How Much Does it Cost to Hire an App Developer?

Nowadays, many people conduct their business online, especially with the popularity of smartphones and tablets (these devices account for more than 50% of all internet traffic).

Not just Google or Amazon, though. Every business, including coffee shops and corner stores, has a mobile app. And these companies want to show their appreciation for your patronage by giving you a ton of perks and discounts. When making your business vision a reality, a skilled or committed app developer is crucial.

Are you trying to estimate the cost of hiring app developers in 2023? We have you covered! You can learn everything you need to know from this blog article in about a minute. We did the research for you, so you don’t have to waste time browsing other websites.

If you are looking for a top mobile app development company to assist with your mobile app development, choose us! Our devoted mobile app developers, designers, and specialists are available for hire, whether you need remote app developers or a dedicated development team to supplement your personnel. Let’s discuss what you’re looking for and how to reduce the costs of hiring an app developer before we get started.

It takes a lot of work to build an app from scratch; you must first create or select a design, research the best programming language for your purposes, and then start coding! But there are other aspects of app development as well. It would be excellent if you additionally considered whether you wanted to outsource the app development project or hire mobile application programmers and developers for your project.

App Developer Cost Per Hour Depending on the Region & key things

To estimate the cost of hiring a mobile app developer, look for one that is qualified and has previous experience working on projects in your sector. The anticipated output is one of the most important elements in figuring out how much it will cost to hire an app developer.

Here are a few of the most important components.

1. Location

The hourly rate for hiring a mobile app developer is different around the world, but the location is one of the most important things to think about. The cost of living, the quality of life, and the rate of employment or use of the labor force all have a big effect on where you live. For example, if we compare the hourly rates for app developers in the United States and Ukraine, we can see that skilled coders in the United States might cost up to seven times more than those in Ukraine.

The Cost to Hire App Developers in various countries

2. Project Complexity

This time frame depends on the idea, design, integrations, features, and functions of the project. Your app’s needs may also change the ways and stages of development.

3. App Developer Cost by Level

To figure out how much it will cost to hire a developer, you need to think about how skilled they are. Controlling what the developer does and how well they do it is very important. This process will help get rid of any options that didn’t work out in the end.

Cost of Different Hiring Options with their Pros and Cons

You have three choices when it comes to hiring developers for startups: you can do it yourself, use a staff augmentation service, or work with a recruiting firm.

Hiring a Freelancer by Yourself

When you consider the cost, hiring freelancers could seem like the best choice. They are among the more affordable choices, with hourly fees for freelancers ranging from $15 (for developers from China or India) to $120. (in the US). Anyone can find someone in the middle to fit their budget with this vast variety.

You should be concerned about the entire cost of hiring a mobile app developer as well as the hourly fee because doing it yourself will inevitably result in recruitment and hiring issues. The National Association of Colleges and Employers estimates that the cost of the typical hiring process can reach $4,129. Therefore, you must consider that when hiring a developer because the cost is not just determined by the hourly fee.

Therefore, focusing only on cheaper developer hourly rates and trying to save money won’t get you very far.

Pros

Most of the time, it’s easier to find and less expensive to hire a freelancer.

• People think that freelancers are experts in their fields, so they can work on their own without help.
• Since most freelancers have to rely on reviews and feedback from clients to find their next job.
• To meet their client’s needs, they have to work hard. You can hire skilled developers from all over the world through freelancing.
• When one person is in charge of a project, all decisions are made quickly and instinctively.

Cons

• The only way to evaluate developers on freelancing websites is to look at the projects they have published because there is no screening process in place.
• Even if a freelancer has the right qualifications and certifications, that doesn’t mean they are good at everything else.
• It can be hard to explain your ideas to someone from a different culture or background. Different countries have different ways of doing business, so bringing someone new into your world might take some time.
• Because of the fragile nature of the relationship, even if you spend significant time with multiple freelancers at various phases of the project, a sense of connection is not created at both ends.

Hiring with a Recruiting Agency

By selecting this option, you will unquestionably save time and money because the recruiting firm will do all the legwork in selecting a select group of candidates from which you may select your coder. In this scenario, the average cost would be made up of paying an agency’s fees in addition to the hourly rate of the developer.

The agency’s lack of in-depth technical knowledge is a big drawback of this approach, which is not very advantageous for CEOs who are not technically savvy.

Also, Read | Why You Should Hire App Developers for Your Business

Pros

• Using a recruitment firm will help you fill open positions more quickly. In order to locate a few qualified prospects, you won’t need to spend time enticing candidates and sorting through a tonne of profiles and applications. All of that work will be done by a recruitment firm, but you will only receive a select group of the best candidates.
• Utilizing a recruitment firm will raise the caliber of applicants you receive for your open positions. Recruitment firms, as we’ve already established, have access to a sizable talent pool of pre-screened and pre-referenced applicants. It means that you will only employ candidates who have undergone thorough screening and evaluation.
• You can get specialized information that your own recruiters might not have by using a recruitment agency. An internal recruiter typically fills a variety of positions that a company needs.

