Here is the honest answer before the detail: native iOS and Android apps for your museum, web app included, cost from $70 a month or $660 a year with a no-code app builder, and a web app alone costs $460 a year once you add the extension slot a museum guide needs. Shared guide platforms publish tiers from free to 9,500 pounds a year, and French public contracts run into the hundreds of thousands. The right question is not the subscription line: it is your store fees, your languages, and above all the writing and the voices of your audio guide. Every figure below was read at its source on September 18, 2026.
The four ways to get a museum app, and what each really costs
Four routes lead to a museum app, and their prices have nothing in common: from a flat $36 a month on a no-code builder to a public contract or an agency quote.
| Option | What it costs | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| No-code app builder (GoodBarber) | $36 to $135 per month, all-inclusive | native iOS and Android from the $70 tier |
| Shared museum guide platform | free to 9,500 pounds a year on published tiers, then on application | your guide under the platform's name |
| Specialist supplier, through a public contract | 91,400 euros excluding tax for one French municipal museum in 2026 | software, hosting and maintenance in that one, no devices |
| Custom development by an agency | quote-based | GoodBarber's benchmark: total cost of ownership about one tenth of custom development |
Four pricing logics hide behind that table.
No-code builders charge a flat subscription. You assemble the app from ready-made sections, and hosting, database, updates and store republishing sit inside that one line. The general case is in our article on what an app costs to build without coding.
Shared guide platforms publish tiers. One advertises free for a single tour, then 1,800, 3,500 and 9,500 pounds a year, and a bespoke tier on application, with script writing, production and translation quoted separately on every tier. The audience already on the platform is a real advantage, and your guide lives under the platform's name.
Specialist suppliers sell a contract, not a price list. A French town awarded 91,400 euros excluding tax in July 2026 for the supply, implementation, hosting and maintenance of the digital mediation solution of its castle-museum, only 47,200 of it firm: the rest is an optional extension to a second site and a call-off ceiling. At the other end of the market, a national museum in Paris capped the call-off part alone of its audio guide rebuild at 800,000 euros excluding tax over six years (contract notice sent March 19, 2024): a ceiling on one contract line, not a price paid, and not the scale a small museum budgets for. All the public-contract figures here are French, excluding tax, read in the notices.
Custom development is a different sport. An agency quotes a project, not a subscription, and every later change is billed again. It is the right path for what no builder covers: tickets sold inside the app, audio triggered in front of a work, indoor wayfinding. GoodBarber does none of those.
GoodBarber's real price list for a museum app
Prices below come straight from GoodBarber's public pricing API, in US dollars. Full details are on the Content Apps pricing page.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | What it means for a museum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $36 | $360 | a web app opened from a QR code, no app stores, 5 free extensions, one staff member |
| Premium | $70 | $660 | native iOS and Android apps plus the web app, 20 free extensions, three staff members, 30,000 push notifications a month |
| Pro | $135 | $1,260 | unlimited extensions and staff members, 250,000 push notifications a month |
The cheapest line on a pricing page is not a museum's line, and here is the arithmetic nobody publishes. The sections our museum app builder guide recommends come to six: articles, podcasts for the audio guide, a map, an agenda, a QR code reader and favorites. Every section counts against the free extensions of your plan and Standard allows five, so the sixth costs one extra slot at $100 a year: a Standard museum web app is $460 a year, not $360. The $200 between that and Premium buys the rest of the list, the native apps in the App Store and Google Play, twenty free slots instead of six, three staff members instead of one, and a push quota of 30,000 notifications a month. That is why a museum app meant to reach the stores starts at Premium.
Yearly billing costs roughly ten months of the monthly rate. A one-time Pro licence also exists ($4,600, ten years), worth knowing for an institution that budgets over a decade.
The costs no pricing page shows
Whatever you build with, some lines come from other people.
- Apple Developer Program: $99 per year, to publish native iOS apps in your museum's name. Apple waives it for a nonprofit, an accredited school or a government entity that sells nothing digital through its apps, and rechecks that every year: selling access inside the app and keeping the waiver are mutually exclusive.
- Google Play Console: $25, one time. A personal Google account created after November 13, 2023 must also run a closed test with at least 12 testers opted in for 14 days before going to production; an organization account in the museum's name is not subject to that. A web app pays neither store.
- The paid extensions, if you reach for one. The six sections above are free on every plan, but extras such as a loyalty card or visitor sign-in are billed on Premium and included on Pro.
- A domain name. GoodBarber does not sell them, and a subdomain of one you already own costs nothing extra. It is what lets a printed QR code open the native app, so settle it before anything goes to the printer.
- A new store version the day you turn on audio that plays with the screen locked: that option lives inside the binary. Through GoodBarber's publishing service that is one credit per store, $50 for five.
Hosting, the database, the CMS, push notifications inside your quota and statistics add no separate invoice. The physical world does: printing and fixing the QR codes, a map key for the web app, the rights to your images and voices, and staff time, which on Standard is one person.
