How Much Does it Cost To Create A Mobile App?

The mobile app market is increasing at a rapid pace with no signs of slowing down. For any online business, mobile apps are a real game changer. So, if you are looking to create a custom mobile app for your business or wish to create a business around your app, we are here to provide you with all the information you need.

fthe app idea and already convinced to execute it, but don’t know how much does it cost. To be honest, we don’t know either. There is no fixed price. The cost of an app depends on a number of factors. In this post, we will give you some understanding about what makes the total cost of building an app and how you can calculate that cost.

6 Critical Factors That Makes the Total App Development Cost

When you decide to have an app for your business, a wise option is to hire an offshore mobile app development company. That is because an app development company will have a team of mobile experts with following roles:

• Enterprise Architect: Translates business requirements into technical features of the app.
• Project Manager: Manages the entire project development team.
• App Designer: Designs aesthetic and flawless designs for excellent user experience.
• App Developer: Writes codes to develop the application.
• Test Engineer: Checks the quality of code and test it against bugs.

A custom mobile app development company can have a single member that handles multiple roles or multiple members handling a single task, depending on the complexity of the app. The more complex your app functionalities are, the more expensive it will be. However, the cost of an app depends on following parameters.

1 Type of Application

Web Apps: Web apps are simply a mobile version of the website. It may or may not display all the features of the website. Web apps lack in performance and user experience, but costs much cheaper when compared to native and hybrid apps.
Native Apps: Big companies that aim to deliver the best user experience and optimum performance, go for native apps. Native apps are built to run on dedicated operating systems such Android, iOS and Windows. As they are designed for a particular platform, they are able to directly interact with your phone’s hardware and software. Native apps are the most complex ones, and hence, the costliest.
Hybrid Apps: Hybrid apps are designed using the combination of both web and native apps to run smoothly on multiple platforms. They require less development and maintenance cost, and they almost match native apps in performance.

2 App Development Platform

The mobile app market is significantly dominated by iOS and Android apps. iOS apps are faster to develop than Android apps, and therefore the cost required to build iOS apps is also less. The cost of iOS and Android, which ranges from $1.000 to $250.000 are majorly dependent on the salaries of iOS app developers and Android app developers.
Due to quite lesser cost than Android apps, many businesses prefer launching iOS app first, and once they get positive user responses then only they go for Android app development. iOS is very popular in the USA and European countries, while Android is a more preferred choice in Asia, Africa and South America.

3 Nature of the App

Mobile apps are further categorized based on their dynamic nature.
Table-Based Apps: Table-based apps are the simplest apps with their main function is to just display the data. The users can browse the app and the app will show information based on the user choice. These apps take very less time and cost to develop as there are practically no critical features. The estimated cost to build such apps lies between $1.000 and $5.000.

Database Apps: These apps are dependent on the database to store and retrieve a large amount of data. The database needs to be connected with the app in order to maintain the consistency of data, which is why they take more time to develop. The cost of such applications generally falls between $7.000 and $50.000.

Dynamic Apps: Alongside the database, dynamic apps also make use of third party APIs which extends the functionality of the app. These are expensive applications to build which may cost between $10.000 to $75.000

Gaming Apps: These are the most complex apps to develop. They use tons of features, like AR/VR, animations, 3D graphics and dynamic database. The cost of such apps starts from $10.000 and may go up to $250.000 or more.

4 Features to be Implemented in the App

The features of an app play a critical role in estimating its development cost. This cost is directly calculated based on the time spend to implement the required features. Typically, this cost starts from $25 per hour and goes up to $70 per hour. Some of the common features with their approximate development time are mentioned below.

• User registration – 20+ hours
• User login – 20+ hours
• Chat messaging – 70+ hours
• Push notifications - 20 to 100 hours
• Video streaming – 30+ hours
• Search function – 10+ hours
• Payment integration – 40+ hours
• Sensor usage – 10+ hours

5 Cost of Talent Based on Geography

The cost of talent for different locations is different. From a research we have gathered some information on the annual salaries of the app developers in various countries.

• India - $4.100
• France - $44.000
• Germany – $47.000
• UK – $51.000
• Australia – $66.000
• Canada – $68.000
• US - $107.000

This data clearly shows that the development cost is the lowest in India, while the highest in the US. So, if you need a mobile app developer at the cheapest cost, then India is the best country to look for.

6 Miscellaneous Cost

The expenses that may not directly impact the overall cost are miscellaneous cost. Cost related to maintaining, hosting, updating, licensing and marketing the app should be taken into account before starting the app development. 

Thus, we hope this guide helped you in understanding how different costs add up to give you the final cost of your business app.

About Author

ManekTech Team

ManekTech is a well-known software development and IT consulting company, providing custom software, website, and mobile app development services. ManekTech has own content writing and development team who writes content on various and trending technology that it serves currently.