Cons

• It might be rather expensive to use a recruitment agency. The fees charged by recruitment companies often range from 20 to 30 percent of the employee’s annual compensation. If you’re looking to hire someone for a position that is difficult to fill, the cost of using a recruiting firm may increase even further. Anytime you wish to make a hire through a recruitment agency, you will need to pay a certain charge.
• The cultural fit of the people they advise cannot be guaranteed by recruitment companies. The top applicants for a position or function can be found through recruitment firms. They are, however, significantly less effective at determining a cultural match.
• If you work with recruitment firms, you lose the chance to develop and own your company’s employer branding strategy. Every stage of the hiring process offers you the chance to build, display, and promote your reputation as a top employer.

Hiring with a Staff Augmentation Company

Similar to agencies, this approach may not appear to be very cost-effective, but by choosing an outstaffing firm, you select a trustworthy, high-quality partner who can assist you in finding developers for your business as well as with technical problems. What is the cost of hiring a programmer through an outsourcing firm? Of course, that relies on the price strategy.

However, the total price is typically made up of an hourly rate plus a markup. For that cost, you get an experienced developer without the headaches and delays of a hiring procedure, and the developer may be fired without incident once the project is complete.

Pros

• Hiring new employees for short-term projects can sometimes turn into long-term projects. Businesses can use staff augmentation to test potential team members as they fit into their working environment to see if there is enough work to justify hiring them on a permanent basis.
• When a project needs certain expertise that your current team lacks, a staff augmentation strengthens that team with highly-skilled professionals who merely step in to help temporarily and quickly depart once the project is launched.
• When companies hire new workers, existing employees may experience varied degrees of fear or threat, especially if the new hires have the same skill set as them. It can eliminate these possible fears from your current team members through staff augmentation.

Cons

• If increasing your capacity turns out to be a longer-term project than you anticipated, you may incur additional labor costs; after all, you’re paying highly skilled individuals to come in and supplement your existing team. However, as with everything else in life, this can be negotiated with the agency with which you are working.
• Any new employee has an impact on the resources available for management and the team’s operational procedures. Both full-time employees and temporary employees are subject to this.
• Only current employees will be aware of specific projects that may require prior expertise relevant to the task or customer they are working with. It will take some time for someone who is new to a project like that to get up to speed.

The Factors that Affect the Cost of Developing an App

Because many of the elements that determine app developer rates per hour have distinct effects, it might be challenging to comprehend them.

Also Read | Is it Easy to Hire a Mobile App Developer?

1. Skills and Qualifications:

The price per hour can vary greatly depending on a developer’s years of experience and certification level. For instance, because of the time required to study certain tools and applications that are relevant to mobile app development, UI development courses are typically more expensive than coding classes. Before making a choice, you should take into account these criteria if you’re seeking for someone who can handle every stage of the application procedure.

2. Experience:

Obviously, a mobile app developer with years of expertise (and good ratings!) will charge more per hour than a developer who has just finished their respective courses. Although past work performance has little to no bearing on the final product, it does have a major impact on salary expectations.

3. Technology:

The kind of tech stack you require may also affect the hourly rate. Because the IT industry is adaptable and agile, programmers may easily fill in-demand positions. However, hiring a developer with expertise in a rare technology typically comes at a higher cost.

4. Based on the operating system:

The cost of making a custom mobile app will depend on which platform you’re making it for—Android or iOS.

Android app development costs are different from iOS app development costs because they were made with different programming languages.

You can hire developers who know Java or Kotlin to make apps for Android. To make an iOS app, on the other hand, you need to know how to code in Swift or Objective C.

When it comes to price, Swift and Objective C developers and programmers charge about 15% more than Java developers and programmers. Second, device fragmentation is much more likely to happen with Android apps than with iOS apps.

Android works on a wide range of mobile devices with screens of different sizes. On the other hand, iOS only supports up to 20 different types of devices and OS versions.

5. Based on Application Security Cost

Security is the most important thing to think about when making a mCommerce app or a corporate app. So, when you think about how much it will cost to make a mobile app, you should also think about how secure it will be.

The best security methods may be suggested by mobile app developers based on the size of your app, who you want to use it, and how much interaction it needs from users.

The best way to protect user data would be to use multifactor authentication. Also, if your app stores sensitive information like passwords, you must use a strong cryptographic method. Costs would also include making sure the data is correct and making threat models.

6. Core Features

A big part of the cost comes from the features you add to the app. Here, we will look at some of the most important things that affect the price of making a mobile app.

