The average cost of developing an app in the UK is about £300,000, give or take. For context, I'm assuming you're a UK funded startup, scaleup or mature organisation outsourcing to a mid-sized app development agency.
This might seem high, but often sources don't quote the entire journey needed to take a successful app to market. In my experience, that looks like this:
1. Proof of Concept: £5K-£50K - Create a small prototype to prove you're idea will work.
2. Minimal Viable Product: £50K-£200K - Launch a high quality app with just enough features to give your customers some real value.
3. Optimisation: £50K-£100K - Optimise your MVP to improve the user experience, conversion rates and revenue.
The proof of concept is a sketch, prototype or some other artefact that helps you reduce risk in some way. For example, if you're not sure the tech will work, you could test that with a small sample app. Or if you need to check customers will buy your product, you could get some customer feedback from a survey or focus group.
After the low-cost proof of concept, companies often develop a minimal version of their app ideas for under £200K. The goal is to get a first version out there to start delivering value to customers and potentially generating revenue.
Moving up from £200k to £500K will get you a validated app launched to customers and optimised, possibly with extra features. Some complex apps can cost £500K, £800K or more.
The following diagram may help you understand this. Download the PDF here which contains a detailed breakdown of the phases to help you understand your app development costs better .
This data is based on ten years of knowledge in the app development industry, working with our own UK clients and talking to other app development agencies.
Don't overlook ongoing development and investment. If you look at the market leading business apps, you'll notice that they receive weekly or monthly updates where new feature are developed and conversion rates are optimised to bring more revenue. They have annual budgets to constantly improve their apps and the business results they bring.
In my experience, UK organisations will often invest in running a mobile development team with an agile budget ranging from £20,000 a month to £200,000 a month, depending the amount of work that needs doing and how fast it needs doing. This budget pays for consultancy, app designers, developers, back-end systems, security and quality control. It may also cover costs for user research to validate new ideas or gather feedback on work already done.
You may find cheaper or more expensive ways to take your app to market, and also make decisions that fit your own situation, not forgetting that development speed is a factor.
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