Are app development costs decreasing?

We’ve had quite a few reactions to this post since it was originally published, and in 2014 and 2015 most people still thought that the cost of developing an app would rapidly decline. Perhaps this was anticipating that app development tools would become easier to use and cheap programmers would become ubiquitous. Perhaps this is driven by the fact that the cost of buying apps are “racing to the bottom”. But apps being cheaper to buy in the app store do not translate into the app development costs being any lower. If anything, user expectations about features, social sign-in, and ease of use have increased at the same time that expectations around prices are that they should be lower.

So no, app development costs have not really come down y much, in my opinion.

App Cost Calculators  Can Help Figure Out The Cost To Develop An App

One of the best ways to estimate what an app will likely cost is to consider advice from multiple sources. There are now several app cost calculators out there, and by plugging in assumptions and required features, you should be able to get a consensus opinion about what the ballpark cost will be. Keep in mind that  it is important to configure assumptions about what functionality is needed, especially related to cross platform requirements and needing a back-end and database connectivity as well as social features, required for many app concepts out there…

So here are five calculators I’ve found particularly useful:

Advanced App Development Cost Calculator

Topflight Apps Cost Calculator

High End vs. Low End

Since their introduction in 2010, tablets have become mainstay computing platforms, and  people’s expectations around App User Experiences for both smartphone and tablet platforms have since been raised by many of the great efforts out there.

High end apps like FlipBoard, Zite, Pulse as well as the many great games, entertainment and utility apps published during the last years have served to inspire developers and clients alike.

Consider that for games and high end apps it is a matter of having a champagne budget to accompany the champagne taste: Such apps cost hundreds of thousands dollars to develop, and projects like  FlipBoard raised 10.5M of first round funding, and have just gone back for round two for an eye popping 200 million. The iPad News reader Zite was sold to CNN for over $20 million.

On the low end there are automatic app creation services like The App Builder, Good Barber, and Appery.io which offer very low cost alternatives. However for such template driven apps in general the consensus among clients (and developers) seems to be that one gets what one pays for, and that such platforms will not serve brands to differentiate themselves from the pack

But often when I start digging into their business, assets, website, email lists etc., I wind up gently discouraging them from building an app when other fundamental aspects of their digital presence and strategy are missing or need to be built before an app project could ever bear fruit. 2012 was one thing, but in 2020 the app market is extremely saturated and only truly stand out ideas, with the requisite funding to develop and market them, have any chance at visibility. So for me, there may be truly ROI effective alternative ways to build up a digital strategy, before even considering developing an app.

Consider a recent 2020 example: The Democratic Iowa Caucus app. The spectacular failure of this app was avoidable with better and more experienced development approaches. Many of the faults there were platform independent and caused by decision making of the people involved – but vote counting could have easily been done with a mobile friendly web-site, and some of the app development costs could have been spent on better testing and faster deployment cycles.

Top Down vs. Bottom Up

But assuming a client is committed to develop one, one approach is to start with a top down budget figure, and then decide how many of the desired features can be accommodated within that budget. However very often clients do no wish to communicate such an up-front number.
The other approach is to start by gathering requirements from the bottom up and estimating the project costs. But depending on previous experience and "mobile readiness" of a client, this can be either a short or very long process; some of our clients did not even own a tablet computer at the outset of a project, and the familiarization process can take a long time.

Another phenomenon we've noticed that often apps are perceived by clients as an independent stand alone entities, even when they serve data from a network; the concept that an app may require a back-end content management system came as a surprise to some. App promotion costs are equally easy to overlook at the beginning of a project, we we stress the importance of budgeting for this up-front.

Some Industry Examples

A few years ago I came across a couple of excellent articles that are still relevant and do an great job of breaking down the dimensions that contribute to tablet (and smartphone) development costs:

Here is an infographic as well as comprehensive article:

As little as some 5 or 10 years ago, developing an app was unbelievably expensive. Most startups and SMBs could not afford to hire an international freelancer or outsource their app idea for development. But times have changed and today various mobile technologies have enabled startups, SMBs and enterprises to build an app in their budget. Here is an article from explaining current app development processes and costs.

For some additional resources and recent app cost calculators, see the following links: