How Much Does It Cost to Build a Receipt Scanning App?

Receipt scanning apps process over 100 million expense claims every month across business users alone, and that number keeps climbing. I've built three different receipt scanning solutions over the years—one for a fintech startup that's now processing thousands of receipts daily, another for an enterprise expense management platform, and a third for a small business accounting tool. Each project taught me something different about what makes these apps work (and more importantly, what makes them fail). The cost question? It's never as simple as people think when they first reach out to us.

Most clients come to me thinking receipt scanning is just "point your camera and done". But there's a massive difference between taking a photo of a receipt and actually extracting useful data from it. The real challenge is getting the OCR technology to reliably pull out dates, amounts, vendor names, and line items from receipts that are crumpled, faded, or printed on thermal paper that's already turning brown. I mean, have you ever looked at a receipt from three months ago? Half the time you can barely read it yourself, never mind expecting an algorithm to parse it accurately.

The difference between a receipt scanning app that costs £15,000 and one that costs £150,000 isn't usually the scanning itself—its everything that happens after the scan

Building a receipt scanning app sits somewhere between developing a simple utility tool and creating a full-blown fintech platform. You're dealing with financial data, which means security matters. You're processing images, which means storage costs add up fast. And you're relying on OCR accuracy, which can make or break the entire user experience. Let's break down what you're actually paying for when you build one of these apps, because I can tell you from experience that the initial quote is rarely where the costs end.

Understanding Receipt Scanning and OCR Technology

Receipt scanning apps rely on something called OCR, which stands for Optical Character Recognition. Basically, its the tech that lets a camera look at text on a receipt and turn it into digital data your app can actually use. I mean, we've been using OCR in various forms for years now—from those old bank cheque readers to modern passport scanners—but applying it to receipts? That's where things get properly tricky.

The problem with receipts is they're bloody inconsistent. I've built expense tracking apps for clients in fintech and healthcare, and the variety of receipt formats you encounter is honestly a bit mad. Some receipts use thermal paper that fades quickly; others have tiny fonts, weird layouts, or are crumpled up in someone's pocket for weeks. Then you've got different languages, currencies, and store formats to deal with. A Tesco receipt looks nothing like one from a local corner shop, and your OCR needs to handle both.

How OCR Actually Works in Receipt Apps

When someone takes a photo of a receipt in your app, several things happen in quick succession. First, the image gets pre-processed—that means adjusting brightness, contrast, and perspective to make the text clearer. Then the OCR engine analyses the image, identifies text regions, and extracts the characters. Finally (and this is the bit people often forget about), you need something to make sense of the extracted data—working out which number is the total, which line items are products, what the date is, etc.

Key Challenges You'll Face

Here's what makes receipt scanning harder than standard OCR:

• Poor lighting conditions when users snap photos in dim restaurants or shops
• Curved or wrinkled receipts that distort the text
• Faded thermal paper that becomes harder to read over time
• Multiple languages and number formats depending on your user base
• Varying receipt layouts with no standard format across retailers
• Background noise like tables, hands, or other objects in the photo

The accuracy rate you can expect varies wildly. In my experience building these systems, you're looking at around 70-85% accuracy for standard receipts under good conditions. But that drops significantly with poor image quality or unusual formats, which means you'll need human verification built into your workflow for anything business-critical.

Development Costs for Basic Receipt Scanning

When people ask me how much it'll cost to build a basic receipt scanning app, I usually tell them to expect somewhere between £25,000 and £45,000 for a simple version that works on both iOS and Android. That's assuming you're using something like React Native or Flutter to build for both platforms at once, which honestly makes sense for most projects unless you've got very specific performance needs.

Here's what you actually get for that money. You get an app that can take a photo of a receipt, extract the text using OCR, pull out the important bits like date and total amount, and store it somewhere the user can see it later. Sounds straightforward? It kind of is, but there's still plenty that can go wrong if you don't know what you're doing.

What Makes Up The Basic Cost

The bulk of your money goes into a few key areas. First is the camera functionality—people think this is simple but getting it to work smoothly across different lighting conditions and phone models takes proper testing. Then there's the OCR integration itself, which I'll talk more about in another chapter. You'll also need user authentication (nobody wants their receipts floating around publicly), basic data storage, and a simple interface for viewing saved receipts.

