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App Cost Calculator — Plan your app development budget within 2 minutes
App Cost Calculator is an absolutely free way for startupers or business owners to calculate their expenses on app building.
It is all pretty simple: choose the business you are engaged in and follow thesteps with clear-cut questions. As a result you will get a custom-built PDF report with all needed info to gain some insight on planning a budget
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Replies
@jerome_dumont You are right, the calculator counts only the cost of frontend and backend development without taking into account the overheads.
Ironically, I get an error/warning when I visit site on my mobile device: "Sorry, but this web application has unusable UX for mobile devices."
@brentonhouse it is not ironic) We have been spending a lot of time during finding the best way of usability for mobile devices. Unfortunately, our Calculator includes 3 functionality zones which we can not put on the one screen like in the Desktop version. So at this moment, we have not User-friendly mobile version. I am sure that only mobile App is the solution of the problem with pure mobile UX
Really great marketing tool, love how it's set up. But it gives potential clients false hope. Overpromising on lead times. If you look at the cost for developing snapchat on one platform, it's prob 10x of what is promoted.
Again love the marketing stunt, but this is not even close to real life.
Pros:Nice marketing
Cons:The development lead times don't represent actual dev costs.
Overpromises
How I have written below in the comments:
1. The estimate provided by the calculator is a very rough one.
2. The calculator makes an estimate for the MVP version of the application by default.
2.1. But you can add all additional features and get another estimate for the same App
3. Compare: Snapchat App (iOS & Android) (MVP) https://prnt.sc/gw2m24 and full Snapchat app cost estimation (iOS & Android) https://prnt.sc/gw2mj1
4. Also, take a look at the pessimistic time
I hope this enough for you to change your Review =)
Agreed, this is a wildly low estimate. For an Uber-like app, I just got an estimate of 134.6 hours for a cost of $4,711.
That comes out to $35/hour, which is half the cost of a junior developer in any non-tech hub. In tech hubs it costs more.
@multique love the setup and how you created the calculator. But after 6 years in active app business development, I can assure you the estimates are nowhere near the actual lead times required to build the platforms you preselected. They might suffice to ship a 0.1 of a product for sure. I was hoping to see a calc that is not another marketing tool, but gives potential clients a real idea of what they're signing up for.
@janjeanjack Thank you for your detailed comment. I won’t argue that the estimate provided by the calculator is a very rough one and we indicated this fact in the comments on the page with results (perhaps we do not indicate this explicitly enough but we will try to change make all possible changes).
Also, could you tell me if you have seen that the calculator makes an estimate for the MVP version of the application by default? This means all labor-intensive features are cut. Even without these features you can release the first version of the product. For example, if you look at the estimate of the Snapchat application (iOS & Android) (MVP) https://prnt.sc/gw2m24, but for a full Snapchat application, with all additional features will be https://prnt.sc/gw2mj1 (also take a look at the pessimistic time).
@janjeanjack I agree. We had this challenge where business teams measure timelines one way and developers/product teams measure it differently. Rather than use a huge switch to produce a timeline, we stepped back and looked at how we could be very detailed and apply machine learning based on data we gathered from customer projects and git... ultimately learning that most of the time the small details these types of calculators leave out make up 30% more of the timeline and cost.
@janjeanjack @multique I think you are on the right track for the calculator. I would say that the persona of user who will interface with it is likely a business person and not a dev therefore many of the terms have a different meaning.
MVP even for some has a different meaning across roles. MVP is viable product, where some believe MVP is simply a high functioning / high fidelity prototype.
A great way to improve it is to put a survey out to better understand what people think MVP is vs Prototype so the language can change context and perhaps give better indication to audience.
I'd be quoting snapchat at $2-3 million minimally. Again the business person see's filters, face recognition and all the details it offers so it could easily become misleading. I'd also factor in analytics, business dashboards/admins, etc into the pricing and questions...
There are other tools like http://howmuchtomakeanapp.com/ and https://www.otreva.com/calculator/, but this one is really detailed. Definitely bookmarking it!
