United Kingdom
An app development partner for UK companies.
The UK is the easier engagement of the two markets we serve — the working day genuinely overlaps. Here is the commercial and regulatory detail behind that.
- Overlap
- 5+ hrs with GMT/BST
- Invoicing
- USD or GBP
- Data
- UK GDPR-aware builds
- Reply
- One business day
01Working together
A working day that genuinely overlaps.
The India–UK gap is four and a half to five and a half hours depending on the season, which is the friendliest offshore arrangement available to a UK buyer.
- Your morning is our afternoon
- A five-hour-plus daily overlap without anyone working antisocial hours. Calls land inside both working days rather than at the edge of one.
- Same-day turnaround, in practice
- A question raised at 09:00 in London is usually answered before lunch, not the following morning. That is the practical difference from a US-facing arrangement.
- BST and GMT handled
- The offset shifts by an hour twice a year. The overlap window is defined in your local time, so it does not quietly drift in March and October.
02Commercial
Contracting from the UK.
What a UK finance or legal team asks before signing.
- USD or GBP invoicing
- Published ranges are USD; we invoice in GBP where that is simpler for your finance team, with the rate fixed in the agreement rather than floating.
- IP assignment on payment
- Source, pipelines, store accounts and architecture notes assigned to you, written into the agreement.
- Export of services, no UK VAT charged
- Services supplied to a UK business from outside the UK are handled under the reverse charge, so your accountant treats it as a standard overseas supplier. Confirm the treatment with them for your own circumstances.
- Your MSA and NDA
- We sign UK-standard master agreements and statements of work, and an NDA ahead of the brief if you want one.
03Compliance
UK GDPR, built in rather than bolted on.
Data protection is a design constraint on a mobile product, not a policy document written afterwards.
- Lawful basis and data minimisation
- What the app collects, why, and for how long — decided during scoping, because it determines the data model rather than following from it.
- International transfers
- Where data is processed and stored, with a data processing agreement and the appropriate transfer mechanism in place before the build starts.
- Subject rights in the product
- Access, export and deletion need to exist as real flows in the app and the backend. Retrofitting account deletion is also an App Store requirement, so it is cheaper to build it in.
- On-device where it removes the question
- Inference that runs on the phone means the data never leaves it, which turns several of the above into a paragraph rather than a project.
04FAQ
Working with us from the United Kingdom.
Do you work with UK companies?
Yes, and the timezone makes it the most straightforward remote arrangement we run — a five-hour-plus daily overlap with GMT and BST, with calls inside both working days.
Are you a London agency?
No. We are Cognitain's studio working with UK clients remotely, and we would rather say that plainly than imply a London office we do not have. If a local presence is a hard requirement for your procurement process, we are not the right fit.
How do you handle UK GDPR?
As a scoping constraint. Lawful basis, retention, international transfer mechanism and subject-rights flows are decided before the build, and a data processing agreement is in place before we touch production data.
Can you invoice in pounds?
Yes. Published ranges are USD, and we will invoice GBP at a rate fixed in the agreement where that is easier for your finance team.
What does app development cost for a UK company?
$15k–$40k for a scoped MVP sprint, $40k–$100k+ for a full build, or from $4k a month on a retainer. Ranges are indicative until the written scope after the discovery call.
05Related
Where most engagements start.
The three services UK and US briefs land on most often.
iOS app development
Swift and SwiftUI, current-generation Apple frameworks, and a release you own end to end. No wrappers, no WebView shortcuts.
MVP development
One platform, one sharp idea, in front of real users. Scoped hard, built properly, and instrumented well enough to learn something.
React Native development
One codebase, two platforms, no uncanny valley. Native modules where it counts, shared product surface everywhere else.
Tell us what you're building.
Send the rough version. A senior engineer reads every brief and replies within one business day.