Top 10 Social Media App Developers 2026:#1 Frenchy Digital

"Every agency on page one says it builds social apps. Which of them has actually shipped one?"

That's a paraphrase of a founder who called me about a community app for amateur athletes. She'd read four "top social app developer" lists. Two were written by agencies that ranked themselves. None linked to a single named social app any of the ranked firms had built.

So I went and checked. Here's the claim, with the date on it. On September 30, 2026 I read the public pages of every social app developer I could find that shows a named social, community, dating or creator app on its own website. Ten made the ranking. Three of the ten publish a price. One of the ten says, on its own site, that the client owns the code. Two state an ISO 27001 certificate of their own.

That's the gap this article is about. A social app is not a brochure app with a login. It carries other people's content, other people's messages and, often, other people's location. The questions that matter are what it costs, who owns it when you're done, and whether the vendor takes security seriously enough to be audited. Those are the questions this ranking scores.

To be clear about the conflict up front: I run Frenchy Digital, which builds mobile apps, including social ones. It isn't in the scored table. It gets its own disclosed section near the end, scored on the same rubric (10 of 12, which would place it first), with a plain list of who should pick someone else.

If you're earlier than this, and still working out what a social app needs, our guide to building a social media app in 2026 covers the feature set and build order. This page assumes you've decided to hire an agency and want to know which one.

Most social app developer rankings fail for three reasons: the author is on the list, the agencies are scored on their own download numbers, and nobody checks whether the ranked firms ever built a social app at all.

The first is common. Several of the most visible 2026 social app rankings are published by development agencies, sometimes with the author at number two and a disclosure line saying the same standard was applied to everyone. That's better than no disclosure. It's still a vendor grading its own homework, which is why my company sits outside the table.

The second is the one that makes most lists useless. Social app case studies are full of numbers: downloads in the first month, active users, funding raised, star ratings, retention lifts. Every one of those is the agency's own claim about its own client. Nobody audits them, and in social apps they're especially slippery, because a download isn't a user and a user isn't a community.

The third is specific to this category. The wrong model says any competent mobile agency can build a social app, so the best general agency wins. It feels right, because a feed is a list and a chat is a socket. But a social app lives or dies on the parts that aren't features: moderation, reporting, blocking, verification, and what happens when someone posts something awful at 2am on a Saturday.

The real model is that you're hiring someone to build a small public square, and the evidence you want is a public square they've built before. That's why the entry test for this list is a named social, community, dating or creator app on the agency's own site. Not a logo wall. Not a services page with stock screens. A named product.

Therefore: the question isn't "who is the biggest social app company?" It's "who has shipped one like mine, what will it cost, and will I own it?" You'll see in the scoreboard how rarely the last two answers are on the website.

This article also differs from our existing social media app development overview on purpose. That piece explains the category. This one ranks the firms that sell it, on facts you can re-check.

To be ranked, a firm had to show a named social, community, dating or creator app on its own website, and show no sign of having been acquired or shut down.

I started from about fifteen names that recur in social app rankings and search results, then cut. Here's who didn't make it, and why.

• WillowTree: A strong consumer mobile studio, but TELUS announced it had completed the acquisition on January 4, 2023. It is no longer an independent agency. Out.
• Droids On Roids: The Polish mobile specialist was acquired by the UK consultancy Apadmi. Its team stayed in place, but it's now part of a larger group. Out.
• Named work only on review sites: GeekyAnts appears in social app lists and a directory review describes a social fantasy sports app it built, but I didn't find that work named on the GeekyAnts pages I checked. The test is the agency's own site. Out.
• Named work too thin to score: Codebridge names a professional networking platform and a creator token platform on its social network page, but publishes no founding year, pricing, IP terms or certification I could find. It would have scored 1 of 12. Checked, not ranked.
• List authors: Agencies that published their own 2026 social app ranking with themselves on it weren't scored here, for the same reason my company isn't in the table.

