Nowday's, everyone's mobile phones are full of apps. Everyone has a specific application in their mobile phones for every single specific task. According to Mobiloud, every year 1 million apps are launched on the app store and playstore simultaneously.
With the increase in app usage, its revenue is also increasing rapidly. According to a data by Statista, annual mobile app revenue is expected to grow 8.83% per year (CAGR 2022-2027) and can touch upto 673.80 billion USD by 2027.
Both google play and app store are expected to have a combined annual revenue of 270 billion USD in 2025. With these growing statistics over mobile applications, gives us a thought about mobile app development. Why not create an application for ourselves and use these opportunities firsthand.
But, the first question which comes to mind about mobile app development is how much is it going to cost you? What are the processes that you should follow while developing a mobile application?
That's why we are here to give you a complete guide about the mobile app development process and how you can develop mobile apps with no time without breaking your bank.
How Much on an Average Mobile Development Cost?
Generally the mobile app development cost depends on various factors, but if we remove these variables from the equations, a simple mobile application like a to-do list or a simple weather application can cost you from 5000$ to 10,000$.
If we talk about an intermediate level of app like a fitness tracking app or a restaurant booking app, it can cost you about 20,000$ to 60,000$.
But the main money runs behind advanced level applications like e-commerce apps such as amazon or social media apps like instagram or tiktok. To develop an app like amazon, it can cost you around 100,000$ to 500,000$ easily and even more if you include more features in it.
But it is not necessary that it would cost you the same amount of money for development of these kinds of apps. As we said before, the mobile app development cost can depend on a number of variables like what kind of technology is used, how much does the labor cost, and most importantly the kind of features you want to include in the app.
App Development Cost for Trending Apps in 2024
TikTok
I don't think TikTok needs an introduction to anyone. It is the most downloaded app around the globe in 2024, with more than 1 billion active users around the world. Developing a mobile app like this would cost you somewhere around 300,000$ to 1,000,000$ initially.
Clubhouse
It is another app trending in 2024 based on voice chats. You can create rooms, groups and can chat with one another with voice commands in this application. If you want to develop a mobile app like clubhouse it can cost you upto 100,000$ to 500,000$ easily.
Duolingo
It is the most popular app around the world to learn a new language. The app has different techniques and training strategies to learn a new language. You can also have video chat with your teachers in this application. If you want to create an app like Duolingo it can cost you around 50,000$ to 200,000$.
Notion
Notion is a kind of productivity enhancing application where you can take your notes, create your own databases, calendars and can align your task in it. You can also say that it is a kind of personal workspace. The development of an app like Notion can go upto 300,000$.
Robinhood
With the help of Robinhood you can trade stocks, Crypto, etc, without giving any platform fees or any brokerage. It is an investment and trading application. For you to make one like the same, it will cost you around 200,000$ to 500,000$.
Factors Affecting Cost of Mobile App Development
While estimating your budget for the development of a mobile application, you should check for a few things before diving right into it. Doing final calculation after including all these following factors, you can accurately estimate the mobile app development cost.
Here we have given top 6 factors that affect the mobile app development cost:
1. Number of features in the App
As we know that the cost of any dish is directly dependent upon the number of expensive ingredients used in it. Similarly, the mobile app development cost can majorly depend on the number of features you are integrating into your app and its complexity.
Like, to develop a mobile app with a simple basic messaging feature can cost you around only 3000$ to 10,000$ but if you want to incorporate machine learning or artificial intelligence into your app, the cost of the app can go as high as 100,000$.
And if you want to include voice messaging and video call to it too, the cost will come up to about 50,000$ to 80,000$ easily.
That's why, before developing your application, deciding core features for your app is necessary. Otherwise, you will always be intrigued about adding new features to your application and it can max out your budget.
Below, we have given you a brief example of how much each basic feature will cost you on your app development journey on an average.
2. Designing Your Application
Designing is the initial step for development of your mobile application. You might have to spend around 20% to 30% of your whole budget in designing the app, if your goal is to make a basic and standard mobile application. But, to develop mobile apps with advanced applications, you might have to just spend 10% of your whole budget on designing parts.
Designing your app consists of many key points, but two major areas of designing are user interface (UI) and user experience (UX).
