How Much Does Mobile App Development Cost?

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Introduction

Mobile application development has come a long way from its introduction in the early 90s to becoming crucial to business development and growth. Many businesses have shifted to the digital arena with their applications ready to compete within the market. However, the ever-dangling question persists among new and existing business owners, “How much does the mobile app development cost?”. Well! The answer is simple yet complex, as the cost relies on multiple factors, such as the size of your application, complexity, features, functionalities included, and many more.

Cost For Mobile App Development in 2024

The cost for developing mobile app in 2024 can range from $7000 to $100000 per month, depending on your application. However, based on our 12+ years of experience as a leading app development company, the estimated development cost can be as follows:

It is just an estimated cost based on the market standards; the actual cost can vary. However, multiple companies provide a more cost-effective approach to developing mobile applications.

Factors that Affect the Cost of Mobile App Development

Several factors can affect the cost of your mobile application development in 2024. Putting these factors in check can benefit you by reducing development costs and ensuring the most optimal and performant mobile application based on your industry standards and specific needs.

🟠 Cost Based On OS Platforms

The cost of your type of application helps you determine the actual cost of a mobile application development. The most prominent mobile application OS platform approaches include Android, iOS, and Hybrid.

Let us take a deeper look into the details to understand these bifurcations and this estimated cost better.

 1.  An Android application is built to work natively on Google Android OS. The development of these applications requires Kotlin and Java. Thus, the tentative cost of developing an Android application ranges between $65000 to $800000. This cost, however, is a generic assessment; the actual cost can vary depending on factors like complexity, compliance laws, and various other intricacies.

 2.  An iOS application intended to interact natively with the device’s core component. The development requires Swift, Objective-C, XCode, or other tech stacks. Therefore, an iOS application development costs from $70000 to $1000000.

 3.  A Hybrid application or cross-platform application that is ideally effective for Android and iOS devices with a single codebase. It is an economical solution compared to separate apps for different platforms. Hybrid app development requires frameworks like React Native, Ionic, Flutter, NativeScript, and more. The cost of development ranges from $90000 to $5000000.

🟠 Cost Based On Regions

The cost of developing an application can sometimes put a hole in your pocket. However, with the proper knowledge, you can build your app outside your region. Many countries offer competitive pricing with their app development services. The hourly rate to hire developers in different countries is given below:

With this data, we can see that the cost significantly shifts as the region changes. However, India ranks as the most economical option for efficient developers within your budget. You can opt for a trending technology and onboard React Native Developers or Flutter Developers based on your needs and requirements.

🟠 Type of Application

Mobile application development is not like one shoe fits all, as different types of app development require diverse expertise. For example, developing a social media app has an entirely different approach than developing a travel app. Therefore, we can classify the cost of developing various types of applications as follows:

🟠 Features and Functionalities

The approach is simple for mobile apps or any other development: more features means more time and resources. A simple app is easy to build and requires less cost and resources. At the same time, a complex app requires more time and resources. Below is a general classification of how you can classify your app needs into simple, mid-level, and complex.

🟠 Design Elements and Animations

The design elements and animation, transitions, color schemes, UI mockups, and designs all play a vital role in increasing or decreasing your cost for mobile app development. So, before moving ahead with your development process, it is crucial to understand and choose the right colors, themes, animations, and all to ensure they align with your product and its requirements.

Choosing too many colors, transitions, and more is never a good option, as they can dilute the authenticity of your brand. The right color can help set the tone and feel for your application and highlight key features and segments that will be visible to the users.

The unnecessary animations within your app can increase your development costs. The animations and illustrations can include anything that is not an image, from icons, vectors, logos, and gifs to anything specific element that counts as an animation. These icons and logos make your app visible in the market and create a value and niche for your brands.

🟠 Backend Infrastructure and API integration

A robust backend infrastructure ensures the smooth and efficient functioning of your application. It includes server hosting, database management, and other related expenses. The applications also require integration with third-party services such as payment gateways, social media platforms, or APIs. Integrating the APIs also needs licensing and usage fees; these, along with the backend infrastructure and similar other factors, can add costs to your budget.

🟠 Application Maintenance

Launching your app within the market is not all that needs investments; there is an add-on lifetime expense known as the maintenance and support cost. Thus, it is crucial to understand the all-round aspects of maintenance and support. Generally, the average cost of support and maintenance is around $30000 annually. Similarly, other data shows that you must spend around 50% of your app development on maintenance during the first year. Then, approximately 25% from subsequent years, after that, 15-25% for each following year.

The cost of maintenance for your mobile application includes:

• Bug fixing, and quality assurance,
• Stability and performance improvements,
• Code optimization
• Upgrading to the latest OS versions
• Implementation of new features
• 3rd party services support for the latest version

🟠 Type of Development Partner

The choice of the ideal options for the mobile app development process is not a guarantee that the development process will remain within budget. Choosing the right development partner for your next project can also significantly affect your development project.

