How Much Does It Cost to Hire an App Developer?

We are living in the era of digitalization. Software solutions and especially mobile apps are deeply integrated into all spheres of our lives. The number of apps is continuously growing, as well as the number of their users.

There are apps for practically every task you can only imagine: from communicating with friends to tracking supply chain processes. While some apps are intended for individual users, others are developed for corporate use at various organizations and enterprises. The global mobile app market size was over $208 billion in 2022 and experts believe that this figure may reach the mark of $777.4 billion in 2032. According to some estimates, the market size in 2023 was around $228.98 billion.

Apple app store dominated the mobile application market in 2022, owing to different mobile applications that operate on the iOS operating system for gadgets such as iPhones, iPods and iPads.

With these market tendencies, it is obvious that the demand for app development services will be skyrocketing as well. Already today the industry standards for the quality and performance of apps are very high. It means that if you are going to launch your own app and need to hire developers, you should take into account not only a software developer hourly rate but also the skills and expertise of this specialist.

That’s why we’d like to tell you how to find the right balance between the cost of hiring an app developer and the quality of the provided services, experience, and knowledge. In this blog post, you will also find some practical tips that will help you to understand what factors influence app developer cost and how to analyze them correctly.

To begin with, we need to highlight that in this article, all calculations will be based on hourly rates of developers, not on their average salaries. It will be done for the convenience of understanding and for having the possibility to see a real app developer price without monthly bonuses, taxes, etc.

When we are talking about costs, it is always necessary to take into account the general context of your project and the specificity of tasks that an app developer will have, Even if somebody says that the average hourly rate of the developers at their company is $53, we can’t understand whether it is a fair cost of their services. We do not know what these specialists do, what skills are required for that, what tools they need to use, etc.

When you need to find an app developer, your main task is not just to hire a new person but to solve the software-related task. In other words, you are looking for skills (and, consequently, for people who have them). And these skills should be relevant for dealing with your tasks, such as the development of a mobile application, for example.

In general, the formula for calculating the app developers cost looks very simple:

Hourly rate of a developer * Development time (hours) = Development cost

As you see, everything is based on the well-known mathematics principle, nothing more. And here, you need to understand that sometimes hiring a developer with a higher rate may be cheaper for you than working with a specialist with a lower rate. How is it possible? The answer is quite obvious when you look at our formula.

The first developer may need less time for fulfilling a particular task. For example, if a developer with a rate of $55 needs 120 hours for building a feature, the total amount will be:

55 ($/h) * 120 (h) = $6600 ($)

But if we hire a programmer with a rate of $40 and for the same task it is required to spend 180 hours, we will have the following result:

40 ($/h) * 180 (h) = $7200 ($)

Let’s have a look at other important factors that will impact your investments in a mobile app development project.

For many businesses that hire app developer cost can be a determinative factor. And it is absolutely clear. When you allocate your budget for app development, you should be confident that your investments will pay off. Without any doubt, you should never sacrifice the quality of your software solution. Nevertheless, if you know the factors that can determine the final amount, you have the possibility to regulate them and optimize the cost.

The most important factors that we are going to consider in our blog post are the following ones:

And now we offer you to consider each of these factors in detail.

Every company that decides to find an app developer always has several options on how to establish cooperation with this specialist. You can either hire an in-house developer or work with external experts. And here you will need to choose whether you will cooperate with independent contractors (freelancers) or you want to work with a software development agency like UMIND that will be able to offer flexible terms of cooperation.

This option may seem to be the easiest one as it is the most common. In this case, the format of your cooperation with an app developer won’t seriously differ from the way of hiring a marketing specialist or sales representative.

If you already have an in-house development team and you are going to launch long-term projects, it will be a rather sensible idea to hire an in-house developer. But when you are calculating all the costs associated with hiring this employee, you need to take into account not only a developer hourly rate. There will also be a row of additional costs and expenses. As a rule, they are the following ones:

All countries have their own legislation and regulation, that’s why these extra costs may vary as they greatly depend on taxes. In many countries, mandatory taxes and fees can push an average hourly rate higher by 35%-40%. In other words, if a developer’s hourly rate is $40, with taxes you will need to pay $54-$56 per hour.

All additional costs that we’ve mentioned above can be split into two groups: mandatory and optional.

