The pattern is always recognizable. Six months in, the demos keep looking fine, the invoices keep arriving, and nothing reaches a store. Then the agency restructures, the freelancer stops replying, or the internal developer leaves. You are holding a partial product, a spent budget, and nobody who can tell you what you own.
Live, but crashing or flagged in App Review?
Not every failed project is unfinished. Sometimes the app is in the store, users install it, and it crashes; or Apple's App Review rejected the latest update or flagged the app, and the team that built it no longer answers. Then the order changes: first secure the developer accounts and signing keys, then establish what App Review objected to and what makes the app crash, then fix the app and submit a release that addresses what was flagged. More on that in App Store rejection help. If the app is otherwise sound and only needs an owner, take over an existing app is the better fit.
First the inventory, then the decision
The expensive mistake at this point is commissioning a rebuild from the next vendor who sounds confident. You do not yet know what exists. Before anything else, five questions need answers in writing: what code exists and does it build, who controls the cloud accounts and the store listings, where does the data live, what actually works when a real user touches it, and what is legally yours.
What the App Check produces
- An inventory of every account and access: code repository, Apple and Google developer accounts, cloud, database, domain, payment provider, email sending and API accounts, with who owns each and who can log in
- Where the keys and passwords are, whether the app builds with current tools, store risk, payments and backups
- A traffic-light report within five business days, and the most critical gap fixed
- A recommendation (keep and take over, rescue, or rebuild) with a fixed price for the next step
- $2,000, $1,100 for the first five clients (until 31 December 2026 at the latest), credited in full if you order the next step within 60 days
The App Check covers one app with one backend. With several systems, the Architecture Review at $10,500 to $13,900 looks at architecture, access, data, operations and dependencies over one to two weeks.
The answer is sometimes uncomfortable
Sometimes a codebase is salvageable and finishing it is the cheap path. Sometimes the archaeology costs more than starting again, because the data model was wrong at the root and everything above it inherits the mistake. I will tell you which, with reasons you can check, and the App Check is priced the same either way. Nobody here earns more from the answer that involves more work.
The App Rescue, from $27,800
The rescue is a takeover plus hardening, at a fixed price per milestone:
- every account moved into your name, the previous team's access removed, a reproducible build
- security holes closed: access rules, keys, login
- payments repaired and the app made ready for the stores
- tests for the critical flows, monitoring and backups with a tested restore
- 90 days of free bug-fixing after go-live, on top of the 12-month warranty
The code sits in your repository from day one; with each paid milestone, the rights to everything delivered up to that point pass to you. After that, operation in three tiers from $1,400 a month: see app maintenance and operation.
From prototype to real app
The same rescue has a variant for apps built with AI tools. The prototype proved the idea; paying customers need access rules, backups, logging and a clean way into the stores. I check what holds up and fix the rest at a fixed price. More on vibe-coded app to production.
Recover the accounts first
If a former developer still controls the Apple Developer account, the Play Console, the domain or the cloud tenancy, that is the urgent task, not the code. Every week of delay makes the recovery harder, and in the worst case an unpaid invoice becomes leverage against a product you have already paid for. What Apple and Google require for that is described in how to transfer an app and its source code into your own accounts.
All prices are net; the tax treatment is clarified before contract and stated in the offer.
Confidential from the first call: we are happy to sign an NDA before we talk.
Professional liability insurance in place, proof on request.
If the project is finished but ownerless: take over an existing app.