User Interface (UI):
The basic example of UI is that everything you see on your app screen is called user interface. The main aim of the user interface is to make applications easy to understand by users and they can make their way on the app easily.
Creating an intriguing color scheme, deciding font size and color, image altering are some of the key parts of a user interface designing. To create a UI for a basic application, it may cost you around 1000$ to 3000$.
Whereas, to develop mobile apps of intermediate level you need to spend some extra upto 7000$. And if we talk about an advanced level of application this cost can go further upto 15,000$ easily.
User Experience (UX):
This is defined as the overall experience of the user while using the application. Like if the user is experiencing any problem while using the app, is he or she really enjoying using the app? How is the user behavior while using the app and how it can be improved.
The cost of UX for a basic app is about 500$ to 1500$. This cost gets slightly increased in intermediate and advanced levels of the app, i.e about 3000$ to 5000$ simultaneously.
Beside UI and UX there are several other aspects of designing which can cost you from nominal to a fortune. Below we have given a list of all parts of designing and its average cost, so that you can decide from yourself how to use these techniques according to your budget during development of your app.
3. Choice of Platform (Operating System):
While developing a mobile application, one of the most important decisions that you have to take is if you want to develop your application for android users only, or you want to develop mobile apps for iphone users or for both.
This decision is important from a development perspective because for both platforms, the development process is different. If you make an app for iphone, it will not work on android and vice versa because both platforms have different application architectural support and ecosystem environment.
If you want to opt for cross platform development to develop mobile apps, your focus would be only on iOS. In this development methodology you don't have to make different apps for both android and iphone, but because of the cross platform development methodology, that single application will run on both android and iphone easily.
Below is a simple comparison about Android vs iOS(iphone) vs Cross platform mobile app development costs.
If you are deciding to go for android app development then you have to keep things in mind like android app development is maybe cheaper than iOS and Cross platform development, but due to fragmentation, its maintenance and testing cost can be higher than both of them.
And, if you want to decide to go with iOS development, your initial costing can be 20% to 30% higher than android development but your maintenance cost will be less as compared to android.
According to us, cross platform development can be the best solution for your app development process. It cost much less than both of the iOS and Android development and does not cost as much in maintenance also. But, the only problem with cross platform development is its performance. Cross platform apps compromise performance and features as compared to native apps developed based on Android or iOS.
4. Development Technologies:
There is not a single but number of ways to develop an application. There are a number of mobile app development technologies and frameworks available in the market.
Below we have given a comprehensive guide of the cost of different technologies, so you can choose your preferred technology on your own.
Front-End Development:
Front end development consists of creating a perfect UI and UX for the application, and also all the basic structure of the application.
Read more: React native vs Flutter: which one is best for mobile app development.
Backend Development:
Backend development means all the functionality and process that will be carried out by the app is made via the backend development team.
Full Stack Mobile App Development:
Instead of doing backend and frontend of your application differently, you can merge them and carry out on a single platform and take help of fullstack developers to develop mobile apps for you. With this your mobile app development cost will be less than developing frontend and backend separately.
Read more: React+Node.js: the ultimate combo for mobile app development.
Database Selection:
Select any technology you want for the development of your app, but you will still need an important database to store your necessary data and credentials.
Read more: Want to learn more about databases for app development: here is the complete guide.
With selection of a full stack framework and good database, your mobile app development cost will come up around 50,000$ to 100,000$, just for the development part. And here we are talking about an advanced multi featured application. Basic applications may have development costs way less than this as much as around 25,000$.
5. Development Team Location:
It is necessary to check the development team's location because the labor cost for app development is different in different regions of the world. For example the average cost to hire a developer can be upto 150$ per hour, while a developer from India can cost you somewhere around 50$ per hour.
Below we have given a list of cost of different developers based on their geolocation:
6. Security Requirements in Mobile App Development
Security is an important part of mobile app development, because we have to store sensitive user data into the app. Ensuring compliance with industry regulations and implementing robust security measures can significantly influence development costs, impacting the overall budget.
Compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS is essential for apps handling user data, health information, or payment transactions. The costs associated with achieving compliance can range from a few thousand dollars to over $100,000, depending on the complexity.
Implementing security measures such as data encryption, secure authentication methods, and regular security audits is vital. These measures can add costs ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 or more, depending on the specific requirements and the app's architecture.
