How much does an app cost?

“How much does it cost to develop an app?” This is the most common question I get from my students, people in the tech industry and, of course, customers. It's a “simple” question that I've heard thousands of times, but it's still a complicated question to answer. After all, there is a fine line between the values of R$ 4,000.00, R$ 100,000 and even more than 1K, right?

The main issue is that there are several variables involved in the development of a mobile application. It is often difficult to find these variables and know how much each one is worth within the development process. Manpower is just the first and most basic of factors, for example, there is a significant difference between hiring a freelancer, a development team, or an agency specializing in apps.

Likewise, having an application that requires a built-in backend server or built-in APIs can vary dramatically from an application that is completely standalone.

That is, and forgive me for being generic at this point: costs obviously can vary from request to request.

“Developing an app is easy, the hard part is knowing how much an app costs.”

For experienced developers, often the biggest difficulty is not developing an app, but knowing how much to charge for each app. If a simple and autonomous application can cost a few thousand reais. If you want to build backend services for your app, that number will go up even higher.

According to Ken Yarmosh, CEO of a major app agency: “Everyone seems surprised that Instagram crunched $500K in venture funding to build a new frontend and backend. I do not." And I totally agree with him, including points from his research that highlight:

• Applications developed by large mobile companies can cost between US$500,000.00 to US$1,000,000.00
• Applications developed by slightly smaller companies can cost between US$150,000.00 to US$450,000.00
• Applications developed by small companies and very lean teams cost from R$ 100,000.00 down.

You can see that a multitude of points must be analyzed when developing an application and when ordering too, after all, all the variables will affect the price between a smaller application and a millionaire application!

“This amount I'm paying in the app, is it a fair amount? It's cheap? It's expensive?"

The same question haunts the minds of customers who request the development of an application. Mainly, because he is the one making the investment and will want an ROI at least satisfactory.

I have listed some among all the variables that we must consider when pricing the application that we are going to develop or obtaining quotes for what we are buying. I think these topics are basic and extremely important to consider.

Quality

Essential when pricing the development of an application, or judging the product received. In practice, all applications must always have excellent quality and meet the expectations of those who request it. However, sometimes, for cost-benefit reasons, it is necessary to adjust the quality of the application to the available budget.

That is, the higher the quality level that the application has, the more expensive it is.

design

The design of an application directly affects how the user experience when using it. This can influence the success or failure of the app, as users want something that makes their lives easier, not more complicated.

The more detailed and personalized the app design, the more expensive it gets.

Monetization

There are a few types of app monetization . They can be free and include advertising, paid – applications that provide services with monthly fees and packages; or any type of business that generates sales within the application as an e-commerce.

E-commerce can be considered one of the most expensive types, as it is necessary to guarantee a certain level of security in the transactions carried out within the application.

Login and User Profile

It is very common for most applications to initially require the user to register and login before starting to use the available features. You need to consider this type of functionality when pricing your application.

The need for the user to log in to the app using email and/or social networks and creating a profile also makes the app more expensive.

Integration with Website and Admin Panel

Often, the application is just “the tip of the iceberg” of the complete solution. Therefore, it is very common to have integrations with websites and administrative panels that feed their content, process and curate the data that is shown in the application.

An extremely important point when pricing or requesting an application is the attention to not only considering “the tip of the iceberg”, but the complete solution.

Multilingual, Bilingual or Single Language

What languages will it support? Will it be an English/Portuguese app?

Preparing the app to support more than one language is an extra work in the development process and probably a professional translator/interpreter. Therefore, the value of the application increases as well.

This list contains only the basic elements, even so, you can already have an idea of what to include in your quote. Also, remember that the cost for an app involves UX, design, development, initial project management, etc. There will be a minimum budget required for ongoing updates and potentially some server costs.

How to Know How Much an App Costs

As you've seen, there are a lot of variables to think about when calculating the cost of an application.

Fortunately, there's a tool called How much does it cost to create an App , which I've been testing and would like to recommend to you. It is a “hand in hand” for developers and customers to do these calculations and have a good basis for how much the application will cost.

How much does it cost to create an Application is an interactive site that helps to make this calculation based on the variables I mentioned above.

Basically, to use the tool, you must answer the questions regarding the application in question. These questions are based on the items I mentioned above.

To make the approximate calculation of the final value of the application, the tool considers the answers obtained together with a database with various information about values and characteristics of applications developed by freelancers, small and large companies.

So how much does an app cost?

It depends, we saw that there are many variables to consider when pricing the development of a mobile application. But we can have the help of the aforementioned tool to help us make these calculations.

Making an evaluation using How much does it cost to create an Application , considering from the simplest application to a more complex one, the values for the development can vary between R$4,760.00 to R$75,480.00 reais.

*Remember, these values only serve as a basis to assist in the calculation of the value, considering that each application has its particularities that can increase or decrease the final value.

Obviously, your knowledge of mobile platforms is also essential, because the more knowledge you have of the platform, the easier it will be to analyze the factors involved in the development of an application, such as its pricing.

Where to find developers and/or projects?

There are two things you might be thinking about at this point, depending on which side you are on, as a customer looking for developers or as a developer looking for projects to start monetizing your Android development knowledge.

For both cases, it is possible to use freelancer websites to connect those who want a mobile project with those who want to develop these projects.

There are several sites out there and I'm going to recommend two really cool ones, both for developers and customers.

freelancer.com

Freelancer.com is a place where clients post projects of all types, including development, and receive competitive offers from freelancers wanting to work on the project.

They have a reputation system to make it easier for the client to identify the best freelancers and for job seekers to show the quality of service. It's a simple and secure way to connect clients with freelancers.

Access Freelancer.com

fiverr

Fiverr is one of the world's largest marketplaces for services. One service offered on Fiverr is called Gig, pronounced “guig“. Gigs are offered for prices starting at US$5 . You can find everything, including mobile app development, from extremely simple Gigs to more complex Gigs with values well over $5 .

This site is great for both clients and freelancers alike. For customers, because the value is extremely affordable and the professionals are of great quality. For freelancers it's a great site to start doing projects and working on very specific things, like fixing bugs or converting websites into Android apps.

Access Fiverr

One last consideration…

“Is it worth investing and learning how to develop apps?”

The doubt is even greater for the novice mobile developer, who sometimes comes from other areas of development, and/or wants to start his career as an application developer.