The first group unites all the fees that should be paid by law like payroll tax and benefits. These benefits will depend on the country that we are talking about. In accordance with the current legislation, in the United States, the following benefits should be covered:

In some countries, employers are also obliged to cover the following costs:

As for additional costs, they can include coverage of sports activities, foreign language lessons, professional training, etc. Though they are not obligatory, a lot of companies offer such bonuses to their employees in order to retain them and to create more comfortable conditions for them.

Looking at all costs that you will need to pay when you hire a full-time employee, you may decide that it will be significantly more expensive to expand your in-house team than to work with freelancers. In the majority of cases, it can be so but you should remember that freelancers also pay taxes and they also need to think about their equipment and other expenses. It means that they usually add such costs to their rates.

If you open any of the popular platforms where you can find individual contractors (freelancers) like Upwork or Fiverr, you will see that rates can be very different, even when developers indicate practically the same skills and experience. And here, it will be rather challenging to understand whether you can really save your costs and choose an app developer with lower rates or it will be too risky for your projects to cooperate with such a person.

It can be very comfortable to work with freelancers when you have short-term projects or you require their help for performing some separate tasks. You can hire such a specialist rather quickly and you can easily set a fixed price for the services based on the rates of the chosen developer for hire. But you shouldn’t forget about the pitfalls related to the fact that freelancers usually work on several projects simultaneously which may result in delays and lack of focus.

If you do not want to rely on individual contractors, you can work with a professional software development agency that can create a dedicated team for you or find an app developer based on the principles of outstaffing.

Though the rates are also calculated based on all the expenses that a vendor will bear, this model of hiring developers provides great flexibility which allows you to optimize development costs. You can easily scale your hired team up and down which will help you to regulate the expenses.

When you work with a reliable development team, you can always ask them to provide you with detailed project estimates. As a result, you will see each app developer price and will understand how the final amount is calculated. Moreover, in comparison with working with freelancers, in this case, you can be better protected from the risks related to delays and unfulfilled tasks.

This model of cooperation is a good one for projects of different types, and especially for long-term ones. The rates offered by agencies can be higher than the rates of freelancers. However, this option has a row of other benefits.

In general, it is impossible to provide any precise answer without analyzing your case. If we take for comparison only an app developer cost, we will see that, as a rule, in-house hiring will be the most expensive option while working with freelancers will require the lowest investments. Nevertheless, for making the right choice you need to think not only about the cost of hiring a developer but also about all the associated risks, as well as your type of project and ongoing business needs.

When somebody asks us: “How much does it cost to hire an app developer?”, we always need to get clarifications of the skills and experience that are required.

Traditionally, it is possible to define 5 levels of seniority in the software development industry: a trainee, a junior app developer, a mid-level app developer, a senior app developer, and an architect. And as you can understand, while trainee developers will have the closest rates, architects have the highest ones.

But to get the possibility to earn a higher salary, a developer should be able to demonstrate their skills and apply this knowledge in practice.

How do proficiency levels differ from each other?

• A trainee developer has no working experience, needs supervision, can cope with the easiest tasks, and usually have theoretical knowledge only in one programming language.
• A junior developer has up to 3 years of working experience, may still require control and supervision but can already solve more complex tasks.
• A mid-level developer can cope with all the assigned tasks significantly faster and can already independently develop parts of apps. Nevertheless, some minimal supervision may still be required. And after 3-5 years of work, such specialists usually already have excellent theoretical knowledge in a range of technologies.
• A senior developer can work fully independently and can fulfill even the most challenging tasks and cope with unpredictable situations. This specialist has deep specialized knowledge, up to 10 years of experience, and skills that will be strong enough to coordinate the workflow of the entire team.
• A software architect is the highest rank in this hierarchy. Such specialists can create the most complex systems that will be further implemented by their teams.

Though the difference between the rates is rather tangible, it doesn’t mean that you need to try to reduce costs by hiring developers with the lowest qualifications. If you hire only junior app developers, the chances of failure are rather high. We highly recommend you hire only those developers whose skills can satisfy the needs of your project.

Based on Ziprecruiter statistics the average developer salary in the US (without additional & hiring costs) is:

The importance of the chosen technologies can’t be underestimated when you are going to calculate the development cost. And namely, the tech stack is one of the core things that you should think about at the stage of planning. You can easily fire developers and hire new ones if something goes wrong. But it will be very expensive to change the technology after the beginning of the development process.