On acquisitions: the WillowTree deal is documented in the TELUS release filed with the SEC, which announces the completion on January 4, 2023. The Droids On Roids deal is in Apadmi's own announcement. The page doesn't carry a date I could read; trade coverage places the completion in January 2025.

For the ten that made it, searches found no acquisition, merger or shutdown news from 2024 to 2026. Absence from search results isn't proof of independence. If ownership matters to you (a new parent can change pricing, staffing and who signs your contract), ask directly.

One more note on scope. Some ranked firms qualify through a community app rather than a feed-and-follow network: Cheesecake Labs through a car enthusiast community, Uptech through a sports community, Clockwise Software through Geocaching. I counted those because a community app carries the same core problems (profiles, user content, messaging, moderation). Where the fit is looser, the named-work score says so.

Six attributes, 0 to 2 points each, twelve maximum, all checked on September 30, 2026 from pages anyone can open.

• Named social work: 2 for a dedicated case study page on the agency's own site for a named social, community, dating or creator app; 1 for named social apps listed on a services page without a case study I opened; 0 for none.
• Case study depth: 2 for named features plus a named tech stack; 1 for features only; 0 for a name with little else.
• Years operating: 2 for ten or more years stated on the agency's own site; 1 for under ten years stated there; 0 for none found on the pages checked.
• Published pricing: 2 for price figures on the agency's own site; 1 for a described pricing model or estimate process without figures; 0 for nothing.
• IP and code ownership terms: 2 for an explicit statement that the client owns the code and IP; 0 for nothing stated.
• Security certification: 2 for ISO 27001 or SOC 2 stated as the agency's own; 1 for a lesser certification (ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials) or a standard listed without saying it is the agency's own; 0 for none.

Ties break on named social work, then years operating, then alphabetically.

What I excluded, and why.Downloads, active users, funding raised, star ratings quoted on case studies, retention and engagement lifts, because every one is the agency's own number about its own client. Headcount and project counts, because 3,000 projects tells you nothing about who builds your chat. Code quality and app performance, because I haven't audited anyone's code and won't pretend I have.

Review ratings.I didn't score them and I don't print any. The big directories block automated readers, so ratings reach me only through search snippets and the agencies' own badges. A number I can't see on its source page isn't a number I'll rank on.

How to re-check it.Open each agency's homepage, social or media services page, the named case study, and any pricing or about page. Search the site for "cost", "price", "you own", "intellectual property", "ISO", "SOC" and "years". It takes about fifteen minutes an agency. If an agency has published something since September 30, its score should change.

Scorchsoft and Cleveroad lead with 8 of 12, and Scorchsoft takes first on the tiebreak. The middle of the table is a five-way tie at 6.

Do the arithmetic. The ten scores add to 63, so the average is 6.3 of 12, just over half. The leaders disclose about 1.27x what the average agency does, and 1.6x what the bottom two do. That's a tight field. The difference between first and tenth is three points, which is one published price list and one ownership sentence.

Now read the columns instead of the rows, because that's where the finding is.

Years operating: nine of ten score 2. Everyone on this list has been around for a decade or close to it. Named social work: seven of ten score 2. The entry test did its job. IP terms: nine of ten score zero. Pricing: six of ten score zero. Security: four of ten score zero.

So the market is generous with case studies and quiet about the three things that decide your risk: what it costs, who owns the code and whether anyone has audited how the vendor handles data. For a product that will store other people's messages, that last column matters more here than in almost any other app category.

There's a pattern in who scores well, too. The two leaders score for opposite reasons. Scorchsoft wins on the depth of one named dating app case study. Cleveroad wins on publishing a price range and an ISO 27001 certificate, with its social work named only in a list. Neither publishes IP terms. The one agency that does (Clockwise Software) finishes tenth, because its social evidence is the thinnest.

Every score traces to a cell below. Everything in this table is the agency's own statement on its own site.

A few cells need a note. Appinventiv's homepage lists ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2 among a long set of compliance standards alongside GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS and FedRAMP. That reads as a list of standards it works to, and the page doesn't say which are certificates it holds, so it gets 1 rather than 2. If you need the certificate, ask for it.

