How Much Does Mobile App Development Cost in 2024?
October 29, 2024
Are you building apps and concerned about the budget? Do not worry—you don’t have to calculate it yourself. However, it’s essential to have deep insights to avoid exorbitant pricing and make well-informed decisions.
Our app consultants use their decades of experience to provide you with accurate estimates.
The mobile app development cost is largely influenced by the complexity level, technology stack, outsourcing model, and more. This blog provides you with valuable knowledge to help you analyze the app budget.
What is the Cost of Mobile App Development?
On an average, the cost to develop a mobile app can be anywhere between $20,000 to $300,000. The large range is basically because of the influence of several factors affecting the estimates.
The exact price depends on the app’s complexity, functional features, and many more factors:
Basic apps: Simple apps with a few functional features, like a login system, user profile, and dashboard, can cost between $5,000 and $20,000.
Mid-level apps: Apps with more interactive features like eCommerce, chatting, or food delivery apps, can cost between $50,000 and $200,000.
High-level complex apps: Apps with modern & advanced features, like augmented reality, virtual reality, AI and ML can cost between $100,000 and $300,000 or more.
Here are the Top 5 Factors That Decide The Cost of Mobile App Development
There are so many factors influencing the app development costs that it’s not pragmatic to enlist them all. Moreover, we cannot be obsessed with factors of little influence.
Rather lets’ focus on the major aspects, so you have concrete answers without the hassle of reading on and on.
1. Functional features you need in the app
Building simple apps with a limited number of features helps to cut down the initial investment. This is a significant reason why entrepreneurs and established companies opt to experiment with minimum viable products (MVP).
Moreover, launching the app as an MVP helps to proof-test ideas and identify market values. Further you can add more features in the base mobile app and release them as iterations.
Some of the must-have functional features (costing between $500 to $3000) of any app category are:
- It should be secure and reliable to protect users’ sensitive personal information.
- Users should be able to navigate easily and find relevant information without difficulty.
- Ability to track statistics about the app usage, which further helps with deciding and developing new features.
- It should follow industry regulatory compliances.
Advanced Features of mobile apps (cost between $2000 to $10,000) are:
- Push notifications: This helps to interact with users and send promotional content.
- Offline functionality: It helps users to browse the app without an internet connection.
- Social media integration: Allowing users to use social media accounts like Twitter or Facebook to sign in and connect it for sharing posts or purchases.
Location-based services: The app can use the user’s location to provide relevant offers and promotions.
2. Platform Choice: Native or Cross-Platform
Whether you are building for iOS and Android separately or opting cross-platform, largely affects the app development price. Read this PWA vs Native vs Hybrid app comparison to find which one fits your needs perfectly.
Here’s the key difference between native and cross-platform apps:
| Features | Native app development | Cross-platform app development |
| What is it? | Different apps are built to launch on different OS. This means you need two teams, one for Android development and the other for iOS. | A single codebase helps to launch apps on both the Android and iOS platforms. |
| Cost | This is a costly and time consuming approach as you need to build separate apps. | This allows you to reach audiences on multiple platforms at the app development charges of one codebase. |
Another option for launching apps on mobile devices is progressive web apps (PWAs). They are not true mobile apps, but they function similarly to them. You can have various mobile apps simulating features with PWA, like home-screen accessibility with app icons, push notifications, offline accessibility, and more.
PWA development helps you build apps at a fraction of native or cross-platform budgets. This is because they are built with web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
3. App UI/UX Designs
One of the biggest factors deciding the mobile app development costs goes in building intuitive and immersive user interfaces. The UI designs must be simple and impressive and encourage users to perform desired actions seamlessly.
The app design cost is low when you use ready-made standard UI. On the other hand customized UI are expensive as they are tailored for specific needs of the target audience. Good UI/UX helps to build credibility and enhances the app retention rate.
4. Size and location of the app development team
The location and structure of the development team is a vital factor affecting the mobile app development cost. It is obvious in plain sight that building apps in a country like the US or UK will cost you more than having a team in China or India.
In simple words, outsourcing an app development project costs less than in-house development. Similarly, having a large team of experts helps with faster time-to-market ideas. However, on the downside, large teams can increase the development budget.
The infographic below provides insights into the median cost of mobile app development process in different regions of the world.
5. App maintenance cost
Mobile app development does not end with launch. This is more evident if you are testing new ideas with an MVP. Once your application is launched, you are flooded with feedback from users.
The feedback mainly revolves around bugs and performance issues or requests for missing features. It is important to make necessary improvements to the mobile apps based on them.
Mobile app maintenance costs around $21,000 annually. Various companies spend as much as 50% of the app development cost on maintenance during the first year.
JS Panther Provides You With Guilt-Free Estimates
We have built apps for various business industries, including retail, fashion, food and beverage, and healthcare, and we have the technical expertise you need. As a leading mobile app development company, we can provide you with 100% accurate estimates.
We offer end-to-end services whether you want to build web apps, native apps, or cross-platform applications. We can provide the app development cost breakdown for your project.
