Table: monthly cost of the same builds on Expo EAS Build and aipps.dev in October 2026. 15 iOS + 15 Android: $0 on both free plans. 60 + 60: EAS $154, aipps.dev $3, 51x. 300 + 300: EAS $874, aipps.dev $9, 97x

If you build an Expo or React Native app, EAS Build is the default answer to "where do the binaries come from". It is good at it: one command, credentials handled, a Mac you never have to own. It also charges per build, and per-build pricing is the line on the bill that grows fastest once a team starts making preview builds for every pull request. aipps.dev does the same job, building Android and iPhone apps from your project and handing back an install link, on a daily allowance instead. This is a side-by-side with the published prices from both pricing pages, the build times we measured on aipps.dev this week, and the places where EAS is still the better pick.

Disclosure: aipps.dev is our product. Expo's figures are the list prices on expo.dev/pricing, read on 28 October 2026; ours are from aipps.dev/pricing on the same day. Taxes left out.

The two price lists

text
                     EAS Build (Expo)                    aipps.dev
free plan            up to 15 Android + 15 iOS builds    3 builds a day, any number of apps
                     a month, low-priority queue,        (66 on 22 working days)
                     45 min timeout, 1 macOS at a time   one build at a time
paid plan            Starter $19/mo incl. $45 credit     build pack $3/mo = 10 more builds a day
                     Production $199/mo incl. $225       stack as many packs as you need
per build            Android $1 medium / $2 large        up to 20 min and 150 MB counts as 1
                     iOS $2 medium / $4 large            20-60 min or up to 500 MB counts as 3
long builds          2 h timeout on paid plans           Large add-on $5/mo per app: 120 min, 2 GB
concurrency          Starter 5 total / 2 macOS           1 at a time, 2 from the second pack
                     Production 15 / 10 macOS
                     extra macOS slot $50/mo each

The model is the real difference. On EAS every build is a charge, so the bill is builds x price, minus the credit in your plan. On aipps.dev you buy a daily ceiling: a pack is 10 more builds every day, and the count resets at midnight UTC whether you used them or not. A build that fails because of our machines doesn't count; one that fails because of the project does, as it would on EAS.

The aipps.dev pricing page in USD: Free $0 with 3 builds a day, Build pack $3 a month for 10 more builds a day, Large add-on $5 a month per app for builds up to 120 minutes and 2 GB
aipps.dev/pricing on 28 October 2026, USD view.

Three teams, worked out

Same assumptions as our CI build cost comparison: medium EAS workers, builds spread over 22 working days, and every build short enough to count as one on aipps.dev (see the measured times below).

text
A hobby app: 15 iOS + 15 Android builds a month (about 1.4 a working day)
  EAS Free                                             $0
  aipps.dev Free (3 a day)                             $0

A small team: 60 iOS + 60 Android a month (about 5.5 a working day)
  EAS Starter    $19 + (60 x $2 + 60 x $1) - $45 credit = $154.00
  aipps.dev      5.5 a day > 3 free -> 1 pack (13 a day) =  $3.00
                                                  ratio     51x

A busy team: 300 iOS + 300 Android a month (about 27 a working day)
  EAS Starter    $19 + ($600 + $300) - $45               = $874.00
  EAS Production $199 + ($600 + $300) - $225             = $874.00
  aipps.dev      27 a day -> 3 packs (33 a day)          =   $9.00
                                                  ratio     97x

For the hobby app there is nothing to choose on price: both free plans cover it. EAS Free is the more generous on build length (45 minutes, against 20 for a simple build on ours, where one 20 to 60 minute build a day is allowed), and ours is the more generous on count once you pass 15 builds of one platform in a month.

From the small team up the gap is wide, because the EAS bill grows with every build and ours grows in steps of 10 a day. The busy team's 600 builds cost 97 times less, and the ratio keeps rising with volume: EAS's per-build price is the same at build 600 as at build 60.

