We are sometimes told that €5 a month is a lot for an app. Here are the figures, as they appear on the invoices.
What has already been paid (June → October 2026)
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| AI programming assistant (subscription, €180/month since June) | €900 |
| Code hosting and automated tests (GitHub) | ≈ $746 (≈ $345 of it in October alone) |
| Website and plan-engine server (Render) | ≈ $279 |
| Database (Supabase) | $100 |
| Background GPS licence (one-off purchase) | $399 |
| Apple and Google developer accounts | $124 |
| An Android phone, to test what the app really does on Android | 2,890 kr (≈ €250) |
| Total | ≈ €2,670 |
Dollar amounts are converted at rounded rates. The developer's time is not counted: it has never been paid.
In subscriptions, this €2,670 is about 630 months of subscription (at €4.25 net, after the store commission): some fifty kennels subscribed for a year, just to pay back what has already been spent.
What the app costs every month
Today, while it is being built: about €270 to €300 a month. The programming assistant is the biggest part, because the app changes every day.
Once it reaches cruising speed, this cost will go down: when the app has less to build and mostly needs looking after, the assistant will cost less. What stays no matter what is the base: the server and the database, about €90 a month.
Out of €5, the App Store or Google Play keeps its commission. About €4.25 per kennel is left. So it takes about twenty subscribed kennels just to pay for the base, and about 65 today — with not a cent for the time spent building the app.
The work, in days
In 139 working days since 12 June 2026:
- 1,542 deliveries in the register: features, fixes, small changes;
- an iPhone and Android app, a website, an engine that writes the training plan;
- more than 750,000 lines of written code, and more than 600,000 lines of tests that check it does what it says.
Without a programming assistant, the same thing would take two to three developers over these five months: about 200 to 300 days of work, that is one to one and a half years of a full-time developer. It is an order of magnitude, not a measurement. MushMate was built by one person with a programming assistant.
What €5 a month pays for, concretely
- the servers, the database and the backups running day and night;
- every week's fixes and new features (more than 500 in October);
- one subscription for the whole kennel, on every phone and on the website.
€5 a month is less than 17 cents a day.
What this does not mean
- It is not a call for donations. Nobody has to subscribe: the 30-day trial is complete, and a partner code gives free months without a credit card.
- Your data pays nothing. No advertising tracker and no audience measurement on the website: the subscription is what pays.