Ongoing maintenance, including patching vulnerabilities and monitoring for incidents, is also crucial. Budgeting 10-20% of the initial development cost annually is advisable to ensure the app remains secure and compliant, ultimately fostering user trust and long-term success.
Hidden Costs That May Jack up the Price
Beside those 6 reasons, there are other reasons too which can participate in your app development cost. Here we have given some hidden reasons that also can cost you in your development journey and you might want to save some mobile app development budget for them.
1. Marketing:
Let's suppose you have completed the development of your mobile app successfully and now it is ready for the common users. But the concerning question here is that how would those people even know that your application exists?
That's why reaching out to your preferred audience is very crucial for the initial success of your mobile app. Even if you develop an astonishing application with tons of features and tools, it is very less probable that it might reach the desired audience.
There are alot of marketing strategies and tools that you can choose from and every one of their costing is slightly different from each other:
a) Social Media Marketing:
In this renowned world, social media is an integral part of everyone's life. That's where your main focus should be. Running targeted social media ads for your potential user base on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and X(Twitter) can be a really effective strategy to increase your social media user base and create buzz for your brand.
On an average it will cost you around 500$ to 10,000$ per month for social media marketing depending on your ads frequency.
b) Collaborating with Influencers:
With the rise of Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram reels, people usually consume more of this kind of content and these influencers can be very useful in promoting your app. Different influencers charge differently to make a video or post a story on their profile based on their followers and reach.
Here is some basic information in table form about how much it costs you to collaborate with influencers on instagram and youtube based on their number of followers.
c) App Store Optimization:
App store optimization means strategically using keywords and SEO optimization for your app on the app store or play store so that whenever anyone searches anything related to your application, your application must come higher in the ranking than every other app on it.
App store optimization can contribute to your mobile app development cost from somewhere around 500$ to 3000$ for an initial adjustment and optimization of the application on the play store or app store.
Beside these three, there are are several marketing strategies you can choose from, here are some of them with their pricing:
2. Maintenance and Updates:
You can't conclude that your work is done after launching the application for common users. Without regular updates and maintenance of the app, it is as good as a dead person. You have to make chances according to user experience and feedback, keep fixing bugs on a regular basis and what not.
Here is a simple breakdown of how much it is going to cost you for regular maintenance and update of the application:
3. Platform Fee:
Using the app store or play store to publish your application is unfortunately not free. You have to pay some kind of subscription or one time fees to keep your application on their platform.
If you want to publish your application on the playstore, it will cost you a one-time charge of only 25$, while if you want to publish your app on the app store, they charge 99$ per annum for this assistance.
Step Wise Mobile App Development Costing
Developing a mobile application by yourself is not an easy task, it consists of a number of steps and decisions. For your convenience we have given a step by step guide on app development and also have configured data for you about how much it is going to cost you on each single step so you have an average idea of how much you should spend on each step.
1. Market Research
Let's suppose you want to buy a dress. You will do all kinds of research before buying it, like comparing different websites and their prices, read online reviews, go to your nearest market to look out for more offline options and compare online vs offline prices.
Same thing you should do before just starting the development of your mobile app. You should do market research about the niche of your app, check out for competitors and their strategies and find something unique that your app can provide to its users.
You can do market research on your own if you want but if you hire some professional experts or a company to do market research including a complete competitive analysis, structured data, surveys, feedback etc, it will cost you around 1000$ to 5000$.
2. Defining Basic Structure and features.
As we have discussed before, you can't be too intrigued about adding too many features into your app. You should start with sticking to a basic structure for your application and some basic features and tools that it will offer to its users.
Document everything about structure and features in this step of the development process. It is going to cost you about 1500$ to 3000$ to create documentation and a prototype for the application.
3. Development process
After doing market research and defining the main structure and wireframe for your application. Now you can start the development process for the application. But it is not as easy as it looks, there are few things you will need to keep in mind while selecting your development team.
Either you can build your own development team which is called an in-house team, or you can opt for outsourcing, which generally means hiring a professional team or company to do all of your work.