When you choose your tech stack, you should analyze the following aspects:

• Will it be possible to create the desired features with the chosen tools?
• What type of app are you going to build (native, web, hybrid, cross-platform)?
• Will it be possible to ensure the expected performance and scalability of your app?
• Will your future app be compatible with the devices of your target audience?
• Will it be easy to find specialists who can work with the chosen technologies?

If you are not sure that you can make the right choice, at UMIND, we can help you with defining the most appropriate tech stack based on your project needs.

As of 2023, the most popular programming languages are:

It’s already the 8th time in a row when JavaScript occupied the first line in this list. As for the trendiest technologies that have been actively gaining popularity over recent years, they are Go, Kotlin, and TypeScript.

But as for the app developer price, the situation is the opposite. If you have a look at the most expensive skills, you won’t see the most popular technologies there. Among the technologies that ensure the highest rates for developers, there are Zig, Erlang, and F# that are used quite rarely these days and also those technologies. But here, the rates may differ based on regions and the availability of experts in the local market.

Businesses often have a dilemma: to launch a cross-platform app or two native solutions for Android and iOS as an app developer cost is greatly influenced by your choice of the platform.

The development of Android apps presupposes knowledge of Android Studio ID, Android SDK, Kotlin, or Java. A software developer hourly rate can be around $28-$65 depending on the proficiency level and region.

For building iOS apps, developers should work with XcodeIDE, Swift, or Objective-C. Usually, the rates of such experts will be higher ($34-$79).

Cross-platform development can be a good idea if you need to optimize your costs. In this case, developers will need to know Flutter or React Native and write only one code instead of building two separate apps. The created apps will run on both Android and iOS platforms. The rates of programmers with this skill set are close to the rates of Android developers ($30-$74). Despite the financial feasibility of this method, you should also consider the limitations related to the performance and functionality of such apps in comparison to native solutions.

The rates are seriously affected by the economic, political, and social situations in different countries. And that’s the main explanation for why the rates of developers in India can be almost 10 times lower than in Canada.

Before we will have a look at the figures, let us remind you that the labor market is rather dynamic. It means that when you will make up your mind about the region of hiring, you will need to check the ongoing rates.

Traditionally Central and Eastern Europe are known as the most attractive spots for offshore outsourcing. Businesses from all over the world worked (and still continue working) with developers from Eastern Europe.

Developers from this region demonstrate:

• excellent tech skills
• high responsibility
• a good command of English

And all these benefits are combined with very reasonable rates.

There are a couple of factors that you should take into account (and here, we are talking not only about app developer hourly rate). They all are related to the organization of your work processes.

It should be comfortable for you to communicate with your development team. However, the majority of companies are very flexible and are ready to shift their work hours in order to have the possibility to communicate with you. At least at UMIND, we can do it.

You need to make sure that developers can easily understand your requirements and can express their thoughts. English is used as a universal language in the IT industry and you can indicate language skills among all other requirements that you will have for candidates.

You should always discuss in advance how your communication with developers will be organized (if you are planning to work with a software development agency). If you see that you have absolutely different approaches to collaboration, it’s better to look for another team.

As you can see, in the majority of cases, that’s not a question of regions, but of skills, approaches, and business models. When you need to hire an app developer cost is important. However, you also should consider other parameters and factors.

One of the greatest concerns of many businesses, when they work with freelancers or agencies, is the protection of their data. Actually, the same risks theoretically exist when you work with in-house developers. But in the case of in-house hiring, we are accustomed to believing that the signed NDA in combination with the responsibility that in-house employees typically feel will be enough to guarantee the security of our sensitive information.

When we work with external specialists, the risks seem to be higher. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t cooperate with contractors. Without any doubt, if this model is convenient for you, you should use it. Nevertheless, it will be sensible to apply some measures that will help you to increase the protection of your data.

1. Always sign a formal data protection agreement.
2. Conduct security training.
3. Provide access only to those tools, platforms, and data that are really required for fulfilling the set tasks.
4. Revoke access to databases and systems after the end of your cooperation.
5. If it is possible, you can set up a separate infrastructure for projects and files that contractors and freelancers will work with.