Cheesecake Labs' homepage says it has had AI live in SOC 2 and HIPAA environments since 2024. That describes the environments it has worked in, not an attestation of its own, so it scores 0 on that column. It may hold one; the page doesn't say.

Uptech says 10 years on its homepage and 9 years on its social app page. Either way, it scores the same on years once you round to the decade, and I used the homepage figure.

Each profile says who the agency suits, what I could verify, and what I couldn't.None of this is a quality judgment. I haven't worked with any of them.

Top ranked

1

Scorchsoft

the most detailed dating app case study

Score: 8 of 12. Suits: UK and European founders building a dating or identity-sensitive social app who want to see how a vendor handled verification and photo safety.

Verifiable: its BARE case study describes rebuilding a body-confident dating app from an older Cordova app into React Native, with redesigned sign-up, chat and profile screens, a subscription system, a matching algorithm with profile filters, photo blur controls, age and identity verification through Yoti, image safety checks through Google SafeSearch, and an admin back end. The stack is named: React Native, PHP on Yii2, MySQL. Its homepage says over 15 years of experience, a Birmingham in-house team, Cyber Essentials certification, and ballpark estimates followed by fixed-cost sprints.

Not verifiable: no price figures, so pricing scores 1. No IP terms on the pages checked. Cyber Essentials is a UK baseline scheme, a real step but a smaller one than ISO 27001, so it scores 1.

Visit Scorchsoft

2

Cleveroad

a published price range and ISO 27001

Score: 8 of 12. Suits: buyers who need a certified vendor and a price range before the first call, across social networks, dating and streaming.

Verifiable: its social media app page names Ayoo Dance (a social app for dancers), Greenlight (a US dating app), Photo-Fi (a donation-based social network with streaming), Just Play and DeltaSport (sports networking and community). It says development typically costs $40,000 to $300,000 or more, states ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certification, and says 15 years in the industry, with offices in Estonia, the US and Norway.

Not verifiable:I didn't open a dedicated case study for any of the named apps, so named work and depth score 1 each. The Clutch rating and ranking on the page are directory claims and aren't scored. No IP terms.

Visit Cleveroad

3

Blue Whale Apps

video profiles for a pet lovers dating app

Score: 7 of 12. Suits: US founders building a niche dating or matching app who want a vendor with offices in Virginia, Florida and New York.

Verifiable: its Max & Molly case study describes a dating app for pet lovers with 20-second video profiles instead of photos only, location-based matching, real-time chat and notifications, and a web admin module, and names Swift and React Native. Its homepage says 17+ years of experience and shows an ISO 9001 badge.

Not verifiable: the download figure in the case study and the client counts and ratings on the homepage are its own. No pricing or IP terms. ISO 9001 is a quality management standard, not an information security one, so it scores 1.

Visit Blue Whale Apps

4

Fora Soft

a dating app with coaching built in

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: products where video and real-time communication are the core, such as dating with video calls, live sessions or coaching.

Verifiable: its Mindwibe project page describes an iOS dating app combining swipe matching with relationship coaching: psychologist-designed courses before matching, real-time chat with photo and video, in-app consultations with coaches, and over-the-air updates so the interface can change without a new App Store submission. It names Stripe for payments and Twilio for SMS verification. Its homepage says it was founded in 2005 and specializes in video, real-time and AI software, with 50 in-house engineers and no subcontracting.

Not verifiable: no pricing, no IP terms and no security certification on the pages checked. It offers an NDA on request, which is a confidentiality promise, not an ownership term.

Visit Fora Soft

5

Cheesecake Labs

a community app for car enthusiasts

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: US startups building a hobby or interest community in React Native who want a nearshore team with a Latin American base.