Where the count is less kind to us

A build that runs 20 to 60 minutes, or makes an app file over 150 MB, counts as three on aipps.dev. If your release builds routinely take 30 minutes, the small team above needs about 16 build counts a day instead of 5.5, which is 2 packs ($6) rather than 1: still far under $154, but the ratio drops from 51x to 26x. EAS charges a large worker the same $4 per iOS build however long it runs, so the longer your builds, the narrower the gap. Above 60 minutes you need our Large add-on ($5 a month per app).

What we measured on aipps.dev

Every successful build on aipps.dev from 23 to 28 October 2026, 24 in all, from the build records (start to finish, so the queue wait is not included):

text
platform  profile                      builds  median    range       median app file
Android   preview (APK, arm64)         11      14.9 min  4.1-21.8    21.2 MB
Android   production (.aab, all ABIs)  4       17.0 min  15.6-23.7   48.5 MB
Android   demo                         1       18.4 min  -           23.0 MB
iPhone    preview (simulator build)    8       1.8 min   1.7-4.8     12.3 MB

counted as 1 build (simple)          22 of 24
counted as 3 (complex, over 20 min)   2 of 24
median wait from request to start    0.2 min

The apps are small to mid-size Expo and React Native apps (a hello-world, an email client, two community apps) plus one native Kotlin app, the 4.1-minute outlier. Two limits on what this shows. The iPhone figures are simulator builds; signed App Store builds take longer because they archive and sign, and we don't have enough of them yet to quote a median. And the sample is a week of our own apps, not a benchmark against EAS, which doesn't publish build times. The queue wait is short because the service is young; on a free plan you are behind paying accounts in the queue, as you are on EAS Free.

An aipps.dev install page for the Hello test app: Android, preview, build 8, 20.0 MB, kept until 24 Nov 2026, an Install on Android button and a QR code in a phone frame
Every finished build gets an install page with a QR code. This one is a preview build of our test app from 27 October.

Feature by feature

text
                          EAS Build / Expo                aipps.dev
Expo projects             yes                             yes: expo prebuild, eas.json profiles read
other projects            bare React Native               RN, Capacitor, Kotlin/Java, Swift/ObjC
install link + QR         yes (internal distribution)     every build, 7 days free / 30 days paid
Play store submit         EAS Submit                      --submit to a Play track
TestFlight submit         EAS Submit                      --submit testflight
Apple credentials         Apple account login or API key  App Store Connect API key only,
                          can make certificates for you   we never hold an Apple password
OTA updates               EAS Update                      no
CI workflows              EAS Workflows (per minute)      no (run aipps build from your CI)
push notifications setup  expo-notifications + Expo push  APNs + Firebase keys per app, send API
macOS builds at once      2 (Starter) to 10 (Production)  1, 2 from the second pack

Three rows are worth slowing down on. OTA updates: if you ship JavaScript fixes with EAS Update, aipps.dev doesn't replace that, and you can keep EAS Update on its own while building elsewhere; our OTA updates comparison has the per-user prices. Concurrency: on EAS Production ten iOS builds run at once; on aipps.dev a busy team's morning rush waits in line, and 27 builds of about 15 minutes on two slots is three and a half hours of machine time spread over the day. Credentials: EAS can sign in to your Apple account and create certificates for you, which is convenient; aipps.dev only uses an App Store Connect API key you make yourself, which is one more setup step and one less password held by someone else.

Which one to pick

Stay on EAS if you use EAS Update and Workflows as one product, if many iOS builds have to run at the same moment, or if Expo's managed credentials save you more time than the bill costs. For a solo developer inside 15 builds of each platform a month, both are free and EAS has the longer timeout.

Move your builds to aipps.dev if your bill is mostly per-build charges: preview builds for testers, builds on every merge, several apps. The small team above pays $3 instead of $154 a month, and the busy team $9 instead of $874. aipps init reads your eas.json profiles, and EAS Update can keep running beside it.

Build your Expo or React Native app on aipps.dev: 3 builds a day free for any number of apps, and an install page with a QR code for every build.

Start building free

Sources: expo.dev/pricing (plans, build credit, per-build prices, concurrency, timeouts, queue priority), read 28 October 2026; aipps.dev/pricing and aipps.dev/docs, same day; build times and counts from the aipps.dev build records, 23 to 28 October 2026.