I worked on a basic expense app for a small accounting firm a while back and they initially wanted to build native apps for both platforms separately. That would've cost them close to £70,000. We went with Flutter instead and cut their costs almost in half whilst still delivering something that worked brilliantly on both iOS and Android.

Time Breakdown For Development

These timeframes assume you've already sorted out what features you want and have proper designs ready to go. If you haven't done that groundwork, add another 2-3 weeks for discovery and planning—which honestly you should do anyway because skipping this stage is where projects go off the rails.

Don't try to build everything at once. Start with the absolute basics—capture, scan, store—and get that working properly before adding fancy features. I've seen so many projects run over budget because clients wanted to add expense categorisation, multi-currency support, and team sharing all in version one. Build the foundation first, then iterate based on real user feedback.

One thing that catches people out is the difference between "it works on my phone" and "it works reliably for thousands of users." The testing phase is where you find out that certain receipt formats don't scan properly, or that the app crashes on older Android devices, or that images are taking forever to upload on slow connections. You really don't want to skimp on this bit—trust me, dealing with angry users after launch costs way more than proper app performance testing upfront.

The camera functionality alone needs serious attention because receipts come in all shapes and sizes. Some are printed on shiny thermal paper that reflects light badly, others are crumpled or faded. We spent ages on one project getting the auto-focus and edge detection right so users didn't have to take five photos before getting a clear scan. That kind of polish takes time but its what separates apps people actually use from ones they delete after a week.

Advanced Features and Their Price Impact

Once you've got your basic receipt scanning working, this is where things get expensive fast. I mean really expensive. A simple OCR engine might cost you £15,000-25,000 to implement properly, but the moment you start adding features like automatic expense categorisation or multi-currency support, you're looking at another £8,000-15,000 per feature. Its not just about building it either—these advanced features need constant training and refinement.

Machine learning for smart categorisation is probably the biggest cost driver I see in receipt apps. You need a decent dataset to train on (which takes time and money to compile), plus ongoing adjustments as it learns from user behaviour. We built an expense app for a fintech client that categorised transactions automatically; the ML model alone added about £22,000 to the project cost, and that was with a relatively small training dataset. If you want it to handle industry-specific categories or learn individual user preferences? Add another £10,000-18,000 to your budget.

Features That Actually Add Value

Real-time data extraction and validation—where the app checks receipt totals match line items or flags duplicate submissions—typically costs £6,000-12,000 to implement. Multi-language OCR support adds roughly £4,000-8,000 per additional language because you need different training models. Batch processing (uploading multiple receipts at once) seems simple but requires careful queue management and costs around £5,000-9,000 to do properly without crashing the app.

Storage and Processing Considerations

Cloud processing for OCR—using services like AWS Textract or Google Vision—adds ongoing per-transaction costs that many clients don't anticipate. Sure, you might save £10,000 on development by using these APIs, but if you're processing thousands of receipts monthly, those API fees add up quick. I've seen monthly processing costs reach £800-1,500 for moderately successful apps, which is why some clients opt for hybrid approaches where common receipt types are handled locally and only complex ones go to cloud services.

Integration with Existing Systems

I've built receipt scanning features for accounting platforms, expense management systems, and even integrated them into existing ERP software—and honestly, the integration work often costs more than the scanning functionality itself. A client in the fintech space once told me they'd budgeted £15,000 for their receipt app, but when we mapped out all the systems they needed to connect to (their CRM, their accounting software, their payment gateway, and their internal reporting tools), the integration alone came to nearly £30,000. Its a bit mad really, but that's the reality when you're dealing with established business systems.

The complexity depends entirely on what you're connecting to; if you're integrating with popular platforms like Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage, there are usually well-documented APIs that make life easier. I've done this dozens of times and it typically adds £5,000-12,000 to your project cost depending on how many systems you need to talk to. But here's the thing—legacy systems without proper APIs? That's where things get expensive. We worked on a healthcare expense app that needed to integrate with a 15-year-old hospital management system, and we ended up having to build custom middleware just to make the two systems speak to each other. That added three months and about £40,000 to the project.