Verifiable: its CRU case study describes a social app for car enthusiasts: profiles with car photos and specs, organizing shows and rallies with RSVPs, real-time GPS during road trips, and direct messaging for advice and business connections. The stack is named: React Native, TypeScript, Node.js, Forest and Firebase. Its homepage says 13+ years of shipping software.

Not verifiable: the user, event and rating figures in the case study are its own. No pricing or IP terms. The SOC 2 mention is about environments it has worked in (see the scoreboard note).

Visit Cheesecake Labs

The bottom half isn't worse at building social apps. It publishes less, or its social evidence is thinner.

6

Appinventiv

a voice-first social app for smart glasses

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: larger companies that want a big delivery organization and an unusual social product, such as audio or wearables.

Verifiable: its Vyrb case study describes a social app for Innovative Eyewear that sends and receives audio messages optimized for Bluetooth wearables, with Siri and Google Assistant commands, an autoplay feature that reads feeds aloud as one stream, and speech-to-text. The homepage says 10+ years and lists ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2 among its compliance standards.

Not verifiable: no tech stack on the case study page, so depth scores 1. The download and funding figures there are its own. No pricing or IP terms on the pages checked.

Visit Appinventiv

7

Uptech

a sports community built from an idea

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: first-time founders who arrive with an idea rather than a spec and want research and product discovery before code.

Verifiable: its Rivalz case study describes a sports community app in Qatar for finding games and nearby players: game creation, discovery by sport, time and location, skill-based matching, in-app chat, split payments and a premium subscription. It names a native stack (Swift with RxSwift, Kotlin) and a Node.js, Python and AWS back end, a nine-person team, and user research through web front end in scope.

Not verifiable: no pricing, IP terms or security certification on the pages checked. The referral rate and project counts on its site are its own.

Visit Uptech

8

Apptunix

audio social and dating, with ISO 27001

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: buyers in the Gulf, India or North America who want a large team and a certified vendor for a social or dating product.

Verifiable: its social media app page names Poddy (an audio social app in the UAE), BancReach (a professional banking network in the US), Preeple (a video sharing platform in Nigeria) and HiViibe (a spiritual dating app in Canada), and outlines a six-phase process. Its homepage says it was founded in 2013 and states ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and CMMI Level 3.

Not verifiable:I didn't open a dedicated case study for the named apps, so named work and depth score 1 each. The user and rating figures beside each app are its own. Pricing is custom quote only, with MVP timelines of 3 to 4 months. No IP terms.

Visit Apptunix

9

Purrweb

a creator marketplace and a starting price

Score: 5 of 12. Suits: startups building a creator or media product in React Native who want a price anchor before a call.

Verifiable: its media and entertainment page names Contentplace, a marketplace where content makers buy and sell video, says it has made apps for 10 years, and prices media solutions from $80,000, with an estimate of $80,000 to $85,000.

Not verifiable: Contentplace is a creator marketplace more than a social network, and I found no case study depth on that page, so named work scores 1 and depth 0. No IP terms or certifications.

Visit Purrweb

10

Clockwise Software

the only public IP clause

Score: 5 of 12. Suits: buyers whose first question is ownership and budget, building a community or location-based product.

Verifiable: its social media app page says the client owns the source code, documentation, design files and intellectual property, with the transfer written into the contract from the start. It is the only one of the ten to say so. It also lists price bands: $15,000 to $50,000 for discovery or a prototype, $50,000 to $100,000 for an MVP, $100,000 to $500,000 for a sales-ready product, and $500,000 or more beyond that, across six phases. It names Geocaching, Eventbrite and WijnSpijs as clients.

Not verifiable: Geocaching is a community app, but Eventbrite and WijnSpijs are event and dining products, and the page gives no build details, so named work scores 1 and depth 0. No founding year on the pages checked (other sources describe it as ten years or more, but I score only what the site says). No certification.

Visit Clockwise Software

A social app has a set of obligations a normal app doesn't, and Apple writes them down.