If the contract software engineer hourly rate and his or her skills fully meet you requirements, you shouldn’t reject this candidate only because you are not going to onboard him or her as your in-house employee. When you are cooperating with contractors, you need to implement additional measures to protect your data. But that’s not the reason to opt for in-house app developers only.

When you want to find an app developer or hire a development team, you may face a lot of difficult choices. But to facilitate all the related processes for you, let us share some practical recommendations that will help you to keep the costs within your budget and at the same time to be confident in the quality of the final results.

• Always set clear project requirements

You need to get a full understanding of the scope of work, the specificity of the tasks that you will have for developers, and, consequently, the skills that will be necessary for dealing with the assigned tasks.

• Conduct market research

You should analyze the market in order to understand the average hourly rates of developers and trends. Moreover, if you are going to hire in-house specialists, it will be useful to have a look at the terms and conditions that are offered today by employers. If you want to work with a software development agency, you need to find the most reliable partner.

• Consider different models of hiring

If you always used to hire only in-house developers, it doesn’t mean that you should act just the same way now. Based on the difference in app developers cost in different regions, you can also explore offshore opportunities and opt for flexible business models.

• Carefully analyze CVs and conduct interviews with candidates

It’s crucial to make sure that the right people will occupy the right positions. During interviews, you can also check the knowledge and skills of your developers by offering them to answer scenario-based questions and asking them to share their portfolios with you.

But even when you hire the best developers ever on the most feasible financial terms, you still have a lot of work to do for making sure that this cooperation will be highly productive and successful.

You need to build and further maintain effective communication and collaboration with your developers regardless of the hiring model that you have chosen. It is very important to make sure that all your app developers who work on the project are on the same page with you and that all the goals are clear enough.

There are various project management methodologies but they all include regular communication with developers for discussing the progress and further steps in the project realization.

It will also be very sensible to listen to the opinion of the developers and to build your interaction with them in the form of a dialogue.

We like a hub of top development gurus who are eager to assist you with building an amazing software product. You can hire just one app developer or a dedicated team. The process is very streamlined. Here’s an overview of how it typically works:

1. Requirement sharing:

Begin by defining your project requirements. Clearly outline the skills, technologies, and experience you’re seeking in the app developer. This detailed description will help us identify the right candidate for your project.

2. Initial contact:

Reach out to UMIND via this contact form and provide us with a concise overview of your project’s requirements

3. Candidate selection:

We will share the profiles of app developers who match your criteria. These profiles will include information about the developer’s experience, skills, and previous projects.

4. Interview and evaluation:

We set up an Interview with the potential app developer to assess technical skills, communication abilities, and fit for your project.

5. Agreement and NDA signing:

Once you’ve selected a suitable developer, we provide an agreement. This document will outline the terms of engagement, payment structure, work hours, and any other relevant details.

6. Onboarding:

The developer will be integrated into your team’s workflow, tools, and communication channels. UMIND will help with the setup to ensure a smooth transition.

7. Development and reporting:

The developer will work remotely, but you’ll have direct communication with them. They’ll provide regular progress updates and reports on their work.

8. Quality Assurance and support:

The developer will ensure the code they write is of high quality and thoroughly tested. They should also be available for discussions and adjustments as needed.

9. Project work completion:

Once the project is completed, the developer’s engagement can be scaled down or extended based on your needs. If there’s any additional work or maintenance required, you can discuss it with us.

10. Knowledge transfer (if necessary):

If you choose to discontinue the developer’s engagement, UMIND can facilitate a smooth transition by providing documentation and knowledge transfer to any new team members.

You pay only a flat rate for the developer you choose, no any extra costs or fees!

While app developer price remains to be one of the weightiest factors when you are choosing between different candidates, it shouldn’t be the only one. You always should clearly know your project’s goals and needs in order to determine what skills will be required for dealing with your tasks.

Only when you have a full understanding of the expertise and qualifications that you should look for, you get the highest chance to find an app developer who will be able to meet your requirements.

If your budget is limited, you can compare different hiring models. Do not forget that the hourly rate for software developers can be very different in different regions. Thanks to modern business processes, it won’t be a problem to hire offshore developers if this option provides an excellent price-quality ratio.

At UMIND, we are always ready to discuss with you all possible options and formats of our cooperation. Our app developers have rich expertise in building mobile software products for companies working in various industries. And we are sure that they will be able to bring real value to your projects.