Know the Estimated Cost of Hiring App Developer in 2022

What is the cost of hiring an app developer? This is probably one of the first queries that app brands have before starting a project. The bottom line of every mobile app development budget is the cost of hiring an app developer and the overall budget for the development.

Mostly, a business owner finds herself trying to answer these two questions: how much is the cost of hiring an app developer to create an app for my business versus how much does it cost to create an app on my own. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.

If you are confused about calculating the cost of hiring an app developer, this is the right place for you! In the first section, let's take a look at the cost of hiring an app developer vs. in-house to see how they affect app development costs.

Cost of hiring app developer vs. in-house

An app development business gains considerable experience in mobile app development for numerous platforms after a number of years on the market, when app projects can be fairly sophisticated, incorporating AI, ML, IoT, and another advanced mobile tech. Working with such a team will help you grow faster because they are smart and learn from their experiences on other projects. App development is a process that requires meticulous preparation and sticking to a strict deadline.

Suppose you decide to build a mobile app in-house. In that case, you can certainly reduce the cost of hiring an app developer, at least at first, because over time, going through bug fixes due to a lack of experience, you can actually catch up with the price tag you would get from an app development company if you decide to hire one.

As much as we'd like to put a dollar value on the cost of hiring an app developer, we can only provide an estimate. Because each app development process involves several variables that influence the ultimate cost of hiring an app developer.

Fortunately, various app development budget-generating tools can help you in determining the cost of hiring an app developer. So, here's how to calculate the app developer cost. You can easily find the cost of hiring an app developer from this.

How to calculate the cost of app development?

• What an app's functionality and purpose are — what an app can truly do for its customers.
• Supported mobile platforms and devices - whether an app will be built exclusively for iOS or an Android version.
• Integration points— Will an app be integrated with third-party apps that will serve as its content source?
• Use of visual items - the cost of hiring an app developer and developing an app is heavily influenced by the complexity of its visual components.
• Use of smartphone hardware features — whether or not an app will make use of smartphone features such as GPS navigation, NFC technology, motion co-processors, Augmented Reality technology, and other technologies found in smartphones and tablet computers.
• Maintenance strategy - once an app development part is finished, the project will require technical assistance from an expert app developer.

Having said that, we may apply some usual or average benchmarks for app development project expenses to various types of apps. You can calculate the cost of hiring an app developer based on the cost of app development taken as a benchmark. In the next section, let's dig deeper into the cost of hiring an app developer.

Cost of hiring an app developer

When a business decides to hire a developer, how much will be the cost of hiring an app developer arises. According to Indeed.com, corporations must pay $89,000 per year to hire a US-based mobile app developer. After translating from a native currency to USD, Australia and Germany come in second and third, respectively, with $76,000 and $66,000. It is actually far cheaper to engage an app development specialist in nations like India - only $4,000 per year, which we may attribute to the economic differences between North America, Europe, Australia, and India. However, the cost of services should not be the sole determining factor in a company's decision to hire an android app developer cost; other factors such as previous client feedback and expertise in specific technical areas should be considered as well.

Now that you have seen the freelance app developers' cost, time to know more about the benchmarks for app development costs which you can use to calculate the cost of hiring app developers.

Benchmarks for app development costs

Many years ago, the cost of developing an app for iOS and Android platforms was very different. This gap is now insignificant, according to various pieces of research undertaken by established app development companies. Today, the most important element is the complexity of the mobile app, which may be arbitrarily classified as simple, medium, or complex. The table below shows the cost of hiring an app developer from the US and the cost of project app development.

• Developing a simple app will cost $40,000 to $60,000
• Developing a medium-complexity app will cost $61,000 to $120,000
• Developing a complex app will cost $120,000
• Hiring app developer from US will cost $90,000

Keep in mind that the cost of hiring an app developer and other costs given above are only estimates. They're designed to give you a bird's-eye view of what your app development budget might look like based on the app's complexity. The cost of app development shown above excludes the price of app upgrades, which are an inevitable component of every mobile app's lifecycle and differ greatly based on the version and the importance of each update.

Cost calculators for app development to know before hiring an app developer

With several million mobile apps on the market, the topic of how to reach your target customers and accomplish your ROI objectives is quite difficult. Businesses want to find the cost of the development of an app. To accommodate this demand, a number of online calculators were created. Let me show you the most popular ones below.

Cleveroad calculator

This calculator will walk you through 10+ questions to help you figure out how much it will cost to produce an app that is similar to existing apps on the market (Uber, Snapchat, Airbnb, and others) or to build a mobile app from the ground up based on particular criteria. You'll obtain development time estimates in hours as you make decisions and answer questions.