1. In-House

Hire an in-house development team to get comprehensive expertise and monitor every task with your own keen eyes, making it efficient and performant and reducing the time spent on reworking. So, indirectly, it helps save your hard-earned money on the app creation costs. However, establishing an in-house team sometimes proves expensive due to the need for infrastructure, the resources hired, and other unavoidable costs.

2. Freelancer

Freelancers are the independent resources available within the market on platforms such as Upwork, Toptal, and Fiverr. However, although freelancers are an economical option, finding quality resources among these freelancers is complex. A non-competent freelancer can hamper the project delivery timeframe, increasing the overall mobile app development cost.

However, you can hire dedicated developers from a renowned company like Bacancy to free yourself from the issues that arise and get trusted developers with diversified knowledge and expertise within your budget.

3. App Development Company

A Mobile App Development Company is the best option for a business owner looking for app development services within budget. These companies have an industry-vetted pool of experienced developers and cost-effectiveness analysis, flexibility, fast development, diversified expertise, and more to ensure you get the most out of your mobile application. You can also contact a professional mobile app development company like Bacancy and get assured results with optimal development in record time.

How To Reduce Mobile App Development Cost in 2024

You can reduce the cost of developing mobile apps in multiple ways. However, based on our experience with numerous clients from various industries, we have consolidated the strategies to help you reduce mobile app development costs without affecting performance.

🟠 Set Clear Project Scope

The more precise you are on your mobile app requirements, the better your final result. Therefore, it is crucial to set a project scope. You can start by creating a detailed and comprehensive plan as a reference point throughout the project lifecycle. The plan must include goals, features, functionalities, and documentation required. With this roadmap, you can save time and money investment, enhance efficiency, and deliver timely results.

🟠 Prefer Open Source Technologies

Numerous open-source libraries and frameworks available within the market can come to your disposal, thereby effectively reducing your development time and costs. Also, with open-source technologies, you get the freedom of outside assistance as many problems you face during the development are already addressed and resolved by someone from the community. Overall, this approach reduces the possibility of errors and reworking, improving the quality and helping control costs.

🟠 Agile Development

The agile methodology offers an extensive approach to your application development, promoting flexibility and collaboration throughout your project development lifecycle. A significant component of this methodology is that it divides the development work into smaller sprints.

The sprints allow you to monitor the progress and give you ample freedom to iterate possible improvements. Also, you can refine the app features and functionalities throughout the development process. This continuous feedback, adjustments, and enhancements collectively reduce costs by preventing late-stage changes and making adjustments early in the process.

🟠 Cross-Platform Development

The cross-platform development for your mobile app is the best way to reduce your app development costs. Cross-platform development tools and frameworks enable you to write code once and use the same codebase with little or no alterations on multiple platforms (Android and iOS), saving time and resources. Cross-platform development can be an excellent choice for your app development, specifically if you plan for faster release of your app within the market.

🟠 Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

If you are new to the mobile app development market, an MVP is your answer to faster release of the application with essential features your app needs to function. You can quickly release a working version to get user feedback and test the market inclination and preference. Following this approach helps you save the cost of development and make calculated decisions rather than investing a lot of funds in functionalities that don’t align with the user’s preference.

🟠 Reusable Components

Creating modular components and reusing them across different application parts is excellent. It allows you to save a lot of time and development costs. The components collectively make development much smoother, reduce the risk of errors, and ensure consistency throughout your application.

🟠 Cloud Services

Another way to reduce development costs is to improve your app infrastructure to leverage the efficacy of cloud services for hosting, storage, and backend functionalities. It is, again, a cost-effective approach as the cloud providers offer flexible, scalable options that eliminate the need to invest in and manage your infrastructure. Also, using cloud services, you can reduce infrastructure costs, improve scalability, and focus on resources on app development compared to IT infrastructure.

🟠 Use Templates

Pre-designed templates are another way to design your application interface and reduce costs. The templates help you save time and money by offering a foundation for your design and ensuring a consistent look and feel throughout the application. You can ideally use these templates to fast-forward your development project.

Cost of Developing Mobile Applications Like Leading Brands

When you are in a business domain that already exists within the market, then the way to reduce your mobile app development cost is to thoroughly research and analyze your competitors. This saves your hard-earned money and gives you a live example of the features and functionalities you wish or should accommodate in your application. Below are a few leading examples of companies and the estimated cost to develop your mobile application like these brands effectively and efficiently.

1. Uber

Uber is a leading ride-sharing application that enables drivers to connect with riders around the globe based on their area and location. The Uber mobile app allows customers to request a car instantly or on a schedule. The request directly reaches the nearby drivers, who can accept or reject it based on availability. The annual revenue of Uber for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023, is $35.95 billion, which tells us a lot about the potential of developing an application like Uber.

The cost of developing an app like Uber can range from $25000 – $150000 based on the features, functionalities, and data the mobile application intends to handle.

