How Much does it Cost to Build an App – Save your Budget with This Guide

Understanding App Development Prices

How much does it cost to build an app today? The prices for app development change on an hourly basis due to the growing demand for apps. The revenue from mobile apps went as high as 318 billion US dollars in 2020 globally. And it is still growing. But if you plan to boost sales and profit with your app, you need to be ready to invest in it first. We’ll help you with the preliminary budget estimation and then calculate the final price.

This article contains our analysis of app development price estimation and dominant factors that determine the ultimate cost to build an app. We will also guide you on how you can minimize the cost of creating an app and give you examples of the highest and the lowest prices for mobile and web application development.

How App Development Cost Estimation Works

App development is picking up steam with nearly an 80% increase in all in-app purchases worldwide thanks to advertising and app stores. Noticeably, it’s profitable to invest in software development or mobile app development right amidst the coronavirus outbreak. But, somehow, you won’t find a fixed price for developing an app today.

A price tag for web or mobile app development ranges from $1,000 to $400,000. And this is not the limit. The cost to build an app will depend on certain factors:

• Location of the developers;
• Size of the team;
• Amount of time it takes to make an application;
• Type of the industry or business;
• The number of app features;
• Complexity of design and many more.

Scroll down to see other factors that have a critical impact on the cost to produce an app.

To get the best price for your app development at once, contact us directly. Our team of professional app developers can help you reduce the cost and improve your digital presence.

App Development Team

Once you have made a choice in favor of outsourcing app development, you need to know who will build your app and why it matters for the final price.

An average app development team consists of:

• Project manager
• 1–2 Android/iOS developers
• Back-end developer
• Designer
• QA engineer

Depending on the team roles, app development specialists have clear-cut responsibilities to create the best app for you. They may have either an hourly rate, set the price for a specific task or estimate work in story points. Hourly rates of app developers differ from country to country dramatically.

Stages of App Creation

Looking at the above hourly rates, it may seem that app development costs too much. It’s too soon to judge. Especially, if you haven’t seen the whole lifecycle of app development yet.

Have a look at the following stages of custom app creation:

1. Project ideation and initiation (1–4 days) – sketching your idea and creating an app concept.
2. Analysis of requirements (2–6 days) – a research phase that includes analysis of your customer needs to prioritize certain features. It also includes developing a product roadmap and setting a technical task.
3. Prototyping (10–40 days) – creating a prototype of an app or a minimum viable product (MVP) according to the technical assignment.
4. Designing (10–30 days) – depending on the complexity, a designer works on the UI + UX.
5. Development (25–80+ days) – front-end and back-end development, API (Application Programming Interface) and other types of programming work.
6. Testing (3–15 days) – testers or QA engineers need to validate the accurateness of your app. They test all the features, navigational options and design, the safety level, functioning on platforms (iOS or Android), etc.
7. Deployment and support – once an app is released, it requires maintenance and undergoes a post-development phase. This stage also defines the costs of making an app.

46% programming experts and software engineers evaluated the average time to deliver an app. It is 5 months at minimum or even more. 80% of mobile applications take far beyond 3 months to create. 40% of all apps take more than 6 months.

What else can be a turning point in app development cost estimation? Read on to find out.

What Else Influences the Exact Cost to Build an App

Additional functions and features increase the price for making an Android, iOS or web app. The platform itself matters for the costs of app creation. As well as the app type and the amount of time it takes to develop an app:

Basic (small) app – it takes 2–3 months to make it, and the prices range from $1,000 to $25,000.

Medium app – app development takes 3–8 months, the price may start at $25,000 and sky up to $80,000.

Complex app – specialists work on the app for 8+ months, so the cost will be $80,000 and can rise up to $400,000 depending on other factors.

Let’s see how additional features and/or functions influence the final price for app development. Check the table below.

Feature/function	Approximate cost
Login with email and social media accounts	$1,200–$1,600
Files and media content uploading	$700–$1,300
Search	$620–$800
Profile changes/edits	$1,850–$2,700
Chat and its features (message status, sending data, etc.)	$5,600–$9,250
Booking API	$850–$1,500
Google maps	$700–$1,200

 

If you want to add more functionality to your mobile app, you will have to pay more for each feature correspondingly. For example, it can be an in-app store, video/audio calls, broadcasting options, multilingual capabilities, payment APIs, etc.

You do want your application to have a vast range of features, don’t you? At the same time, you’d like to decrease the cost of your business app, right? Look at the strategy of price minimization for your app development below.

Price Minimization Strategy

To help you reduce the cost of app development for your digital transformation strategy, we have prepared some tips for you:

1. Finalize your project details on the start (technical instructions and requirements).
2. Outsource your app development (offshore outsourcing may be the cheapest variant).
3. Choose a cross-platform type of an app.
4. Make prototypes and MVPs.
5. Do repetitive task automation.
6. Hire a reliable mobile app development agency with adequate pricing.

Request a call back or a free consultation and we will help you reduce the price for your mobile or web application. Meanwhile, compare the overall funding for the most well-known apps in the next section of the article.

Examples of Highly-Priced and Low-Cost Famous Apps

Here’s a list with examples of famous apps with the highest and the lowest costs:

Snapchat: $3 billion US dollars

Instagram: $500,000

Tinder: $485,000

Twitterific: $250,000

Uber: $200,000

The most affordable apps are the basic ones: clocks, simplest games and calculators.

What about your app? How much should you pay for its development? We have come to the final step of our analysis.

How Much will it Cost you to Build an App? Let’s Calculate

So, how much does it cost to build an app? 

Here’s a common cost estimation formula:

How we calculate the cost to create an application:

1. Get in touch with us for clarifications and a quote.
2. We get some additional data from you about the concept, business + user + system requirements.
3. Our product manager analyzes the work scope and calculates the preliminary price.
4. We reach you out to determine the content of an app and discuss its features in detail.
5. Our project analyst estimates the price more precisely.

If you’re ready with an app idea, contact us straight away. At FutureOne Tech, we can offer both free consulting services and app development at low cost. We have done hundreds of software development projects and created more than 50 mobile apps already. Yours can be the next one.