How Much Does It Cost to Build a Mobile App?
Discover the complete guide on the cost of making an app. Learn about the factors influencing the cost of building a mobile app and ongoing maintenance expenses. Get all your answers now!
Cost of making an app in 2024 — Revealed!
You must have encountered this question once or twice, especially if you are interested in app development. As per the latest industry reports, the cost for creating an app lies somewhere between $20,000 and $250,000. The average cost of creating an app is approximately $172,000. Remember that the above-mentioned figures are just estimates, and the final cost of an app project can vary more or less per the requirements.
But the answer to the question of how app development costs are calculated is here. This article discusses an in-depth overview of the global software development market state. Along with this, you will also learn how much it cost to build an app, what all factors influence the cost and how to effectively manage app development costs to avoid unexpected expenses in the future. Let’s get started right away with the cost calculation.
The final cost of an application depends on dozens of factors, but if you want to know the sum in a few sentences, find it below, as per Goodfirm’s extensive survey.
The cost to create a basic or simple app in 2023 may range from $30,000 to $50,000. A basic app will have features such as a user interface, user registration and login, and basic functionality and developed in 6–12 weeks. Simple apps, for instance, are flashlight apps, calculator apps, and weather apps.
The cost to create a complex app may range from $100,000 to $ 300,000 and above. In this category of app, more features are involved, such as third-party integrations, real-time updates, push notifications, and advanced user interface, and developed in 8–16 weeks. For instance, social media apps, e-commerce apps and gaming apps.
Building an advanced app may range from $250,000 to $900,000 and above. The app typically has highly complex features that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality and takes 12–17 weeks to develop. Examples of advanced applications include healthcare apps, financial apps, and enterprise-level apps.
How Does Agicent Estimate the Cost to Build An App?
There are various ways we cost out an App development project. But primarily it is either on the basis of Fixed Price Fixed time equivalent method or the hourly/ monthly team based method.
For Fixed Price Fixed Time Method, this is the process:
- Requirement Gathering and business analysis: Our Business analyst and tech leaders understand your app project’s feature list, use cases and goal thoroughly and then create a proper scope of the work (SoW). Technical feasibility study is also done in this phase.
Division of the total SoW into sub-deliverables We then divide the whole scope of work into several modules and deliverables such as (depending upon app to app):
– Design and wireframing phase.
– MVP development phase.
– Backend development phase.
– Integration phase.
– Testing & Deployment phase.
– Warranty phase.
– Post warranty maintenance phase.Estimating each phase in development hours
Depending upon various factors like technology to be used, external APis to integrate, ready to use libraries and likes, we then figure out estimated hours against each such module in “minimum to maximum” possible scenarios.All these hours are then multiplied by the effective hourly rate (usually $ 20/ hour for regular kind of apps) and you get the final estimation of the whole project.
We then also take into account a buffer of 10 % on the overall cost and timeline estimation, and also figure out an “actual delivery time” when a team works on the project.Dividing the project into milestones — the whole project is divided into trackable milestones (usually 4 to 5) according to which the equal divided percentage of payment is made. Something like this:
Signing of the agreement and kicking off the work.
Some extra values that we ensure for our clients when we pick a project are as follows:
Deep Market Research — Before the development process begins, we help our clients conduct comprehensive market research, analyze popular apps, define the target audience and hereby execute your unique idea already taking into account the future marketing campaigns and their targets. We help you in finding out the gap areas that other popular apps in your segment have left, and then work with you in filling them gap and make that as one of the core USPs of your product.
Begin with the first app version or an MVP as they call it– For the new app projects, we put a lot of emphasis on nailing down the features list for the MVP. Especially in case of startups that come with limited budgets and most of the times as bootstrapped, doing the whole big list of features can be really challenging so which is why we work with our clients in identifying the scope of the MVP wrt to their overall product vision and help them move forward phase by phase.
Ongoing development & business process handling — After an MVP is done, we offer you our continuous development and maintenance teams in various easy monthly payment plans that you can see here — Dev Team Plans from Agicent. Here you can use our team as yours in a totally flexible, cost effective and ongoing manner (something that all startups need).
Apart from development, we also help our clients in setting up their business processes (like digital marketing, customer care service, virtual assistance services, fund raising campaigns etc). So you can build your whole business with Agicent and not just an App.
You can also check out our successful case studies of apps done so far and read the client testimonials. We have a wholesome experience of working on MVPs and then also scaling them for millions of users — so a complete cycle of product development to product success and ongoing growth. Some prominent case studies can be seen here –
HASfit App case study (from 500 to 6 million users)
Mediorbis Telehealth App (from 1000 to 1 million users)
So if you have an App idea, Agicent is the perfect development and growth partner you deserve!