The real cost isn't just getting data from point A to point B—it's making sure that data stays accurate, secure, and synchronized across every system your business relies on

You'll also need to factor in authentication systems (single sign-on adds £3,000-8,000), data mapping between different formats, and handling edge cases when systems dont quite agree on how data should look. And don't forget about testing—integration testing takes longer than most people expect because you need to account for every possible scenario across multiple platforms. When you're dealing with multiple departments who each have their own requirements, getting stakeholder alignment becomes crucial for keeping integration costs under control.

Choosing Between Third-Party APIs and Custom Solutions

This is probably the biggest decision you'll make when building a receipt scanning app, and honestly it can save you tens of thousands of pounds if you get it right. I've built receipt scanners both ways—using third-party OCR APIs and developing custom machine learning models—and the right choice really depends on your specific situation, not some one-size-fits-all answer.

Third-party APIs like Google Cloud Vision, AWS Textract, or specialised services like Veryfi and Taggun will cost you anywhere from £0.001 to £0.05 per scan depending on volume. For a startup or MVP? This is usually the smart move. You can be up and running in a few weeks rather than months, and the accuracy is pretty decent out of the box—typically around 85-92% for standard receipts. The catch is ongoing costs; if you're processing 100,000 receipts monthly, you're looking at £1,000-£5,000 recurring expenses just for the API calls.

Custom solutions make sense when you've got specific requirements that third-party tools cant handle well. I worked on an app for a construction company where receipts were often crumpled, dirty, or partially damaged—standard APIs struggled with accuracy below 70%. We built a custom model trained on their specific receipt types and got accuracy up to 94%. Cost? About £45,000 upfront for development and training, but ongoing costs dropped to just server expenses (around £200 monthly). The break-even point was roughly 18 months compared to API costs.

Here's what most people don't consider: data privacy and compliance. If you're handling sensitive financial information, sending every receipt to a third-party API might create GDPR headaches or violate client contracts. Custom solutions keep everything in-house, which matters more in healthcare and finance sectors where I've seen compliance requirements kill perfectly good API integrations.

My general rule? Start with third-party APIs unless you've got a compelling reason not to. You can always migrate to custom later once you've validated the business model and have real user data to inform what kind of custom solution you actually need. If you're planning to pitch this to executives, make sure you understand how to present the ROI calculations for both approaches clearly.

Ongoing Maintenance and Data Storage Costs

Here's what nobody tells you about receipt scanning apps—the development cost is just the beginning. I've built expense management apps for accounting firms and corporate clients, and the ongoing costs can actually exceed your initial build investment within 18 months if you're not careful. The biggest culprit? Data storage. Every receipt image needs to be stored securely (often for 7 years for tax purposes), and high-resolution photos add up fast. We're talking about 2-5MB per receipt on average, which means a business user scanning 50 receipts monthly will generate 3GB of data annually. Multiply that across thousands of users and... well, you can see where this is going.

Cloud storage costs vary wildly depending on your provider—AWS S3 might cost you around £18 per TB per month for standard storage, but thats before you factor in retrieval costs and data transfer fees. One fintech client of mine was shocked when their monthly AWS bill jumped from £200 to £1,400 after six months of growth. The thing is, you cant just delete old receipts either; compliance requirements mean you need a solid archival strategy. I usually recommend implementing automatic archival to cheaper cold storage tiers after 12 months, which can cut costs by 75%.

Maintenance is the other side of this coin. OCR technology improves constantly, which means your third-party API provider will update their service. You'll need ongoing development time to handle these changes, fix bugs, and update the app when iOS and Android release new versions (which happens twice yearly). Budget at least £500-1,500 monthly for basic maintenance, more if you're actively adding features based on user feedback. Keeping an eye on competitor features will help you prioritise which updates matter most for staying competitive.

Set up monitoring for your storage costs from day one—cloud bills can spiral quickly, and most providers offer alerts when you hit certain thresholds. I've seen companies caught completely off-guard by storage costs they never anticipated.

