How Much Does It Cost To Design App? (Detailed Price Review 2020)

6 min readMay 22, 2020

Have you ever wonder how much does an app design cost? If yes, here’s some more food for thought.

Let’s dive into what app design price is, explore the process of designing an app and define the details cost to design a mobile app like Uber or Instagram!

According to Statistics, the number of available apps in the Google Play Store was most recently placed at 2.87 million apps.

While App Store ranks the second place with almost 1.8 million apps for iOS.

Moreover, in many market research, a mobile app can be on top if it focuses on UI/UX design.

Additionally, investing in UX can save up to 50% of wasted development time and decrease the chances that your application will not resonate with target users.

In fact, great user interface design and user experience are some of the most important aspects of a successful mobile app.

Each mobile app design principle can get more traffic, more user conversion, and increase ROI.

The better design, the more users engage with your app. For instance, it may include a clear structure, beautiful designs, a neat display of button as well as animated effects to encourage them to return to your product again and again.

So, how much does it cost to design an app? In detail, the cost of app design usually depends on the number of development stages.

However, design is not just about the appearance. It also about the way it works.

Firstly, let us consider the most common situation: the mobile app UI design process!

Process effecting on app design cost

Every mobile app has to make design guidelines clear steps by steps before launching.

As a result, it may be impossible to define the average app design cost without knowing all the aspects.

The basics app design process consists of the following: research, analysis, UI/UX that refers to design, development, testing, and branding.

Each software company will have a different process of designing services. Here are the 4 steps goes in AgileTech and mostly IT outsourcing company.

Create design documents

As a software outsourcing company, after given the requirements from customers, we will begin to write the list of design documents.

Product brief

It is usually essential if you spend a lot of time understanding every stage of the project such as product brief, target audience, competition, or market trends.

Without clarifying product brief, it is difficult to know how much does it cost to design a mobile app.

In addition, platforms like iOS and Android have different navigation, development tools and many other elements.

Android needs to be matched with many different formats. But Apple has everything standardized.

Define function

After the product brief has been conducted, the team will prepare a product backlog with detailed functionality.

All of these materials will be used further in designing a mobile application.

To emphasize, the app design cost depends on:

app complexity
hours required to research
planning with technical sectors
number of features
number of platforms

It takes time to design each screen appearance. Therefore, the more features an app has, the more working hours the designer has to spend.

As a result, the higher the cost of app design will be.

User flow

Then, by analyzing the latest mobile app design trends, we can create a workflow between these functions.

Exchange request and price

Once defining the design documents, you and your outsourcing partner will clarify requests and estimate the price of app design.

Design

Wireframe

During this stage, designers can layout the structure of a future application with more detailed up to the stage of an interactive prototype.

Creating a wireframe is a must-have step before prototyping. It helps clients have a clear view of how the app will look like.

In case there is something you don’t like, clients can suggest a change to the technology partner.

UI Prototype

Unlike wireframes, UI prototype shows a detailed form of the entire design process. It also describes how the final app looks.

If the project covers both iOS and Android, we usually start from the UI design of the iOS version. And afterward move to Android design.

When considering the cost to design a mobile app, each company or design team has its workflow for design creation.

The process is usually divided into User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design.

To clarify, below, we will give you steps to keep up with app design costs at AgileTech as a software outsourcing company.

App design costs by country

As we mentioned before, how much you charge your app UI design cost depends on the complexity of functionality.

However, even a professional UI/UX designers can’t tell you the cost of designing a mobile app at first glance.

Significantly, UI/UX design cost also depends on the country where your design partner is located.

The cost to design and develop an app based on the region that you choose to outsource.

Moreover, developers from different countries may vary greatly in price. Let’s see the detailed app design cost by region in the geographic areas below!

the cost of developing an app by country

The average design rates per hour by countries:

United States: $50 — $150/hour
Western Europe: $40–60/hour
Eastern Europe: $25 — $50/hour
Vietnam: $10–25$/hour

According to this infographic, to estimate the price, you can choose to outsource to another country, especially to Asia or Eastern Europe.

For example, the cost of top design services may be up to $150 per hour in the USA. Meanwhile, with the same standard app design service, a Vietnam-rooted software outsourcing company will cost only $10-$25 per hour. In this case, if you choose to outsource UI/UX design for building App like Uber, the mobile app UI design price with average time (200 hours) will be:

Min: $10 x 200 hours = $2,000
Max: $25 x 200 hours = $5,000

Designers in India or Vietnam charge $25 per hour, which is among the cheapest rate in the world. But the app design cost doesn’t mean the only stages. That why you should have more in-depth knowledge of the company that you are planning to get a contract with.

So, how to choose the right offshore software company?

Define your exact goals: roles description, quality expectations, scope, and deadlines.
Shortlist potential service providers: experience, location, flexibility, language, and cultural barriers.
Evaluate your prospects: background check, client reviews, work process, etc.

The list goes on. Let’s take a look at full article to know more!

What about Uber and Instagram app design cost?

https://agiletech.vn/how-much-does-it-cost-to-design-app-detailed-price-review-2020/

As a leading software development in Vietnam, we have huge experiences in many fields including e-commerce, car-sharing platform, health care, Livestream and many more.

You can contact us at contact@agiletech.vn or via (+84) 936 281 059 for more information.

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