Here is a basic difference between In-house development vs Outsourcing development process:
If your aim is to develop mobile apps with basic features and you don't have any management experience then you should definitely go for outsourcing, otherwise if your goal is to make a larger than life type of application and you want to create your own company then you should hire your own team.
In House Development Team Building Cost:
If you have decided to go for an inhouse team for developing your app, here is a comprehensive guide about how much people you should hire and how much in total it will cost you:
It will cost you around $630,000 - $1,030,000 annually on salaries alone for an inhouse team.
Outsourcing Development Cost:
Outsourcing is comparatively less expensive than creating your own In house team, because you can hire different developers from around the world at the cheapest of cost on an hourly basis.
Here is a basic cost structure for outsourcing a development team:
Depending on the total hours worked on app development, outsourcing can cost you around 50,000$ to 100,000$.
4. Testing Phase:
After the completion of your development process, it is time for testing every part of the app. There are a lot of testing methods and strategies to check if your app is working properly or not.
There are basically two types of testing:
a) Manual testing:
As per the name, manual testing is done by the testor of each and every single feature and part of the application to check if the function is working properly in different case scenarios.
A manual testor's hourly rate is about 20$ to 50$ per hour, and overall manual testing cost can go upto 2000$ to 10,000$ based on the size of the application.
b) Automation Testing:
Instead of manually testing every feature and tools of the application, opt for automation testing. In automation testing, testers runs pre written code and use testing frameworks and software tools to test the application with pre-written tests.
An automation test for your application can cost you around 1500$ to 5000$ based on the type of software tools that are being used for testing.
5. Release of App and its Marketing
After testing every aspect of the app and resolving every bug and errors, now it is ready to roll out for the users to use. But as you know finding a right partner does not cost you as much as marrying them does.
Launching the process of your mobile application and introducing it to a general audience can be very costly, that's why you need to buckle up and try not to spend too much on everything, but just on important things.
Marketing is like a black hole for your budget, it will swallow all of your budget if you do not carefully spend it on only necessary stuff only. Here is a breakdown about how much it would cost on the marketing and launching process and on what key parts you should spend on only:
It should cost you minimum upto 3500$ to 13,000$ based on the size of your app for launching and marketing of your app.
As we have discussed on every step of the app development process, every app is different and its development process is different too. We can't say for sure how much it will cost you to develop a mobile app for yourself, but here is an estimation of app development cost on each step of the development process that we have discussed before.
This in total may be going to cost you from minimum 15,000$ to 150,000$.
How To Monetize Your App?
Now that you have spent so much money on the development of the app, now you must be eager to earn some revenue with it too. A data by statista shows that annual mobile app revenue is growing at a rate of 7.84% CAGR in total and with this rate it is expected to touch around 781.70 billion USD by 2029.
There can be several ways to monetize your app, which generally depend on the app type.
Here are some ways to make money through your app:
1. Advertisement:
This is a basic earning model for most of the apps in the market. According to BussinessOfApps.com, in 2024, companies over the globe spent around 400 billion USD on advertisements on mobile apps alone.
You can choose Google Ads to show ads on your app or you can create a custom made section to show custom ads too. On an average Google Ads give you 0.5$ to 2.5$ on per 1000 views on the ads, which can be a great source of earning if you have a large user base.
2. App Subscriptions:
Just like Netflix and Amazon Prime, you can also charge an annual or a monthly subscription fee from your users. In 2023 Netflix earned around 33.72 billion USD from subscriptions, this statistics shows how much a subscription model can be effective in generating revenue from your app.
If your app provides some exclusive features or unique tools, you can also charge your users on subscription basis which will increase the app revenue in no time.
3. Sales within the App:
If you have experience playing any kind of online multiplayer game, you must know that the game charges you to purchase any new weapon or dress. Same strategy you can use for your application.
You can charge for some specific tools or features or even for some unique user interface whatever you want. For example, Google Play generated 21.5 Billion USD in total for In App purchases in the first quarter of 2024 only. And the App store is also not behind it, they generated around 24.6 billion USD in revenue from In App Purchases in the same quarter of 2024.
4. Sponsorships:
Sponsoring other apps or advertising someone's product on your app can be a good source of your app revenue too. Here is a basic guide to let you know how much you should charge to someone or sponsorship on your app based on its user base:
5. Paid Downloads:
You must have seen on the app store or play store, some of the apps are free to download but some apps cost you some bucks to download. That's another way to make money for your app. You can set up some price to download the app on Play Store or App Store.
