Due to constantly advancing technologies, the competition among app developers has intensified in today’s digital world. Moreover, determining the expected cost of an app design is also a real struggle for business owners.

There is no formula to calculate the accurate estimated cost required for an ideal app design and development. Instead, you can consider the factors that influence app pricing. You must be clear about your business goals, requirements, and budget.

If you want to know how much it will cost to design the app, this is the right place to get the answer. So, let’s dive into it!

Estimated Cost Range for An App Design

Designing an app can cost anywhere from $3000 to $40,000. The final price may vary depending on the factors that go into designing the app.

A simple app can cost around $3000 to $6000. The costs for an app equipped with advanced and complex features start from $10,000. The costs of high-profile apps begin from $20,000. Lets dive deeper and see what makes an app design cheap or expensive.

Factors Determining/Affecting The Costs Of An App Design

Designing an app involves many things, like the concept, team to execute the plan, features, and space or location where app designing takes place. All of these aspects are further subdivided into various actions and scenarios that are inevitable for app designing and require some financial outlay. Therefore, when you intend to design an app and determine the expected costs, you need to focus on these critical factors/steps, such as:

App Complexity

The design of an app can be complex or simple as required. Usually, large organizations opt for complicated apps as they enable them to offer their services more efficiently and effectively. Complex designs cost more than simple designs. Scroll down to know why.

Additional Screens And Versatile Features

Every app has a particular number of accessible screens, such as a welcome screen, feed screen, menu screen, etc. Apps with simple designs include 3 to 5 screens. However, complicated apps, such as shopping and real estate apps, include more than 5 screens, each opening a new page or menu to access. The app complexity and costs increase as you increase the number of screens.

Features improve the functionality of apps. The more features an app contains, the more user requirements the app will be able to meet. Each feature included in the design directly affects the cost range. If you want to design an app at minimum costs, incorporate essential features, such as User Experience, User Interface, and security features.

High-budget apps are integrated with multiple impressive and trendy features. Chat support, push notifications, AI technology, voice searching, and offline access mode are some of the popular costly features that also help boost your business’s growth.

Type Of App Design

Two types of designs can be used for app creation: custom design and native design. Custom design refers to the app design formulated accurately according to the business platform, requirements, and mission. However, native app designs are built using the existing designs for different platforms or operating systems. These designs are not exact duplicates of other app designs but only use the standards and guidelines set by operating systems.

Native app designs are less costly compared to custom app designs as the designers have a set of guidelines or standards available at hand to create them. In custom designs, designers must create the concept from scratch, which adds to the total expenses.

Expert Workforce

Qualified personnel are also required to design the app and handle the project’s tasks. How many people you need to hire depends on the design’s complexity.

The team must include app designers and project managers. Add their expenses based on hourly wages, or as agreed mutually for the full time frame, they have been hired. Keep in mind that complicated apps will need you to hire a large number of roles for the accomplishment of the projects.

Type Of Team

The overall costs of the app design also depend on the type of team you choose for the project. You have four team options: an in-house team, a local design agency, an outsourcing company, and freelancers. Let’s see how the cost of app designs is influenced by each type of team.

In-house Team

In-house teams include the required professionals who are hired to work within your business space. Such teams follow your business standards, requirements, and goals more precisely and pay more attention to your projects. For their pros, in-house app designing teams cost a bit higher, around $36,000/hr.

Local Design Agency

You can also reach out to local app design agencies to hire a team of experts and specialists. The team will stay connected to you throughout the project. The costs are usually charged according to working hours. The average cost per hour of app design created by a US design agency is $48,000.

Outsourcing Agency

Numerous app design companies are available that provide outsourcing services worldwide. An app design built by a reputable outsourcing agency may cost approximately $12,000/hr.

Freelancers

Availing of freelancing services for app design creation is also a great and cost-effective approach. However, you must be extra careful when choosing an app designer freelancer, as not all freelancers are efficient and experienced. Also, remember that you may have to exchange one or multiple revisions when working with freelancers. Their hourly working rates begin from $6000.

Location Of Design Partners

The location of the team also impacts the pricing of app design. So, when deciding on the design partners, always consider the location where they offer services at reasonable rates.

The US and Canada are expensive locations costing around $100 to 200/hr. You can look for reliable Europe and UK agencies if you want an affordable option ranging from $40 to $100/hr.

Final Verdict

An app design can be simple or complicated, outsourced or designed locally. Such aspects play a huge role in driving the app costs lower and higher. Speaking broadly, the average price for a simple, medium-complexity and high-complexity app design starts from $3000, 10,000, and 20,000, respectively.