@d4nyll Thanks a lot. We carefully analyzed similar services before creating our own and tried to take into account their strong sides and add value to the concept with our vision :)
Thanks for the question, @abadesi !
First of all, we wanted to make the simplest solution for calculating the development time. To determine the cost of development, we took the average value of the market based on price and quality. Perhaps in the next update, we will add the ability to select the geography of the developers, but I think this can complicate the logic of the calculator.
I just threw up my coffee.
Nice UI, ridiculous numbers.
Signup:
Entering the Birth Date 4.5 hours
Save Password 4.7 hours
Registration by email 12.5 hours
Registration by phone number 9.1 hours
Automatic country code substitution 4.8 hours
@timshnaider Thanks for your feedback. I just wanted to clarify what exactly do you find ridiculous in those numbers?
@natalia_kharchenko Are you serious?
I chose IOS only for a Snapchat type app and all the options on just the Signup page are estimated at approx 50 hours. 50 hours. For a signup page.
@timshnaider The signup page for the app you're quoting is not a usual one, it suggests the features that are normally not necessary but can be implemented optionally. This estimate of 50hrs covers a complete Signup functionality, including Backend.
"Entering the Birth Date 4.5 hrs".
Speaks for itself.
Pros:UI theme, wizard
Cons:The time estimates for most things
Doesn't work on mobile. Says oh and oh. That's the last thing I want to see from an app.
I think guys did a trumendous job, but I would love tp seem bigger variety of features.
Pros:UI looks fabolous and numbers seem solid.
Cons:More features would be great !!
Hey Product Hunters,
We are more than excited to be featured here with our new product - Mobile App Cost Calculator.
The 6-year experience of Cleveroad Business & Requirement Analysts and development teams combined with designer vision have resulted in App Cost Calculator you are looking at. We’ve been working on it for quite a while, carefully reviewing and analyzing customers’ requirements and expectations.
Long story short, here are a few things the calculator allows to do:
- Estimate an existing app or your unique business idea
- Include the features you need most
- See the project team structure
- Control your minimum and maximum cost
- Get a detailed PDF-report
We truly hope our App Cost Calculator will be useful when it comes to planning a budget for mobile app development!
Nice move to get projects (Y)
Pros:Pretty Nice UI and Interaction
Cons:It gives pre entered estimated data nothing else not actual time estimation
I have just added the request to new app. How many time it will take to make it?
Good question @julia_miheytseva
It depends on the complexity of the application and the features list in it. But I think it can be taken in 5-7 working days
@julia_miheytseva @multique Actually the depends on the complexity of application and the time you are taking to develop the application. Yes if you are having an extra features other than it fees will be higher. Actually the first question will be asking you regarding your developer skills. If you have good experience then it can be taken no more than 6 weeks.
Mostly the software developers charge on per project base. And we also have a different type of pricing model called Time and Material. But for me pricing question will be asked in the first interview. Based on my experience 1$ per hour and if the project will going to take more time, then you need to discuss about it with the developer.
So it will be 5k to 8k.
Fitness App development cost and time - https://cliffex.com/fitness-app-...
Excellent product. Will definitely help people get an idea of the cost of development for an app. Would you be offering a API to the calculator so people can integrate into their own sites - or is this something that is proprietary just to your site?
@aelia_yousaf Thanks for the good question. We were thinking about it inside the team and I am sure if we get good results from this launching we will create an API
Great Concept and UX to build out estimates, however, I agree lead time is very conservative, additionally, If I were to look at the estimated hours compared to estimated Cost, I think you are setting wrong expectations and making it harder for devs and agencies to cover costs. At ~32/hour I would say you are at the low end of a good individual freelancer. Native dev rates sit higher as well as including overhead, and project management, I think you should be looking to at least double the expected rate.
@mweston As I said before, our calculator makes Rough Estimates so the cost also is rough. We took an average development rate just to show How much it can be. I agree with you that 32/hour is a good median price for a freelancer (but not for an outsource company) but at the same time, a developer from Asian country can set even a lower rate. BTW you can see our fresh research on this subject - https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/t...
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