App Development Costs 2024: A Complete Breakdown

Determining App development costs is a completely different story depending on the type of app being developed. There are no right and wrong answers, this question demands details.

The App creation costs can vary dramatically depending on the size and complexity of the app. In today’s competitive market, every entrepreneur is trying his best to bring his business to mobile devices, where people spend most of their time.

But the general population of business owners is unaware of the costs and they end up paying way more than anticipated.

You will see a ton of articles, forums, and estimates, they all start with the word “It depends”. But what does it depend on? How much does it cost to make an app?

It would be nice to get a simple number, but the truth is that some apps cost 5000$ while some of them go up to a million dollars. But how much exactly do you need to pay? What should be the development cost for your app project?

We will be discussing how much is it to make an app breakdown with holistic and detailed arguments, so every one of our readers can get the best estimate for their app development project. By the end of this blog, you will be more informed about your spending, save tons of dollars, and improve your ROI in the best way possible.

How Much does an App cost in 2024?

Putting a price tag on it helps, we know that. So to put it simply, we have provided an average estimation of h

w much does an App cost depending on its scope and complexity.

Average Cost of App Development-By Scope

This is an updated cost estimation for 2024 if we were to ballpark your budget costs (from minimum to maximum). But keep in mind that this can go even higher if your app is more complex and rich-featured, no matter the scope.

Factors that Affect App Development Costs

Several factors influence your developing cost for Apps, and it is indeed a vast subject. But for your convenience, we have categorized that subject into skimmable & digestible parts yet complete in their information:

• App Type (Industry and Operating system) 
• Region
• Hiring App Developers
• App Development Process

Let's dive into these categories, one by one, to give you a better idea of your investment, and how you can control your costs.

App Type

Your App type has a major impact on the cost. It indirectly determines the entirety of your costs which we are going to discuss shortly. Here are some major types of mobile Apps:

App Type Costs By Industry

• Social Media Apps (for chatting, media sharing, and calling)
• ECommerce Apps (for purchasing, selling, and payment options)
• Gaming Apps ( battle royale, offline gaming, animation, board games)
• Education Apps (online courses, live classes, progress calculators)
• Healthcare & Fitness Apps (customized plans, progress tracking)
• Travel Apps (Travel booking, vacation rentals, location tracking)
• On-demand Business Apps (custom functionality that serves your business objectives)

There are several more apps like this, but they all lie under their one major category. So to ballpark the development cost for each of these categories, here is an updated cost chart for 2024, with an estimated total development time range.

App Type Costs by OS

The development price can differ with your choice of operating system. Here is the latest cost estimation for all OS categories:

However, we need to understand that this hourly app developer salary range can differ with the choice of programming languages, project complexity, staff involved, experience, skillset, and more.

Factors Affecting the Hourly Rates of App Development

The more you discuss these matters with your hired entity, the better the chances of you making informed decisions about your money.

Hiring App Developers

There are two major hiring options for your app development project:
In-house developers: One of the most expensive options is to hire a full-stack in-house development team because of factors like:

• Recruiting Cost
• Training
• Salaries & Benefits
• Communication challenges
• Transparency
• Limited Talent Pool
• Staff Turnover

Freelance Mobile App developer: Freelancers can be the most cost-effective option for smaller projects or when you need specialized expertise of great quality

• Access to Top Global Talent
• Quality Assurance
• No legal issues
• Time-Saving
• No sick leaves or benefits

However, the choice of hiring option depends on your budget, project needs, scope, and complexity. But still, it’s always good to have a bird’s eye view of all pricing factors that could save you money.

App Development Process

Creating successful apps requires a well-planned and executed App development process especially if you are looking for a quick time-to-market (TTM).

Your workflow needs to be flexible and should encounter any unseen challenges while keeping the development unaffected.

The App creation process consists of 5 major stages:

• Discovery and Planning 
• App Design
• Development 
• Testing 
• Deployment

Let’s take a closer look into these categories to see how they affect our costs in developing an app.

Discovery and Planning

During this stage of planning an application, we define our target audience needs, app functionality, and business goals.

It takes hours to do such business analysis for each requirement. But then you get a final presentation of objectives that will significantly affect your app development timeline.

Agile App development is the best course of action for most projects and especially when you require speed and effectiveness simultaneously. It only takes a couple of days to draw up a plan for the next sprints.

While the traditional waterfall approach takes up nearly 10 percent of the entire app cost.

Pro Tip

• We recommend that you hire business analysts experienced in your domain to speed up the process for mobile app business plan. 
• This process should not exceed more than 30-40 hours.

The costs for this stage depend upon the complexity of your app. 

Higher the number of features and pages, the more time it takes for brainstorming and business analysis, and ultimately more expenses. 

Prototyping and Design

The next phase involves user experience and graphical assets. This involves color scheme, icons, fonts, logos, animations and screen transitions and other supporting elements that need to be included in your mobile UI framework.

While designing mobile apps, this framework defines both user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) for your project.

But of course, there are template-based and custom designs that affect your App design cost which further depends upon the number of screens (pages).

• Templates for smaller and simple apps is a more cost-effective choice
• Custom designs and plugins are preferred for business/enterprise apps although they cost more, but offer originality and powerful performance

But generally, this stage takes up to 15% of the entire app cost.

Contact our UI/UX app development agency to get apps tailored to your brand style guide.

Pro Tip

Create a high-fidelity wireframe, which is more interactive and closer to the original app functionality, and perform usability testing.

Testing a prototype is 80 percent cheaper than iterating a code. Try putting in extra time to maximize your ROI.

Development

The application development stage per se is what takes up most of the budget. In this stage, the app undergoes rigorous coding, debugging, and integration of several features. The App development procedure includes building the core functionality of an app, extended features, robust-backend, and more.

The costs in this stage can vary with the number & complexity of the features you want to integrate.

This stage is heavily influenced by the type of app you wish to create. But generally, it takes up to 50-70% of the app budget.

Get in touch with WDS to get the best custom mobile App development with creativity and originality.

Testing

After the app is finished with its development, the next deciding phase is Quality Assurance (QA). QA mobile App testing takes care of all the bugs, performance errors, or glitches.

The QA team ensures that your app is performing to its fullest potential and the user needs are optimally satisfied.

The cost for application testing depends on the number of features used, testing tools, QA activities, and the size of the testing team. But it would cost you no more than 10% of the total cost for app development,

Deployment

Finally we arrive upon the deployment and launch phase for your app. However it only takes a fraction of time compared to other stages of the app creation project, but the platforms that will host the application take up some portion of your total budget.

The general cost for deployment is nearly 5% of your total cost.

Assuming that we take a general approach towards an app development project, we have come up with average cost percentages for each stage.

The average cost per stage is displayed in this development lifecycle.

Average % Cost of App Making Per Stage

Mobile App Maintenance Costs

Most mobile apps are hosted on cloud service providers like Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure, which can cost either pennies or thousands of dollars. Mobile App maintenance costs also depend upon a number of factors.

In addition, if your app is integrated with third-party services (like payment systems) demand subscription costs, which also add to your budget allocation.

Every app is built to be scalable and as its popularity and number of users increase, the app’s throughput needs to grow as well, stacking further expenses).

Over time, you will have to pay more for your mobile app maintenance & updates. These costs include:

• Proactive Support
• Bug Fixing
• Ensuring Data Security
• Hosting Charges (Storage and traffic control)
• Server updates and Software
• Maintaining App Relevancy to the user

But speaking generally, App maintenance cost per year amounts to 15-20% of the original development budget.

Get proactive mobile application maintenance and support that works 24/7.

Hidden App Development Costs

This is where most business owners get fished into unseen expenses and they end up paying more than expected. There needs to be complete transparency of how much it would cost so you are aware of where your money goes. 

We have provided some costs that business owners tend to overlook:

• Backend Structure: Having a robust backend ensures a powerful and lightning-fast user experience. This involves you paying for server hosting, database management, and other expenses.
• Integration with third-party services: The integration of third-party services like payment gateways, social media platforms, or APIs demand owners to pay for licensing and API usage fees.
• Security Features: Maintaining the privacy of user’s data should be the top-most priority in your after launch activities. This involves encryption, two-factor authentication, mutual TLS, SSL certificates, and other additional costs.
• App Store fees: If your app is launched onto Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store, you will need to pay a fee for these platforms. This includes charges for app submission, updates, and hosting.
• ERP Integration eCommerce: Enterprise resource planning involves significant hidden costs that can prove hefty on your pocket, if left unsupervised. This is to ensure real-time monitoring and updating information pathways to reflect any one change throughout the system.
• CRM Integration: Integrating AI to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is vital to customer retention and satisfaction. That too comes with recurring expenses.
• Marketing: For a successful launch and maintaining relevance to the users in the long-run, you will have to spend budget on app promotions and ads.

Keeping these hidden costs in mind is paramount for your budget-friendliness and improving ROI. You can then finally control these hidden post-launch costs and aside from how much does app cost to develop. Reduce exhausting elements that contribute nothing of substance to your app and invest that money into your app scalability.

However, we recommend discussing the above-mentioned factors with your hired entity for complete transparency and maximizing your return on investment (ROI).

Get the Best App Cost Estimate for Your Project with WebDigitalSphere

Have no idea where to start? Juggling between quality and cost?

Fret not, WebDigitalSphere will take care of all the hiring research and business analysis to come up with the most affordable average price to develop an app that gets you the desired quality, aesthetics, and performance.