Features and Functionalities

When making an app, you should first think about back-end infrastructure, third-party service integration, choosing a content management system, and different technologies. Depending on what you choose, these things can either raise or lower the cost of making a mobile app. Aside from that, if you add more features to your mobile app, the price will go through the roof. At the most basic level, most businesses would like to add the following features:

• User sign-in
• Chat or messaging
• Sign-up through social media or email
• Navigation
• In-app purchases
• Push notifications
• Portrait or landscape view
• Payment integration

To figure out how much it would cost to add the above features, you would also need to think about the platform and technology stack.

How to Get an App Developer for a Reasonable Price?

The matter of knowing how much app developers charge per hour is important not only to small companies with limited budgets but to medium-sized enterprises who want to make the most out of their investments. In this case, knowing solely the rates per hour may not be enough, that’s why we prepared for you this list of tips on how to hire most effectively.

Tip 1: First, carefully examine the market to determine the hourly rate for developing mobile apps.

You must understand how a potential employee’s desired wage relates to the industry standard for hourly pay when they disclose it during an interview. If you know how much a developer costs per hour, you can also figure out the project’s preliminary budget.

Tip 2. Figure out the best tech stack to figure out the hourly rate of a mobile app developer.

Since technical qualifications have a big effect on how much it costs to hire someone, it’s best to decide on them right away. Then you’ll know how much a certain tech stack costs and won’t pay too much for skills you don’t need. Select the platform where your app will run as well.

Tip 3: If you want to hire a mobile app developer for less money, think about sending the job overseas.

Offshoring is a great choice for people who want to save money but don’t want to lower the quality of their products. This is due to the wide disparity in expenses between nations. You’ll be able to hire a better programmer in the first place. You’ll be able to recruit a superior programmer in the beginning (the senior app developer cost per hour in Ukraine is the same as the middle in the US). Additionally, you might be able to use a coder on multiple projects. Overall, a great offer!

Tip 4. Use staff augmentation services

If you simply require a developer for a limited period of time to create an app, staff augmentation companies can be a viable option. Yes, an hourly rate can be a little higher, but when you take into account sick leave, vacation pay, and providing the right tools, the benefit is clear. In the long run, the average cost will be less if you do this. We hope that these tips helped you figure out how much it should cost to hire an app developer.

How to reduce the cost of hiring an app developer?

The cost of hiring an app developer can be a significant expense for any business. However, there are ways to reduce the cost of this type of hiring.

• Freelancer:- One way to reduce the cost is to use a freelancer. There are many platforms that offer freelancers for hire. This can be a great option if you are on a budget.
• Offshore development company:- Another way to reduce the cost is to use an offshore development company. Offshore development companies often have lower rates than domestic companies.

Finally, you can try to negotiate with the app developer you want to hire. Many developers are willing to negotiate their rates, especially if they are interested in your project.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How to reduce the cost of hiring an app developer?

Ans: To reduce the cost of hiring an app developer, you can consider using a freelance platform like Upwork, Fiverr, or PeoplePerHour. On these platforms, you will be able to find experienced app developers who can work for lower prices and with flexible terms. You can also use a development house who have experience in working on projects similar to yours, which could help reduce the cost of developing your app. Finally, you can take advantage of open-source software that is available online and customize it to suit your needs.

Q2. How Much Does it Cost to hire an App Developer in India?

Ans: The cost of app development in India depends on various factors such as the complexity of the project, your requirements, and the type of agency you hire. Generally speaking, app developers in India charge anywhere between $12–$80 USD per hour depending on their experience and the technologies they use. Moreover, hiring an experienced app developer through a reliable agency can help you save up to 40% of your budget.

Q3. How Much Does it Cost to Hire an App Developer in Europe?

Ans: The price may vary depending on where you live and the type of developer you want. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic all offer a lot of excellent choices. Taxes, fees, and other surcharges are often included in hourly salaries.

Q4. How much does it cost to pay an app developer?

Ans: You must choose the app type and its functionality before you begin app development. It will be a lot simpler to come up with the design and necessary features once you have that thought out.

Conclusion

In the year 2023, every firm needs a mobile app. How much it costs to hire an app developer has certainly crossed your thoughts at some time if you’re thinking about creating one.

We advise you to think about outsourcing if money is limited or you want to get the most out of every dollar you spend on development. Mobile app development is a fantastic choice for your company because it doesn’t necessitate a regular presence in the office. Additionally, utilizing a broader professional network guarantees that you’ll find app developers for hire swiftly and efficiently.

We hoped that our article about the average cost to hire an app developer would be useful to you. Now that you have all the knowledge, you are prepared to recruit developers. If you want the greatest mobile app available, get in touch with us or arrange a consultation if you have any questions.