The recurrence relations have a very important place for the special polynomials such as q-Appell polynomials. In this paper, we give some recurrence formulas that allow us a better understanding of q-Appell polynomials. We investigate the q-Bernoulli polynomials and q-Euler polynomials, which are q-Appell polynomials, and we obtain their recurrence formulas by using the methods of the q-umbral calculus and the quantum calculus. Our methods include some operators which are quite handy for obtaining relations for the q-Appell polynomials. Especially, some applications of q-derivative operator are used in this work