Guideline 1.2 of the App Store Review Guidelines says apps with user-generated content or social networking must include four things: a way to filter objectionable material from being posted, a way to report offensive content with timely responses, the ability to block abusive users, and published contact information. Guideline 5.1.1(v) adds that any app supporting account creation must offer account deletion inside the app.

None of that is exotic. All of it is work. A report button is a screen. Timely responses to a report means someone reads a queue, which means an admin panel, roles, an audit trail and a target for how fast you answer. Blocking means every query that returns people or posts has to check a block list. Account deletion means deciding what happens to a deleted user's posts, messages and likes.

Here's why this belongs in a ranking. When I read the ten case studies, the ones that named safety features (Scorchsoft's verification, image checks and admin back end, Blue Whale Apps' web admin module) told me more about the vendor than any download count. A vendor that shows you its moderation tooling has built a social app. A vendor that shows you only a feed has built a demo.

So ask every shortlisted agency the same question: "Show me the admin and moderation panel from a social app you shipped." If they can't, the quote in front of you almost certainly doesn't include one.

To be clear, the rules outside the App Store are moving too, and they differ by country and by your users' ages. I haven't tried to summarize them here, because a ranking of vendors is the wrong place for a legal survey and I'm not a lawyer. What you can ask a vendor is simpler: which age assurance, reporting and data deletion features have you built before, and for which markets?

The rank matters less than the fit. A 5 that matches your constraint beats an 8 that doesn't.

Decide your one non-negotiable first (a budget ceiling, code ownership, a security certificate, dating experience, a community with events) and see who survives it. Then compare the survivors on everything else.

Two rows deserve a longer word.

The dating app founder. Dating is the social category with the least room for error. You hold photos, locations, private messages and sometimes identity documents, and the people most motivated to abuse the product are also the ones most motivated to find its gaps. Three ranked agencies show named dating work (Scorchsoft, Fora Soft and Blue Whale Apps), and Cleveroad and Apptunix list dating apps too. Ask each of them how they verified age, how they handle a reported profile, and what location precision the app exposes to other users.

The regulated or enterprise buyer.If your procurement team needs an ISO 27001 certificate, two of ten state one: Cleveroad and Apptunix. Ask for the certificate itself and read its scope. A certificate that covers one office or one service line doesn't necessarily cover the team building your app.

Whatever you pick, decide the build approach before the vendor does. Most social apps today ship on iOS and Android from one cross-platform codebase, and most of the case studies here (Scorchsoft, Cheesecake Labs, Blue Whale Apps) name React Native. Our React Native development page explains why we default to it and when we don't.

This is a scenario, not a client.

Consider a founder building a community app for amateur runners: profiles, a feed of runs, clubs, group chat and event sign-ups. She has $120,000 for version one. Her investor has one condition: the company owns the code outright.

Step one is ownership. One of ten agencies already says in public that the client owns the code: Clockwise Software. The other nine aren't out; they just have to put it in the contract. So she emails the same line to her whole shortlist: "Please confirm in writing that all source code, design files and IP are assigned to us on payment, and that the repositories and store accounts are registered to our company." How fast and how cleanly each answers is the best free signal she'll get.

Step two is the budget, and the arithmetic is worth doing out loud. Clockwise Software puts an MVP at $50,000 to $100,000, so $120,000 is 1.2x the top of that band. Purrweb starts media apps at $80,000, so her budget is 1.5x its floor. Cleveroad's range is $40,000 to $300,000 or more, so she sits at about 3x its floor and 0.4x its stated top. On all three published anchors, $120,000 is a realistic MVP budget, not a generous one.

Step three is the part every quote forgets. She asks each agency for its admin and moderation panel from a shipped social app, and asks whether reporting, blocking, filtering and in-app account deletion are in the quote. Suppose one agency quotes $95,000 without them and another $115,000 with them. The cheaper quote isn't cheaper. It's the same app with a missing floor.

Step four is fit. A running club app is a community app with events, which is close to what Cheesecake Labs (CRU) and Uptech (Rivalz) show. Neither publishes a price. A ten-minute email tells her whether $120,000 is a conversation they'll have.

