“What is my app development cost?” That’s the million dollar question countless people are asking.
If you are a business owner who wants to know how much money you would have to spend to develop an app for your business, we can’t give you an exact value.
No one can… without additional information from you. This is because there are many elements involved in the process for developing an app.
However, when you keep the following app development cost factors in mind, you can get a rough idea of how much money you’ll need to spend to turn your idea into a solid app.
Let’s breakdown those costs for developing an app.
- Integration points – Will the app use third party applications as its content source and would it need to be integrated or joined with those third party sources?
- Maintenance plan – How much technical support is needed by the app from the developer once it’s done?
- Purpose and functionality of the app – What are the app capabilities and what it can do for the users?
- Smartphone’s hardware feature usage – Will the app use features normally found in tablet computers or smartphones like NFC technology, GPS navigation, co-processor motion and other various technologies?
- Visual objects usage – How intricate are the visual objects in the app? Cost is largely influenced by how complex the visual objects are.
- What mobile devices and platforms are supported – Will the app be created for Android, iOS or Windows Mobile? Will the app support Samsung Galaxy S6 or iPhone XS or etc.?
App Development Cost Average Benchmark
- Android App – Around $23k
- App Developer In The US Fee – $107k Annually
- iOS App – Around $28k
- Windows App (Phone) – Around $18k
Let’s take a look at the following data about the costs involved in developing apps based on different methodologies and sources.
Cost for Various Stages of App Development
Companies control their finances so it is reasonable that they would properly allocate a budget for each stage of their project.
Based on the data gathered by Clutch – B2B Analytics from 100 companies developing apps, let’s see how much these companies spent in each stage and how many from those companies spent those certain amounts.
There are four stages for app development. First is Discovery, second is Design third is Development and last is the Testing then Deployment.
Pre-Research or Discovery Stage
You’ll find this as the cheapest out of all stages. Out of 100 companies, 51 spent less than $5,000 in planning and researching their concept. 22 spent around $5k to $10k while 14 spent $10k to $25k.
Design Stage
Majority of the companies (60) spent around $5k to $50k in designing their apps, 9 spent more than $50k and 32 spent less than $5k.
Development Stage
You would definitely agree that this is the main factor in the entire process in developing a mobile app. This is where the app’s features are being coded. Only 9 companies were able to keep their cost below $5k during this stage. 33 spent around $5k to $10k, 25 spent $10k to $20k, 17 spent $20k to $30k, and 15 spent more than $30k.
Testing Then Deployment Stage
Out of 100, 32 companies were able to test the app and send it for market deployment for less than $5k. 31 are within the $5k to $10k budget, and the others spent more than $10k.
The rate for app development also differs depending on the country’s economy.
India, for example, has a rate of $10-$50 or more per hour, which is the lowest rate. US on the other hand, has the highest rate with $60 per hour to $125 per hour.
Developing for iOs or Android platforms would also have different rates depending on the location of the developers.
As an example, app development for Android in South America is cheaper by $9 compared to iOS but in North America, Android would cost $18 more than iOS. On the other hand, UK has no discrimination pricing for those two platforms.
One of the major issues concerning developing apps is the costs. Figuring out your app development cost can seem pretty tricky unless you have the facts!
Cost Benchmarks For App Development
Android and iOS are the two most popular and most-used operating systems for mobile devices, although there’re also Blackberry and Windows Mobile.
if you are developing an app for the operating system of iOS, you’ll be spending more as it is the most expensive. You would however get the highest profit from it compared to other platforms.
The cheapest is Blackberry as it is becoming less popular these days. Only very few developers create apps for Blackberry.
What follows are figures you can use as a basis for estimating the cost for developing an app for different platforms.
Please take note that these were gathered seven years ago so the current cost would be higher.
- Android - $22,637
- Blackberry OS - $15,181
- iOs - $27,463
- Windows Phone - $17,750
On a survey made by Kinvey app development, it showed that 14% of companies would spend not more than $50k for app development while the biggest percentage of 21% are willing to spend $50k to $100k.
17% would spend $100k to $200k, 19% has a budget for $200k to $500k, 18% with $500k to $1M or more, and the smallest segment of 11% don’t know how much they can shell out.
The biggest contributor for app development cost is infrastructure where different activities are involved like scalability and data encryption, enterprise data access, API integration with third-party, data storage, basic controls and initial setup.
App Development Cost And Maintenance
15% to 20% of the original cost for development is the accepted average cost for maintaining a software. This cost can be broken down into the following:
Engagement Then Marketing
The cost for marketing an app has multiple components like the CPI (Cost Per Install) which for Android is $1.91 and $1.24 for iOS, cost for the acquisition of a loyal user of app, $2.78/user for iOs and cost for acquisition of a subscriber paying for apps that can reach $106/subscriber.
Hosting
This cost includes MAU bandwidth, User bandwidth, cost for API or backend requests and a lot more.
Licenses
License fees depends on the number of devices and annual fees.
Monitoring
Getting a cost estimate for monitoring an app is not feasible due to the differences of users and their numbers per app.
You can, however, ask mobile analytics companies the ranges of your expenses that constitute the maintenance cost for the app.
Updates
Developing app updates also takes time depending on the complexity of the app. Updates are important in keeping base engagement with app users.
Cost Calculators for App Development
Here are our top picks for online calculators that would help you calculate your upfront cost for app development.
An online calculator used for computing the cost for developing mobile apps for an enterprise. The steps to get a quote are:
Pick a platform, choose from B2B/B2C/B2E, would your app require an authentic?
Decide if you want an app that can re-envision the process or can mobilize the process of a business or can access corporate information and data.
Choose the UA complexity for the app then set the features and decide whether you want it to use Push Notifications. How many corporate networks do you want it to connect with?
The user would need to choose from Windows Tablet, Windows Phone, Android Phone, iPad, Android Tablet or iPhone app, then choose what feature they want like Social Login, Support for Second Language or any other specific app capability.
The calculator will then give them a quote of how much is the cost for developing the said app.
This calculator requires more steps to get a quote but can give you a more granular cost estimate for app development.
Choose your platform first then pick whether you want an external or internal team.
Decide if you will be using a cloud tech or not. Pick the size that you want as well as the user management, including data type for storing and data sources.
You would also need to choose if you will use location data or not, as well as cloud APIs from third party and engagement channels of the user.
Lastly, provide your email address so you can get your estimated cost.
This tool gives an estimated cost for developing apps for the Web, Windows Phone, iOS and Android.
The users would choose which platform to use then the specific features that they want for their app and the calculator would provide a price quote for them in USD.
Based on Indeed.com, the cost of hiring a mobile developer in the US is $107,000 a year.
In Canada it would be $82,000 while in Australia it would be $80,000. Hiring in India is the least expensive and would only cost $4,400 per year.
Keep in mind, however, that there are also other factors to consider in choosing your developer, and not just the price.
Developers’ expertise and client feedback are just some of the factors you need to look at before deciding which company to outsource to.
