Short answer: you make an app for iPhone and Android the same way here, and the two platforms are equally supported. What differs is not the app, it is the paperwork the platform owner asks of you before that app is allowed onto a phone. Android asks for nothing to install from a link. Apple asks for a developer account in your name, $99 a year, before any iPhone will run it. That is the whole difference, and everything below is the detail.
What Android asks of you: nothing
When your Android build finishes, you get a page with a link and a QR code. Open it on the phone, tap install, and the app is on the home screen. There is no account, no store, no cable, no computer. That is why you can install an app on Android without Google Play at all, and why we suggest starting there.
The phone will ask you some questions the first time, because it is being handed an app from outside the store. It may warn about unknown apps, which you allow for the browser you downloaded with. Play Protect may offer to scan it and then let you install anyway. None of that is a fault in the app; it is Android checking that a person meant to do this.
The Android unverified developer step, on newer phones
Some newer phones go further and say the app is from an unverified developer, then refuse to install it. Google announced this in 2026: apps installed from outside the Play Store now need to be signed by a developer who has registered with Google. Enforcement starts on 30 September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, and widens through 2027, so whether you meet it depends on your phone and where you are.
The way through it today is on the phone: unlock Developer options, turn on the setting that allows apps from unverified developers, and follow the prompts. Android wants a restart and a one time twenty four hour wait, then the install works normally. Our install page says this in place, with the exact taps, so you are not looking it up.
The other way through it is a Google developer account, and this one we can now finish for you. On the build screen there is a Connect Google step: you connect your own account once, and from then on we register every Android app you build under your account, with the app name and the signing key we hold for you. The free kind of account costs nothing, needs no ID, covers as many apps as you like and up to twenty phones, which is plenty for a person, a family or a small team. The standard kind is a one off $25 to Google, needs ID, and has no phone limit. You are the developer of record either way, never us.
What iPhone asks of you: one account, and one key
Apple only lets apps reach iPhones through an Apple developer account, which costs $99 a year and has to be in your name. No builder can remove that, ours included, and any that implies otherwise is holding a step back from you. Publishing on Google Play, by comparison, is a one off $25, and installing on Android is free.
What we need from you is one thing: an App Store Connect API key, a small .p8 file, with its Key ID and Issuer ID. It goes into your own vault, never into the browser. From there we do the rest of it: the certificates, the profiles, the device registration and the signing, on our Macs. You will never open Xcode or read a certificate.
The first iPhone gets set up once, by opening a link on that phone in Safari, which is Apple asking to add the device to your account. After that, new iPhones are added to your app by themselves.
What is identical on both
- The app. One description or one template produces one app, and both builds come from the same code and the same backend, with accounts, a database, files and push.
- The price of starting. Every template is free on both platforms: the whole finished app, yours to build on.
- The way you change it. You ask for a change in plain English and the app rebuilds. A simple app from your own description costs about fifteen credits, and new accounts start with five free credits.
Android is quicker to get onto a phone. iPhone is not harder to build, it is harder to be allowed onto, and the price of being allowed is Apple’s, not ours.
Which one to start with
If you own an Android phone, start there today and feel the app in your hand before you spend anything. If you own an iPhone, or your people do, connect the Apple account and build for it; nothing about the app changes, and you can add the other platform later from the same app. Most people who are deciding between the two are really deciding whether the idea is worth $99 a year yet, and the fastest way to know that is to hold the Android copy first.