Notice what the rank did in all of this: not much. The top scorer shows the deepest dating case study, which isn't her category. The tenth-place agency answers her investor's condition on its website. The total is a summary; the columns are the tool.

Social app case studies are dense with numbers, and almost none of them should travel as fact.

The first group is downloads and users. Nearly every case study I read quotes one: thousands of downloads in the first month, tens of thousands of active users, a million users on a video platform. Each is the agency's claim about its client, with no definition of "active", no date and no way to check. Not scored, not repeated as outcomes.

The second is funding. At least one case study credits the app with funding its client raised. An app may help a pitch. It doesn't raise a round, and the attribution is the agency's own.

The third is star ratings quoted inside case studies. A 5.0 or 4.9 on a case study page is a screenshot of a moment, often from a small number of early reviews. I checked none of them on the store listing, so none is printed here as a rating.

The fourth is retention and engagement lifts, the most common numbers in social app marketing. I chased the ones on the pages I read. None came with a baseline, a comparison group or a method. That doesn't make them false; it makes them unverifiable, and I don't print unverifiable numbers as fact.

And the last is our own. Our GameOn case study carries headline counters. I couldn't trace them to a public source I can show you today, which is exactly the category I refused for everyone else, so I don't use them here either.

Once you have two or three proposals, these are the lines I'd look for first.

• No moderation line item: If reporting, blocking, filtering and an admin queue aren't priced, they aren't included. Apple requires them for social apps.
• No clause assigning code to you: Nine of ten ranked agencies publish nothing on ownership. Get a written assignment covering code, designs, and the accounts the app runs on.
• Store and cloud accounts in the vendor's name: The App Store listing, Google Play console, cloud project and domain should be registered to your company from day one.
• Account deletion treated as a later feature: Apple requires in-app account deletion for any app with sign-up. It also forces decisions about what happens to a user's posts and messages.
• Chat quoted as a checkbox: Real-time messaging with read receipts, media, push and abuse reporting is a subsystem. Ask how it's built and what it costs to run each month.
• Download numbers on slide one: Another client's download count is that client's marketing. Ask for two references from social apps you can install today.
• No named team: Large agencies can staff your app with anyone. Ask who, by name, and what else they're working on.
• Security claims without a certificate: A compliance logo on a homepage isn't a certificate. Ask for the document and its scope.

A good social app proposal reads like a build plan: phases, what each phase delivers, who is on it, what the moderation tools look like, and what you own. If it reads like a feature list with a total at the bottom, send it back.

A disclosure ranking has three failure modes, and you should know them before you rely on it.

First, it rewards agencies that write things down, and punishes good builders that don't. An agency with a superb social app portfolio and no pricing page will sit below one with a thinner portfolio and a price range. That's why I call it a shortlist tool, not a verdict. The cost of this failure is small: you might skip a great builder. The fix is cheap: email the ones you like and ask.

Second, claims can be stale or wrong. A certification can lapse. A case study can describe an app that has since been rebuilt by someone else. The cost is bigger here, because a buyer might skip the check. The fix is the same: ask for the document behind every claim you rely on, and install the named app if it's still live.

Third, the rubric can't see engineering quality. Whether an agency writes a chat system that survives ten thousand concurrent users is the most important question in hiring a social app developer, and I can't score it from a website. References and a paid technical discovery phase can.

Why publish it anyway? Because the alternative is a list ranked on download counts nobody checked, often written by one of the ranked firms. The downside of a disclosure ranking is bounded: at worst it sends you three extra emails. The downside of a ranking built on agency claims isn't.

Here's what I chased and couldn't establish.

