Ultimate Guide – How Much Does It Cost To Make An App?

By Usman Ahmed

In today’s dynamics, every individual is so addicted to the device called smartphones, and businesses are looking forward to leveraging the opportunity. A lot of ventures are planning on to design their mobile apps.Every business has its reason for developing a mobile app. Some companies want to target a more extensive customer base; some want to get an online presence.

A lot of ventures are looking forward to generating substantial annual profits. However, a few organizations are willing to create apps to serve customers better. It shows that no matter what your business aims to do, a mobile app is the only solution to your needs.

Since mobile apps provide so many benefits to the business, therefore, it requires a cost to function accurately. If you are also planning on developing a mobile app, then you should know how much it costs to develop an app. This blog addresses all the factors that influence your mobile app cost. Let’s explore.

How Much Does it Cost to Make an App

Mobile apps are considered as the most booming market and showing no signs of stopping at all. A practical reason for this popularity of mobile apps is that applications can help businesses for various activities.

Businesses can create a mobile app for communication, food, sports, lifestyle, games, and much more. Apart from the mentioned ideas, many ventures have other mobile app ideas in mind and to execute it, businesses incessantly looking for a budget to develop the app.

If you also have a great app idea but don’t know how much money you need to breathe life into it, then here is everything you need to know to estimate your mobile app development cost. There are certain factors that directly influence the app’s cost. So, first, analyze those factors to help you plan your app development budget.

Type Of App That You Are Building

The cost of app development depends on the type that you are planning to create. Below are a few types of apps through which you can calculate the development cost to some extent.

1.Gaming Apps

Gaming apps are amongst the most popular types of mobile applications, and 24% of the mobile apps on the App Store are gaming apps. Gaming apps are highly lucrative for developers. Developers need different resources and technicalities to create a mobile game. If you want to create a highly engaging game, then there will be an intense gaming story and characters involved. For the creation of such intellectual gaming apps, you can hire an in-house development team. You can discuss your creative ideas to the team and they will charge somewhere between $100 to $150 an hour.

2.Business Apps

The cost of a business app is directly associated with your business model. Your business model will further determine the technological stack, functionality, design, and development of the app. For example, if you want an app like Uber, then the cost will be around $70,000 to $100,000. It is just a base price to get you an idea. However, if you want a simple app with basic features, then your development cost will be less. The cost will increase with the addition of new features. If you want a complex business app for extra performance and productivity, then you can consider the following features:

Login/User Accounts:

 Login with different social accounts will cost you around $3000, and a simple login will cost you $2000. Many companies are incorporating login feature for system authentication.

Chat/Messaging:

If you want to add push notification or live chat option into your app, then the cost of the feature will be $14,000.

Geolocation:

Geolocation feature is necessary for those businesses’ who are dealing with food and travel. If you want to integrate a simple map, then the cost will be $3,500. For Geofencing the cost will $8000, and for real-time tracking, your developer will charge around $15000.

Mobile Payment Widgets:

In case, your business model requires to add the mobile payment widget into the app like PayPal or Stripe, then its cost will be $7000. The cost for your business app will vary depending on your requirements and features that you want to incorporate.

3. Entertainment Apps

Entertainment apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Tinder and more are quite popular these days. These apps allow you to chat, video sharing, image sharing, calls and more. Every app has its own feature set and hence, the cost of development. To give you a better idea, here we are taking the example of the most famous Facebook app and its cost.

Estimated Cost of Facebook App

Features of Facebook App

• Registration via mobile number or email
• Auto Sync contact list
• Instant share option for texts, photos, and videos
• Instant notifications about comments and likes on the post
• Search option for nearby friends
• Integrated Messenger to chat with friends
• Easy access Facebook business pages

Among the mentioned features, the most time taking features are:

• Chat 190h
• Video Calls 300h

The sum of the Facebook app timeline be like:

Backend- 1440-1680h

iOS app- 1230-1350h

iOS design- 160-190h

Android app- 1230-1350h

Android design- 60-100h

Total estimated hours: 4120-4670h

Other Factors That Determine Mobile App Costs

We have discussed the types of mobile apps in detail, but other factors also influence app development cost. Let’s deep dive to understand those factors.

Platform

The selection of your platform significantly impacts your mobile app development cost.

App owners should focus their platform selection. The best way to select the platform is by analyzing the target audience. Companies first need to analyze that where their audience frequents gets active. If most of their audience is on the Android platform, then definitely Android app development is worth trying.

There are businesses who want to capture huge audiences. For such companies, multi-platform development is a good option.

Cost of app development on Apple iOS: $5,000

Cost of app development on Google Android: $5,000

Apple iOS & Google Android: $8,750

Complexity

App’s complexity is another factor to determine app development cost. Complex apps require more time and technologies, and therefore, they are more costly. For example, Apps that contain backend infrastructure are difficult to build. Backend is not necessary for every app. Apps that have heavy data for exchange need Backend infrastructure. Backend infrastructure works as an OS that provides APIs to exchange data between the app and a database.

Summing Up

There is no precise cost for developing a mobile app. The cost of your mobile app largely depends on certain factors like app complexity, technical stack, platform, features, development team and hours consumed. We hope that with our small research, you can get the idea about how much you will need to invest in your app development process and now you are all set to execute your app idea in the best way.