The questions that come first.

AINCHOR is Cognitain's product studio for client mobile work. We design and build native Apple apps — iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and macOS — and extend to Android and React Native when a product needs to be on both stores. We take products from scope through App Store release, and maintain them afterwards.

Three published ranges, all USD and all indicative until the written scope: an MVP sprint at $15k–$40k over 6–10 weeks, a full build at $40k–$100k+ over 3–6 months, and a rolling retainer from $4k a month. The written scope after the discovery call is the real number.

Six to twelve weeks from kickoff to store for a focused first version. Roughly a week of discovery and written scoping, four to eight weeks of design and engineering with a build in your hands weekly, then one to two weeks for submission and launch.

Four stages. Discover: a free call, then a written scope covering goals, users, constraints and cost. Build: design and engineering in tight loops with a working build every week. Ship: store submission, review handling and launch analytics. Support: OS updates, crash triage and the next version, on a retainer or on call.

You do. Source, pipelines, store accounts and architecture notes all transfer to you. There is no lock-in and no hostage keys, and the assignment is written into the agreement rather than implied by it.

The people who scope your project are the people who build it. There is no handoff after the pitch — it is the first of our four operating principles precisely because it is the most common failure mode in agency work.

Native when the product lives on gestures, animation, background work, widgets, watch surfaces or on-device intelligence. React Native when you need both stores on one budget and the interface is not your differentiator. We argue the decision, write it down, and you can audit the reasoning later.

Both. Inherited codebases, stalled projects, OS migrations, crash triage and performance work are a standing engagement type. Takeovers begin with a scoped assessment, because nobody can quote a fix before reading the code.

Yes — product and interface design are part of a build engagement. If you already have a designer or decided designs, we scope engineering only, which shortens both the timeline and the cost.

Yes. Auth, APIs, sync, offline behaviour and the failure paths are part of a full build. Where a backend already exists we integrate with it rather than proposing a replacement you did not ask for.

Primarily the United States and the United Kingdom, plus Canada, Ireland and Western Europe. Working-hours overlap, invoicing currency and the applicable privacy regime are set out on the United States and United Kingdom pages.

Within one business day, from an engineer rather than a sales inbox — including the briefs we turn down.