2. Tinder

It is another leading app within the market. It is a geosocial networking and dating mobile app with over 67 million annual downloads. The application follows a simple yet intuitive design that allows users to swipe images right or left based on their preference to connect with prospective suitors. Tinder made over $441 million in the first quarter of 2023 and is sure to surpass the revenue of $1.794 billion from the previous year.

The cost of developing a mobile application like Tinder can range from $10000 – $85000, depending on the specific features (like login pages, in-app messaging, GPS location, push notifications, and more) that Tinder offers its users.

3. Ikea

Ikea Furniture is another brand that leverages the power of mobile application development for their business. Ikea is a brand-based application developed with the help of augmented reality. The images of the furniture present in their catalogs are mainly 3D models.

The cost of developing an application like Ikea can be a blow to the budget due to its comprehensive features, such as 360-degree view, CRM integration, real-time dashboard analytics, and more. The average cost of developing a similar mobile application like Ikea can be around $50000 – $150000 or more based on your requirements.

4. Netflix

Netflix is one of the most renowned streaming services that offer a wide range of award-winning TV shows, movies, anime, documentaries, and more for thousands of internet-connected devices. It works on a subscription-based model, enabling users to stream online without time restrictions.

Developing a mobile application like Netflix with almost identical features, functionalities, and intuitive UIs can cost around $15000 – $25000, along with the add-on maintenance costs and traffic management ranging from around $1000. The rest of the specifics depend on your needs and requirements.

App Development Costs Breakdown at Different Stages

Creating a mobile application for your business is a challenging job. However, with careful planning and execution, you can create apps that make your app stand out among the competitors. In general, mobile app development consists of five stages, as given below:

1. Planning

The planning stage will give you detailed insight into your application’s purpose and target audience. You define your application’s features, functionalities, and requirements within this stage. This involves researching the competition and determining the application’s unique value proposition. After this stage, the overall scope and directions are established, and your team can proceed with the design stage.

The cost during this stage can vary as it is proportional to the complexity of your applications and the level of research needed to develop the said application. Many simple applications, such as a based to-do list app or a generic notepad app, require a small team to build and brainstorm the application. Whereas more complex applications, such as a mobile banking application or an ecommerce application, may require a comprehensive or more extensive team that would be responsible for doing research and focusing on user needs and thereby, along with this, the market trends ensure your application success. Generally, based on our experience, you can dedicate 8% of the total cost to app development.

2. Design Stage

The stage involves the development team working on the project based on several factors, such as the complexity of the designs, number of screens, type of designs, and experience level of the design teams. Roughly estimating your project’s design phase, you can dedicate 12% of your development cost to this phase.

3. Development Stage

This stage involves the initiation of building the application. It includes coding, debugging, and integrating various features. Other factors determining the time and investment required in this phase are the number of features, the platform for which it is developed, the experience of the development team, and other similar factors. The estimated percentage that you can dedicate to this phase is 65% of the total development cost.

4. Testing Stage

After your application development, it must be tested thoroughly to identify bugs, errors, or glitches. The cost of the testing stage is proportional to the features introduced within the application, the testing tools used, and the size of the testing team. The testing phase can cost around 10% of the total development cost.

5. Deployment Stage

After completing the testing phase, you need to launch your application to the public or your target group, making it available for use. The cost of this phase depends on the platform you will use to host the application, which can affect the cost of this stage. A rough estimate for this phase is 5% of your overall budget for mobile app development.

Why Bacancy For Mobile App Development?

Bacancy is a leading mobile app development company with over 12 years of experience, focusing on creating custom app development solutions to meet your specific needs. Having completed 2500+ projects and with a team of 1050+ agile-enabled developers, we aim to provide the most efficient and cost-effective development for your business application.

Our approach centers on understanding your goals and requirements, ensuring a collaborative process that saves time and resources. We dive into the complexities of mobile app development by realizing challenges early and offering exact solutions that align with your application requirements. By choosing Bacancy, you partner with a team of developers committed to delivering functional, customized mobile applications that give you an edge over your competitors.

Conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can I reduce the cost of mobile app development?

You can reduce mobile app development costs by best practices such as prioritizing features, choosing a single platform initially, outsourcing cautiously, using open-source solutions, maintaining effective communication, optimizing design, starting with an MVP, and planning post-launch maintenance and similar solutions and getting the most out of your app.

Are there any hidden costs in mobile app development?

Yes, as a business owner, you can incur hidden costs arising from unforeseen challenges, scope changes, or additional features. You can effectively identify and minimize these potential hidden costs via thorough initial planning, including detailed specifications and risk assessments.

Can I reduce costs by outsourcing mobile app development?

Yes, you can quickly reduce your development cost by outsourcing your project to experts from different regions and exceptionally experienced developers from India. You can develop your app at affordable rates with high reliability and quality services.