Buildfire calculator

It's a seven-step calculator that walks you through numerous criteria to determine the cost of developing a mobile app. Platform, Features, Users, Integrations, Monetization, Maintenance & Hosting, and Buildfire Services are the platform's components.

Estimate My App calculator

This calculator offers a different approach, listing all of the filters that can be used to form a price tag on a single page. The filters take into account the app's size, UI complexity, account features sophistication, user-generated content complexity, mobile-specific features like Apple Watch support, Cloud Syncing, dates and locations, social & engagement, etc.

Inoxoft calculator

This calculator can help you estimate the cost of desktop and mobile software. Unlike the other calculators, this one provides a price tag estimate range at each step of the price computation procedure.

How much to make an app

The eight-step calculator, which works similarly to the Inoxoft one, provides a price estimate for each step. The final screen includes a form to fill out with contact information to continue working on the app project.

Andreasley calculator

When all of the selections to create an app development price tag are made, an easy-to-use smart calculator designed in a shopping cart style appears on the right, just like purchased items in a shopping cart system. Platform, Quality, Number of Screens, Custom Controls, Device types, Screen orientation modes, Security level, Supported OS versions, Number of languages supported, Deployment, and Special functions are used to calculate the cost (such as in-app payments support, stats, Push Notifications and more).

Litslink calculator

A seven-step calculator that guides you through the set of 27 questions, beginning with the industry for which a mobile app is needed. In addition to calculating app development costs, the calculator includes a summary of all decisions made. After the cost calculation is complete, the tool will direct you to a contact form where you can fill out a contact form to acquire an app development price quote estimate. And once you calculate that, it is easy to calculate the cost of hiring app developer.

Digitalya calculator

A five-step calculator that estimates the cost of app development and the time it will take. You can get a ready-to-use estimate in PDF format. The app user profile, features to add to the MVP, revenue model (recurring payments/upfront fees/shopping cart system), and high-tech features to include (AI, IoT, VR / AR) are all steps in the estimation process.

In the next section, let me introduce you to the app maintenance costs.

App maintenance cost

The industry standard for software maintenance is around 15-20% of the initial development cost. Hosting, monitoring, engagement, marketing, upgrades, and licenses are all included in the cost of sustaining the process. Let's get to know a bit about each of these now.

Hosting

The type of data the app works with – text or media, such as photo, video, or audio – is a significant factor in calculating the cost of mobile app backend data hosting. Depending on these criteria, an app hosting web server could cost anything from $70 to $320 per month.

Monitoring

Since each app has its own audience and a hugely varying number of users, it's impossible to give an estimate for a mobile app monitoring cost. However, once you've reached out to the companies on the list, make sure you receive a general range for your expense.

Marketing & engagement

Multiple components make up a mobile app marketing expense, which includes initiatives to engage a mobile app user base. An app install is the first thing to do in any mobile app engagement. Its price is determined by the country, platform (iOS/Android), and ad unit. In 2020, the iOS CPI (Cost-Per-Install) in the United States was $2.37 per app install, $0.98 in China, and $0.22 in Brazil. The average cost-per-install for Android and iOS was $2.24. We can talk about an average mobile app user acquisition cost as we get more specific, from a generic app install to a desirable action the app user is expected to take. In 2018-2019, the average app UA cost over the world was $7.5 for registration, $87 for in-app purchases, and $46 for subscriptions.

App updates

Every single mobile app that has ever been released on an app store, whether for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, or other platforms, has received updates. On the one hand, developing a perfect app with version 1.0 is just not possible; on the other hand, successive upgrades are an excellent tool for maintaining app user engagement. The time it takes to build an update varies greatly and depends on the app's complexity. An original update release in an app store may take roughly one hour. But, the time it takes to develop an update varies significantly and depends on the app's complexity.

Licenses

If a mobile app design involves one or more technologies for which the developer must pay a license, the entire app development cost may climb dramatically. A licensing price is calculated based on annual rates and the number of devices and can be as high as $120,000 per year for 50 devices.

Time to sum up the ways to calculate the cost of hiring an app developer and the overall app development.

Conclusion

When businesses calculate the cost of developing a future app, they must first consider the location of the development team and the complexity of the app. Both of these aspects have a significant impact on the entire development cost and the cost of hiring an app developer. Given the strong adoption rates of both iOS and Android, developing an app for both platforms at the same time is a wise strategy for businesses looking to go remote. Since infrastructure is the most expensive part of an app's development, it's only natural for businesses to try to save money on things like data storage and scalability and third-party API integration.