6. Sharing User Data And Behaviour:
Yes, it's another way to make money from your app. For example, Doordash has a large user base in the USA and people order food from it. That means Doordash has information like which city orders what kind of foods most, when does the most food order come and so on. They can sell this kind of information to restaurants or other food delivery apps so it would benefit their business.
For example, if you have a music app, you will have data like what age group of people listens to what kind of music most, who is the most popular singer right now and etc, you can sell this kind of data to big music companies for profit.
Cost Reduction Strategies for App Development
We have read about all the costs starting from market research to launching and monetization of your app. But it won't be a perfect solution if you keep spending money on everything without minimizing the cost on every step of the development.
Here are some suggestions regarding your overall cost reduction of your app:
1. Develop an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) First:
MVP (minimum viable product) refers to developing a core part of your app only. That means instead of releasing a full fledged application, you try to provide a basic main featured app for people so that you can gather more user inputs and feedback before investing more into the project.
Building an MVP costs less time and effort, and with the help of it you can collect important user feedback to improve areas in your application and can make sure to include all the other necessary features people have suggested.
2. Use Cross Platform development:
We have discussed before that if you make native apps for both android and iOS, it would cost you more than just building a cross platform app for both the operating system.
On an average cross platform app development costs 30% to 50% less than native app developments, that means cross platform development can minimize your overall app development cost by half.
3. Choose Outsourcing
We have seen that creating an in-house development team can be very expensive as compared to selecting an outsource unit to do all of the development.
Outsourcing can be as cheap as 60% than an in-house development team. If you outsource your developers from southeast asia like India or Indonesia, because of the cheap labor cost, your overall app development cost can decrease upto 40% to 50% easily.
4. Simplify User Interface
According to a study published on userguiding.com, almost 41% of the users generally like a simple and not more stunning UI in their application. Trying to create a more astonishing UI can result in bad user experience which will lead to greater bounce rates and lower retention rate of users.
Simple and basic UI will cost you less and it will attract more users from all kinds of age groups too.
5. Use Open Source Libraries:
Instead of starting everything from scratch, tell your development team to use open source libraries to create basic structure and other tools as much as possible, it will reduce your overall time and cost of app development.
For example, if you are using react native for your cross platform app development, you will find libraries for buttons, navigation, etc, already there. There are also some pre existing features in it like GPS navigation, camera tools, etc, all this will help you head start in your app development.
How CISIN Can Help You in your App Development Process
CISIN is a renowned name in the app development industry. With experience of over 21 years, CISIN is one of the best app development companies in the US right now. CISIN has already completed more than 5000 projects and have a team of more than 600 experienced professionals working with them globally, and have offices in around 10 countries including USA, UK, South Africa, India and many more.
If you are looking for an experienced team who can take full responsibility for the development of your project, you should certainly choose CISIN over any other company any day. CISIN has every kind of developer from front end, backend to cloud with much experience and they can provide the best quality of work at a minimum rate.
Still if you want to know more about app development, or you have an app development idea and want to know how much it is gonna cost, click here, and get in touch with us. Our professionals will handle all of your queries personally.
Q. How much time will it take to develop mobile apps?
Ans. Every app has a different requirement and can vary in time. But if we take as an example a simple To-Do list app can take 1-2 weeks to complete. An intermediate level app like a fitness app can take upto a month, and an advanced level app like an ecommerce or an social media app can take upto 3-6 months.
Q. What is the average maintenance cost for a mobile app?
Ans. On an average, maintenance and update of a mobile app can cost you around 20% to 30% of your overall mobile app development budget. This includes regular bug fixing, essential features, and cost of server also.
Q. What is the development cost for a mobile app?
Ans. To develop apps which are small in size like a simple messaging app, it can cost around 10,000$ to 25,000$ based on features. And for an advanced mobile app like an ecommerce app, the cost can go further up to 50,000$ to 150,000$ and even more in some cases.
Q. What are some primary factors that influence app development cost?
Ans. The primary factors that affect app development cost are - number of features in the app, design of the application, platform selection - android, iOS or cross platform, development tools, labor cost and security.
