How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Mobile App? Complete Pricing Guide

Overview: How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Mobile App?

Today, if you want to develop a mobile app for your business, the typical cost can range from $5,000 to more than $400,000. However, two factors will determine the overall budget of developing a mobile app. The factors are the complexity and features of a mobile applications. Small and large businesses connect with a mobile app development company to develop their mobile apps. Today, if you want to build a basic app, you will need to invest somewhere between $5,000-$50,000. For a moderate app, you may have to invest between $50,000-$120,000. Whereas, businesses looking for enterprise-grade mobile app development may need to invest a significant amount, around $100,000–$400,000.

How to Calculate the Cost of a Mobile App?

If you want to know how to calculate the cost of a mobile app, you need to consider mainly two factors. The first factor is how many hours developers spend building the app. The second one is how much they charge per hour. If you engage a mobile app development company, they will charge you based on these two factors. Multiplying these two factors can give you an estimate of the mobile app development cost.

Let’s understand it with an example: a mobile and web development company charges $100 per hour, and your project takes 500 hours to develop. This means your project’s app development cost will be calculated by multiplying the development hours by the hourly rate. That is $50,000.

Mobile App Development Cost = Development Hours × Hourly Rate

= 500 × $100 = $50,000.

So, the estimated cost to develop your app is $50,000.

Factors to Determine the Cost of a Mobile App

1) Mobile App Complexity

The complexity of your mobile app is the most important factor that determines its cost. If you want to build a simple app, you will need to invest from $5,000 to more than $400,000. This will involve adding core features to your app, such as a login system, user profiles, a simple dashboard, and limited administration. This could include a basic calculator, a flashlight app, and a simple content display app. 

Now, if you want to build a medium-complex app, the app development cost can be around $50,000-$120,000. In this, a team of developers adds features like user logins, custom APIs, and in-app purchases, and potentially works with a backend. On the other hand, for large mobile app development, you'll need to invest an average of $100,000 to $600,000. This can be expensive for all because large iOS app development and Android app development require significant resources.

2) App Features and Functionalities

Adding advanced features will make your app more complex. If you connect with the mobile app developers, their skills and expertise in managing the features will help you build a custom mobile app. Basic features may be affordable, but real-time data processing, AI, geolocation, and other features will increase the overall cost of app development.

3) App Category and Industry Type

The app category and industry type are factors that determine the price of your mobile app. Many things, such as features, security, and scalability requirements, need to be added as per the app category and its industry type. These will directly and indirectly influence your cost. You can develop mobile apps for healthcare, ecommerce platforms, financial technology, social media, gaming, and more. Each industry can require building a unique type of mobile app. 

4) Trends and Technologies

Every sector of the business wants to remain contemporary with trends and technologies. Integrating important features is crucial for staying relevant in that sector. For example, Chatbots are one example, which you can find integrated into most websites. By incorporating trends and technologies like AI, automation, data analytics, and others, costs can be increased or decreased by providing multiple features simultaneously without having to write separate code. Integrating digital twins and agile methods can reduce costs. This will reduce physical prototyping and development time while allowing others to adopt new technologies and increase prices.

5) App Platform Selection 

The app platform you choose has a significant impact on your app development company's charges. If you choose native app development, it can be expensive because a team of mobile app development experts has to create two separate applications for Android and iOS. 

While talking about cross-platform, this app selection can be less costly compared to native. Because when building a mobile app with the help of a cross-platform, an app development company needs to use the same code for both iOS and Android. Furthermore, a web based mobile app development is also one of the most cost-effective methods to build a mobile app because it doesn't require you to invest in platform-specific coding or app store fees.

6) Technology Stack

The technology stack is one of the main factors that directly impact the price of a mobile app. The combination of programming languages, frameworks, and databases you use determines the overall cost to develop a mobile app. You need to build and run an app where you have to deal with a front end (user interface), a back end (server-side logic and database), and hosting solutions. 

All of these steps require paying subscription fees on a monthly or yearly basis. The platforms you choose, coding, software, tools, and even the size of the teams, influence app development charges. A team of mobile app developers works on the frontend, backend, database, hosting, and additional tools like version control, etc. All of these require an investment of time and cost.

7) Third-Party Integration

If you want to integrate third-party features, it will reduce the cost because third-party integrations are external services and functionalities that will help you avoid writing the code from scratch. However, the higher integration of different features and functionalities can make your react native, IOS and Android application complex and increase the complexity of your apps. 

8) Size of the Development Team

When engaging a mobile app development company, the size of the development team will determine the overall IOS and android app development company charges. That determines the number of hours required for your development task. Using a larger team means you can complete your work faster, but it will require a greater investment.

On the other hand, a smaller team may be a good option. They may have time to perform a task at a lower total cost per hour. A small app development company may take longer to complete a complex task. Therefore, for this purpose, you should contact a big team that can meet your specific needs.

Apart from this, several other factors can determine the cost, such as

• Location of an App Development Team
• App Maintenance
• App Security 
• App Marketing and Acquisition
• Hidden Factors that Influence App Development

Bottom Line

Today, mobile app development is growing more than ever. With 6.6 billion smartphone users worldwide, the demand for mobile apps for businesses and startups is on the rise. There's immense growth potential for businesses and startups looking to launch their new mobile apps. Today, we can see that 200 billion apps are downloaded every year from the Play Store and App Store. Above, we've explained how much you'll need to invest in developing a mobile app. We've also discussed the factors that can determine the cost and even how mobile app costs are calculated. With this, you can now get the approx number of costs by yourself.