Monthly Cost Breakdown for a Mid-Size Receipt App

• Cloud storage (5,000 active users): £300-600
• Server hosting and database: £150-400
• OCR API calls (250,000 receipts): £200-500
• Development and bug fixes: £500-1,500
• Security updates and compliance: £200-400
• Monitoring and analytics tools: £50-150

The smart approach is treating these costs as part of your business model from the start. If you're charging £5 per user monthly, make sure your infrastructure costs don't exceed £1.50-2 per user. I've worked with e-commerce platforms that failed to account for these recurring expenses properly, and it became a real problem once they scaled past 1,000 users. The maths simply didn't work anymore, and they had to scramble to restructure their entire pricing model. Don't make that mistake; build realistic projections early and monitor them obsessively as you grow.

Hidden Costs That Catch People Out

The sticker price is never the full story with receipt scanning apps, and I've seen this catch out too many clients over the years. Sure, you budget for development and maybe even remember to account for ongoing hosting, but there's a whole list of expenses that only reveal themselves once you're deep into the project.

Receipt image storage is one of the biggest hidden drains I see. Your users might upload 50 receipts a month each—that sounds manageable until you've got 10,000 active users generating half a million images annually. At typical cloud storage rates, thats going to cost you several hundred pounds monthly just for storage, and it grows with your user base. One e-commerce client I worked with budgeted £200 monthly for storage and hit £800 within six months because they hadn't factored in image retention policies or compression strategies.

The Expenses Nobody Mentions Upfront

OCR API costs scale directly with usage, and free tiers disappear fast. Most providers charge per scan or per API call—something like £0.002 per receipt doesn't sound like much until you're processing thousands daily. I mean, at 100,000 scans monthly you're looking at £200 just for the OCR service alone.

And here's what really gets people: compliance and security audits. If you're handling financial data or operating in regulated industries, you'll need regular penetration testing and security assessments. Budget at least £2,000-5,000 annually for this. App store fees are another one—that £79 annual Apple Developer fee is fine, but if you need enterprise distribution or want to test on multiple devices, those costs multiply quickly. App store compliance requirements can also add unexpected delays and costs if your app handles business data that might be accessible to users of different ages. Testing devices themselves can run £1,000+ if you want proper coverage across different screen sizes and OS versions.

The Real Ongoing Expenses

• Customer support tools and staffing as your user base grows
• Third-party service price increases (APIs rarely get cheaper)
• Fraud detection and prevention systems for expense claims
• Data backup and disaster recovery infrastructure
• Multi-currency and international expansion compliance costs
• Push notification services beyond free tier limits
• Performance monitoring and crash reporting tools

The financial services clients I work with typically find that hidden costs add 20-30% to their annual operational budget. Its not about being pessimistic—its about planning properly so you're not scrambling when invoices start arriving for services you forgot existed. If you're planning to launch in multiple markets, consider that developer costs vary significantly by region, which affects both your initial build and ongoing maintenance budget.

Conclusion

Building a receipt scanning app isn't as simple as slapping OCR technology onto a camera interface and calling it done. I've watched too many projects fail because clients underestimated the complexity or, worse, over-engineered something that should have been straightforward. The cost range is genuinely wide—anywhere from £15,000 for a basic MVP using existing APIs to £150,000+ for a fully custom solution with machine learning capabilities and complex integrations. And here's what catches people out: its not just about the initial build cost.

Your biggest decision comes down to whether you use third-party APIs like Google Vision or AWS Textract versus building your own OCR engine. For most projects, third-party solutions make the most sense; they're faster to implement, they work well out of the box, and you can always transition to custom solutions later if your volume justifies it. I mean, why spend six months developing something that Mindee or Veryfi already does brilliantly? Save that budget for the features that actually differentiate your app—the smart categorisation, the integration with accounting software, the user experience that keeps people coming back.

The receipt scanning apps that succeed long-term are the ones built with realistic budgets that account for ongoing costs. Data storage will grow every month. OCR accuracy needs monitoring and improving. Users will request new features. Security requirements will change. If you've budgeted £30,000 for development but nothing for the next 12 months of operation, you're going to hit problems quickly. Factor in at least 20-30% of your build cost annually for maintenance and improvements—that's what I tell every client, and the ones who listen end up with sustainable apps that actually deliver ROI instead of expensive experiments gathering dust in the app stores.