I skipped the App Store and shipped 3 offline PWAs instead. Here's what that actually costs you

2026-07-29 · Yusuf Gadelrab

Apple wants $99/year before a single person can install your thing. I'm a student, so I went the PWA route for three small apps and want to write down the honest tradeoffs, because every PWA post I read was either a fanboy or a funeral.

What actually worked

What actually worked: - Install prompt on Android is genuinely one tap. On iOS it's Share > Add to Home Screen, which is three taps and a sentence of explanation on the page. Not free, but not fatal. - Offline via service worker was maybe 40 lines. Cache the shell, version the cache, bump the version on deploy or you will ship a ghost of your old app to everyone who already installed it. I learned that one the expensive way. - localStorage only, no backend. This killed my hosting bill, my privacy policy anxiety, and about 80% of the code I thought I'd need.

What actually hurt

What actually hurt: - No push on iOS unless the user installs it first. So your retention loop has to live inside the app. - No store surface means no discovery. You are 100% responsible for distribution. This is the real cost, not the $99. - Debugging an installed PWA on iOS is miserable compared to the browser.

Would I do it again?

Would I do it again for a small utility app? Yes, immediately. Would I do it for something that needs push, payments, or discovery? No.

Happy to answer anything about the service worker setup.