Audio guide: loaned devices or the visitor's phone, and what each costs you
| Option | What the museum pays | What it asks of the visitor |
|---|---|---|
| Loaned devices | 19 euros a month per device advertised, minimum ten devices for two months, chargers and remote updates included; headphones, writing and recording quoted separately | nothing to install, no phone, no network |
| Native apps, from Premium | subscription, developer accounts, audio production | install the app, bring headphones |
| Web app opened from a QR code | subscription, printing the codes, audio production | a phone, a network, headphones |
One reservation the rows above do not settle: if coverage in your rooms is hopeless, ask GoodBarber support, who can make your content available offline whatever the setup. The technology changes the hardware line, not the content line, and the content line is the heavy one. One French municipal museum ran a two-lot framework for its audio guides: 22,000 euros for the supply of the devices and the integration of the trails, 18,000 for the creation of the sound trails, which is to say the writing and the recording (award notice published February 15, 2024). The voices came close to the lot that covers the devices and their setup.
Some museums now buy both at once. One French town awarded 369,913 euros in 2026, against a published estimate of 250,000, for an audio guide pairing a small fleet of devices with a web app on visitors' own phones (award notice published June 2, 2026).
What native adds to the visit is in our guide; the wider choice is in website, app or both.
Languages: the line that multiplies the budget
An app has one interface language, and it does not follow the visitor's phone. Our guide explains the two structures, one menu section per language or one app per language; here is what each does to the bill.
One menu section per language. One subscription covers both. The menu section takes one more extension slot, $100 a year on Standard and free within Premium's twenty, and every track is recorded again.
One app per language. One subscription each, so two Premium projects are $1,320 a year. GoodBarber's help pages document a 50% discount on each additional language project, calculated on your initial subscription and requested from support before you pay: ask for it, but the budgets below do not count on it. Duplicating the first project into the second costs $40 once.
Outside the subscription, one more language is one more production. A national museum in Paris awarded a separate lot at 15,936 euros, under a 30,000 euro ceiling, for its audio guide content in French sign language (award notice published August 22, 2025).
Three budgets for a first year
| Scenario | What it covers | First year | Following years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Native apps and web app, one language | Premium yearly $660, Apple $99 a year, Google $25 once | $784, or $685 with the Apple waiver | $759, or $660 |
| One app per language, two languages | two Premium subscriptions at full price, Apple $99 a year, Google $25 once | $1,444, or $1,345 with the waiver | $1,419, or $1,320 |
| Web app only, Standard, the six sections | Standard yearly $360 plus one extra extension slot at $100 | $460 | $460 |
These three lines cover the subscription and the store fees, nothing else. The language discount and the $40 duplication would both move the second line; writing, recording, translating, printing and staff time all sit on top, and the contracts above show their weight. Prices are in US dollars; the pricing page shows your currency.
How to keep the total predictable
- Build one real route during the trial. Thirty days, free, no credit card. A project without a subscription is deactivated on day 30 and deleted on day 45, so ask support for an extension if your committee meets monthly.
- Settle the domain and the audio option that plays with the screen locked before the first submission, because changing either afterwards means a new version in the stores.
- Print the QR codes once. Built on the domain you settled, the same code still works the day the native apps reach the stores.
- One menu section per language before one app per language, and pay yearly rather than monthly.
- Open the developer accounts in the museum's name from day one, and ask Apple for the waiver if you qualify, knowing it rules out selling anything digital in the app.
Then settle the budget the only way that works: start the 30-day free trial, add the sections your museum actually needs, and count them. The count tells you which plan you are on, before you pay anything.
FAQ
How much does a museum app cost?
With GoodBarber, $70 a month or $660 a year for native iOS and Android apps plus the web app, verified September 18, 2026. A web app alone is $460 a year on Standard, once you add the extension slot a six-section museum guide needs. Apple adds $99 a year unless your museum qualifies for a waiver, Google Play $25 once.
Is there a free museum app?
The GoodBarber trial is free for 30 days and needs no card, but no free plan follows it. Shared guide platforms do advertise a free tier, usually one tour, under the platform's own name.
How much do native apps cost compared with the web app?
Both come with GoodBarber's Premium plan at $70 a month, so the difference is not the subscription. It is the $99 Apple fee, the $25 Google fee and the store review. What native adds to the visit is in our museum app builder guide.
Do you pay for one app per language?
Not if you create one menu section per language inside one app: one subscription covers it, and that section takes one more extension slot. Yes if you publish one app per language, each with its own subscription, though GoodBarber's help pages document a 50% discount on each extra language project, to request from support first.
Is a smartphone audio guide cheaper than loaned devices?
It removes the devices, the charging and the maintenance, not the writing, the voices or the languages: in one French museum's two-lot contract, creating the sound trails cost 18,000 euros against 22,000 for supplying the devices and setting them up.
Who pays the Apple and Google developer accounts?
Your museum does, directly: $99 a year to Apple, waived for eligible nonprofits, schools and government entities that sell nothing digital in their apps, and $25 once to Google. A web app needs neither.
Can you pay once?
Yes. GoodBarber's Pro plan has a one-time option at $4,600 for ten years. Otherwise yearly billing costs about ten months of the monthly rate.