How to estimate the cost of developing your app?

Building an app cost between $10,000 and $100,000, depending on the features and technology used. It can be easily tracked via different app cost calculators as well. The figure is strongly influenced by the app’s features, its technology, and the development team’s location. It also includes an estimate of the time required to create an app.

The breakdown of app development costs and an estimate of the time required to create an app is provided in the article.

What is included in the price?

The typical cost to produce an app comprises four major areas and lasts from initial planning to delivery. User interface design and the creation of a clickable prototype account for 15% of the budget. Developers, QA engineers, and testers account for about half of the initial costs.

What impacts the price?

Let’s discuss the variables influencing the cost of the finished product to understand better what goes into the average cost of developing an app and why one app only costs $10,000 and the other $1500,000 in comparison.

Elements of Apps

Every feature of an app – including messaging, maps, and interaction with a device’s microphone, camera, or smartwatch – raises the cost of development. The most popular features are shown below, along with their approximate costs (based on an hourly rate of $30) and programming time.

• Login: ($500 – 1,500)

With this function, users can access their accounts using phone numbers, social media identities, or email addresses.

• Completion of a profile: ($1,000–$3,000)

This amazing function allows you to fill out your profile’s details, including your birth date, region, name, and profile image.

• Architecture for local cache: $3,200 to $4,800

This enables the programme to operate without a reliable network connection and save data locally.

• Integration of payment channels: ($1,000–$3,200)

Customers can utilise this functionality to make payments within the app using credit cards, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

• Uploading a file. ($1,000–1,500)

Thanks to this functionality, users can upload different media files and view them inside the app.

Moreover, other cost includes a secure server if your app keeps any user data, which is required today even for the most basic apps. The cost to publish an app on Google Play is $25 once, compared to $99 per year for Apple Store. A rough estimate for maintenance is between 15% and 20% of an app’s annual development budget.

Furthermore, you can also estimate these costs via the app cost calculator to better look at this topic.

Methods to reduce costs:

• Platform-neutral framework

Flutter is a platform-neutral framework that allows you to create apps for both iOS and Android at the same time. For instance, we reused a single code base when creating six apps for the “Riga” pharmaceutical chain (on Android and iOS apps for each of the three brands), saving 40% of the initial expenditure.

• Begin with MVP

You can test the app’s concept with actual users on a small scale and a tight budget by beginning with a Minimal Valuable Product. Then, create the prototype based on your app’s standout characteristics. Finally, you can optimise the full version of the app’s budget with the aid of feedback.

• Employ developers overseas

Hiring programmers gives you access to the entire world because code can be created anywhere. Although time zone and cultural variations may make it difficult to simplify the working process, looking for talent outside your home country or region may prove advantageous in terms of quality-value ratio.

• Limiting the use of outdated hardware and operating systems

Finding a balance is advised because supporting many legacy operating systems comes at a cost frequently not justified by the possible growth in users, even though supporting outdated models increases the app’s user base.

Closure:

Many aspects, including the app’s functionalities, UX and UI design, and post-release support, must be considered when evaluating the time and cost of constructing a mobile app. A very basic app can be created for about $15,000 and $20,000; however, the cost increases as the complexity increases. The good news is that cost-cutting measures can always be taken. For example, consider adopting the Flutter cross-platform framework to construct iOS and Android apps if you want to release them simultaneously. Using a single code base for both apps might save a significant amount of money. And a cost-effective alternative to using local developers is to hire an offshore development firm. Furthermore, if you want to check the real estimation for your app, then use the app cost calculator. It will make your life easier.