How Long Does it Take to Develop an App?
Apps are expensive and time-consuming projects. Generally speaking, you can expect the development process to take between 3 and 9 months.
Which side of that estimate you’re on will depend on a few things.
Cross or Native
If you want to develop an app for iOS and Android, you’ll face the choice between cross and native. For a more specific rundown of the two options, check out our native vs cross-platform article.
But in terms of time specifically, cross-platform apps will take half as much time to develop as you’re developing one app for two platforms instead of one for each. And while your development team may need to put more time into maintaining and testing a cross-platform app, the overall time taken will still generally be less than native.
Features
The complexity and number of features you want for your app will also affect development time:
User Login: 20-48 hrs
Profile creation: 15 – 20 hrs
Offline mode: 40-80 hrs
Search: 13 – 18 hrs
Chat & Messaging: 118 -165 hrs
Push notifications: 20 – 32 hrs
Geolocation: 32-50 hrs
Multi-language support: 15-20 hrs
User management: 20 – 37 hours
Video/Audio streaming: 72 – 140 hrs
Google Maps integration: 20-40 hrs
Data encryption: 16 – 24 hours
Sensors usage: 16-20 hrs each
You should also note that with cross-platform development, native features will take even longer to code or may be locked off entirely.
App developers
And last but not least, the development team itself will affect development time. The key factors here are their expertise and experience in developing apps, their experience in coding in native or cross languages, their development process, and how easy it is to communicate with them.
We can’t speak for all app developers here. But generally speaking, the more experienced and communicative a team is, the easier and faster the process will be.
At the end of the day…
With all these moving parts, there’s no single answer. While you can calculate until the sun comes up, you’ll always get the most accurate estimates by speaking with the developers yourself.
And if you want to speak to us, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