• Engineering quality: No neutral benchmark of app agencies exists, and I commissioned no test builds or code reviews.
• Certificates: ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials claims are as stated on agency sites. I didn't check any certificate register or scope.
• Case studies I didn't open: Cleveroad and Apptunix name social apps in lists; their dedicated case studies may carry more depth than I credited.
• Whether named apps are still live: I didn't install or check store listings for the named apps, and some may have been retired or rebuilt.
• Review ratings: Directories block automated reads. None is printed or scored.
• Acquisition status: Searches found no 2024 to 2026 acquisitions for the ten, which isn't proof there were none.
• Contract terms: IP assignment usually lives in agreements nobody publishes. Absence on a website isn't absence in a contract.

None of this makes the list less useful. It makes it a shortlist you can audit.

Frenchy Digital is my company. That's a conflict of interest, and it's why this pick sits outside the scored table and is labeled as mine.

So let me score it the same way first. Named social work: 2, because our GameOn case study describes a social sports app for pickup games. Case depth: 2, because that page names the features and says we built it in React Native. Years: 2, because we have been operating since 2016 in France, with our US company since 2019. Pricing: 2, because we publish senior-led rates of $150 to $225 an hour. IP terms: 2, because full source code and IP ownership transfer to the client. Security certification: 0. We hold no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HITRUST, and I won't pretend otherwise.

That's 10 of 12, two points ahead of Scorchsoft and Cleveroad. It would place us first of eleven. The two points come from publishing a rate and an ownership term, which is the column almost nobody else fills, and I'd rather show you the arithmetic than hide it.

What the GameOn case study says.GameOn is a social sports app that connects players for pickup games in basketball, soccer and tennis. The case study lists skill-based matchmaking, real-time game coordination and chat, venue booking with payments, player profiles and stats, push notifications for game updates, team creation, group chats, and friend lists. The problem it names is the one every community app has: matching people who don't know each other yet, and getting them to show up.

For a community product we run ourselves, The Corner is the coach and gym companion to our Fighter Cut app. It's a roster, not a public feed, but it solves the hardest problem in social software: who is allowed to see what. Fighters join a gym with a short team code. Sharing is opt-in from the fighter's side, with progress and nutrition as two separate switches, and turning either off deletes what it shared. Meal photos and a fighter's own notes never reach a coach, by schema. Coaches see a generated public name rather than a legal name, guarded by a test that fails if the full-name column is ever requested.

Those are the decisions most social app quotes never price: consent, revocation, what a stranger can see, and what happens on delete. They're also why I trust a vendor who can show you a permission model more than one who can show you a feed.

To be clear about the limits of that evidence: The Corner is on TestFlight and on the web, not a public consumer network, and we publish no download or user counts for it. We also run the member community on our own site, with a feed, comments, a members list and a classroom, which is a small community product we built and run ourselves. None of this is a million-user social network, and I won't describe it as one.

On price, we're a senior-led, Black-owned app and AI agency in Los Angeles. Senior time is $150 to $225 an hour, and a retainer for ongoing work runs $2,500 to $9,500 a month. You get a fixed-price phased proposal within 5 business days, a 30-day post-launch warranty, and full source code and IP ownership. For the worked scenario's $120,000, that's roughly 533 to 800 senior hours at our published rates ($120,000 divided by $225, and by $150), before we've discussed what the fixed-price phases would actually contain.

You can get from this page to a defensible shortlist in about a week.Here's the order I'd do it in.

1. 1.Write down your one non-negotiable (a budget ceiling, code ownership, an ISO 27001 certificate, dating experience, community features) and use the buyer-type table to cut the list to two or three agencies.
2. 2.Email each of them the same four requests: the IP assignment clause from their standard agreement, a screenshot of the admin and moderation panel from a social app they shipped, confirmation that reporting, blocking, filtering and account deletion are in the quote, and a fixed price or range with a timeline. Note who answers all four, and how fast.
3. 3.Install the named social app from each finalist's case study if it's still live, and ask for one client reference you can call. Screenshot every page you relied on, dated, and keep it with the proposal.

If you're still weighing an agency against a freelancer or an independent consultant, our comparison of consultant, agency and freelancer models is the step before this one. Whoever answers those emails with screenshots rather than adjectives is probably your developer. Time to send the emails.