Development Cost in 2025

When you visit a developers’ website, like ours — the BuildApps team — you usually don’t see even approximate project pricing. Do you know why? Because without sufficient information about the product, it’s almost impossible to form an estimate.

• Yes, some service providers publish typical price lists, indicating a range from $500 to $300,000+, but this doesn’t always reflect reality.

Today, we’ll explain how a development budget is formed, which factors influence the final cost, and why it’s always worth having an additional financial cushion or depreciation reserve.

The first and most important factor is the scale of the digital solution: the number of its features and screens, the complexity of navigation, and so on — all of these directly affect the development cost. For example, a one-page website or an app with a single function can cost around $5,000. Why is that?

Let’s take a look behind the scenes, because what seems simple actually includes:

• Front-end and back-end components, which not only need to be connected, but also configured according to the client’s business needs.
• Design, even if it’s fairly basic.
• A feature that usually involves external systems, APIs, and third-party modules.

Accordingly, every additional feature, screen, or function adds to the development cost.

There are cases when clients already have their own design drafts and show how the app is supposed to work. This significantly simplifies the development process — and its cost — since the team spends less time and resources building the system.

If the design is absent, then creating it alone will cost around $1000 – $2000; further costs will be influenced by:

• The complexity and type of animation, including the app’s reactions to user actions, screen transitions, etc.
• Visual styling — the artistic component that also plays a role in shaping the UX and in achieving the business’s goals.
• The number of screens, especially if their interfaces differ significantly from one another.

Why is it expensive? Because a significant amount of time and effort goes into creating not just attractive visuals, but an intuitive, effective, and logical interface. And believe us — the design will also determine whether the business achieves its goals and whether it can effectively monetize the app.

Creating a prototype to test user application use cases may also be included in the price if its implementation is assigned to the development team. This is not a mandatory but an important cost item if you want to verify the user flow and ensure that the future product meets the needs of the target audience, and that its usage guarantees certain benefits for the client, such as ad views, VIP purchases, etc.

The chosen frameworks, back-end and front-end elements also affect the development cost. The reasons are obvious:

• the complexity of building digital solutions depends on the technologies used;
• the time required to create the application, optimize it, and test it;
• integrating all components and ensuring seamless operation of integrations.

However, there are nuances. For example, the development of a cross-platform solution may have different estimates. In particular, if separate frameworks are used for web, Android, and iOS, the product price will be higher. As for the cost of technologies themselves — sometimes cheaper ones may be more difficult to maintain, and therefore more expensive in the long run.

What is meant by this? If you use a conditional Xamarin, which is already somewhat outdated, the initial costs will be lower. However, already at the scaling stage, investments will increase, particularly for integration with more modern services and technologies. Over time, these problems will escalate, and you will have to spend more, for example, on application maintenance or even on its migration to more modern frameworks such as Flutter or React Native.

When someone tells you that AI integration happens like magic — don’t believe it. Even adding APIs and prompts for fast user interaction with it is painstaking and very complex work. Its price is appropriate, though not always.

For example:

• A project with a single screen and an AI feature may cost $7000 with design included. This includes: model selection, API configuration, prompt optimization for specific tasks, testing of interaction scenarios, and ensuring stable performance. Even in projects that seem simple at first glance, it is the AI functionality that requires the most expertise and time. And verifying and ensuring correct responses from the AI always takes a lot of time and effort to configure.
• A complex product with an achievement system, advanced interface, analytics, and data aggregation may already rise to $14,000+.

The more complex the operations embedded in the system, and the more accurate and relevant the expected results — the more expensive the development becomes.

The less time is given for the development of the application, the higher its cost will be. This is because several specialists will be involved in parallel to speed up the work process. By the way, the project costs will also depend on the qualification of the performers. For example, if the task requires exclusively Senior-level skills, their services will be more expensive than those of Junior and Middle specialists.

If you’ve already ordered development, you might have encountered promises of one price and an actual estimate with a higher cost. This is usually explained by the client changing the task during the process, which causes unforeseen expenses the client has to cover. Sometimes that’s true — and sometimes, the client is simply paying for thin air.

At BuildApps, we often fix the budget even before the start of development — provided that we have a complete set of requirements. This allows the client to plan expenses from the very beginning and avoid unpleasant surprises during the process. If we see that we can complete the task within a clear amount — we take responsibility for it.

One of the last factors on the list, but not in importance, is the cooperation model. Yes, the conditional Time & Materials model is more beneficial for the client, as they only pay for the work done, but for this, there must be trust between the client and the contractor.

Speaking more broadly about reducing development costs, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concept is more relevant now than ever. That is, the core functionality is developed for approximately $3,000–$7,000, after which profits from the product are redirected toward its improvement.

So, if we summarize everything said above, we come to several conclusions:

• It is impossible to even approximately calculate the estimate without understanding the project and its design.
• The implementation timelines can significantly increase the cost of development, especially when they are too tight and more personnel need to be involved in the project.
• The level of specialists, if the tasks require having a Senior in the team.
• The price of a project is ALWAYS personalized depending on the client’s preferences, business goals, and needs — therefore, “typical ranges” are almost always irrelevant.

So invest in digital solutions wisely. Contact BuildApps managers for preliminary consultations, product drafts, and their implementation!