8 ms·
Estimate the cost of a Web, iOS or Android app
- keedot 11y agoThis is great. I can finally send people here when they think getting a site up can be paid for with a case of beer.
- sealthedeal 11y agoIn most cases its two cases ;)
- colinbartlett 11y agoHey man I got a great app idea I am gonna let you in on. First, I need you to sign this NDA. I'll buy you lunch and tell you about. When this thing hits big, there could be a job in it for you. But for now, if you build the app I'll give you 5% of the company. When we sell this puppy, you're gonna be rich dude!!
- hluska 11y agoOh wait....you think that my advertising based business model is completely impossible and consider this the worst idea you have ever heard?? Well, you're clearly not very competent...:)
- x1024 11y agoDoesn't work. XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://d3h99m5mv5zvgz.cloudfront.net/api/v1/features/list https://d3h99m5mv5zvgz.cloudfront.net/api/v1/features/list. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'https://estimatemyapp.com' https://estimatemyapp.com' is therefore not allowed access.
- onion2k 11y agoI chose an iOS app with every option, and then added an Android app with every option. The price doubled. I guess that means Oozou will charge you twice for designing or coding assets that'll be reused between platforms.
- dynjo 11y agoYep, we are going to make some changes here to take this into account. Really just a first version to try the idea out :-)
- s73v3r 11y agoYou can't straight up share most things between platforms. You have to adjust layouts and resources into the sizes and formats dictated by the platforms.
- onion2k 11y agoI wasn't suggesting the price should be the same for developing both, just that it isn't double. You can share design assets, logic, algorithms, etc. For a complex app that stuff is actually what takes most of the time - but you only have to do it once regardless of how many platforms you end up deploying to.
- CSEngineer13 11y agoThis is a pretty solid resource for freelance devs to mid-sized digital agencies. It falls short for more complicated applications that require custom architecture, a consultation piece, etc. I think a lot of agencies/shops could benefit by creating a version of this that fits their pricing model based on previous projects -- Not as a hard estimate, but as a ballpark figure.
- dynjo 11y agoYep, we aimed for rough and simple. Really to give indicative ideas. Actually surprisingly hard for non-tech people to find this information.
- kriro 11y agoThe cynic in me sees this as a great tool to roughly estimate then send that price times 5 to those pesky "I have this great idea how much could you develop it for" requests from people who think ideas are a get rich quick scheme. :D
- FryHigh 11y agoThere are so many websites that do the same. http://www.kinvey.com/app-cost-estimator http://www.kinvey.com/app-cost-estimator https://www.otreva.com/calculator/ https://www.otreva.com/calculator/ http://howmuchtomakeanapp.com http://howmuchtomakeanapp.com
- dynjo 11y agoWe are the first to combine web and mobile I think. We are also going to make this a free tool for other agencies to use with their own features, figures etc
- avivlander 11y agohttp://perfectedtech.com/calculator/ http://perfectedtech.com/calculator/
- andreasley 11y agoThat certainly looks like it was inspired by mine: https://www.andreasley.ch/en/costcalculator/ https://www.andreasley.ch/en/costcalculator/ I take that as a compliment. :)
- nzealand 11y agoOtreva fails to display the Select Features button at 1280x800 resolution.
- joshcanhelp 11y agoNot to detract from the tool but ... $56/hour default? That's low for any competent development, let alone iOS.
- dynjo 11y agoOur primary dev team is in Bangkok.
- BillinghamJ 11y agoThat's arguably low in the valley. Everywhere else, it's on the high side.
- empthought 11y agoIt's low (too low) everywhere in the US.
- porlw 11y agoI'm in South Africa, and I'd say realistic rates would be about double.
- hackerboos 11y agoThey're billing as a company or freelancers. As an employee it's high.
- yoklov 11y agoJust out of idle curiosity, what's a more reasonable rate?
- joshcanhelp 11y agoAt least $100, in my mind. Good point from others RE: other countries ... sorry for being so US-centric.
- marpalmin 11y agoWell is not. In fact if you are based in a country other than the US you can arrive to those costs with competent developers. I think we are very competent, you can check us out in www.decemberlabs.com
- duiker101 11y agoHoly sh... I have to say, I am very bad at making estimates. I don't work freelance but it happened that I had to make some projects for people. I tried to estimate the cost of some applications that I made/make in my spare time and the average is way way way higher than I would have ever charged anyone... I need to reconsider my prices... Which is amazing to be honest, making prices I really hard for me and a tool like this can be an amazing opportunity to find my value. Thanks
- dynjo 11y agobtw you can actually plug in your own rates at the bottom. We are also going to make this a free tool for other agencies to use with their own feature lists, branding etc
- krschultz 11y agoDo you think the results from this tool are HIGH? I went through a couple different apps I know and thought the estimate provided by the page needed to be multiplied by 3-5. The default rates are $56 an hour. For Android/iOS developers, I know a dozen people making $100-200 an hour. It's a great tool (and note you can actually adjust your price at the bottom), but I would consider all of the quotes around time & rate as the low end.
- marpalmin 11y agoAs I mentioned earlier, it really depends on the country you are in. Outside US $100 - 200 per hours is ver high, even in most EU countries.
- sokoloff 11y agoduiker's comments were more along the lines of how he's been underquoting. Extremely common among early (or occasional) SWE freelancers IME, myself included. IME, you can get to a point where you tally everything up and it comes to $65K, and then you start thinking, well this would be a fun side gig, and I have some free time I otherwise waste, and I sure could buy something cool with even $25K (after tax), and some of my estimates might be a little on the fat side, and this is a buddy (or isn't well funded, or both), and coding is fun enough that I sometimes do it for free anyhow, so I'll bid $45K. And you've not accounted for the inevitable yak shaves, scope creep items, etc, but you got the work for $30K less than you should/could have.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dynjo 11y agoI guess we should change to Person Days :-)
- egeozcan 11y agoI'm not a native speaker but I always thought the word "man" is also used as a short way to say "human". > the human individual as representing the species, without reference to sex; the human race; humankind [0] [0]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/man http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/man
- ylg 11y agoYou're correct. It's just that our field is not in a good state with gender equality at moment, so some consideration beyond the literal meanings found in dictionaries is often worth the tiny effort. See: "to add insult to injury."
- 11y ago
- amichal 11y agoLove the concept not sure the math works out: Maxed out iOS app shows: 35 person-days UI/UX + 162 person-days dev = $88,650 $88,650 / (35 person-days + 162 person-days) / 8 hr/day = $56.25/hr per person average cost. Assuming the labor estimate is correct, if anyone knows of iOS developers skilled enough to pull that off for 56.25/hr fully-loaded labor costs I'd like to meet them. (e.g. who is coordinating the work and working with the client on evolving specs/feedback)
- dynjo 11y agoWe are based in Bangkok :-)
- amichal 11y agoI understand and I know it's just an estimating tool but are you saying I can hire your team to deliver a gold-plated does everything iOS app with geolocation, health and sensor inputs, a top-notice design, etc including the detailed functional requirements (we all know what clients think is a complete specification), tested and delivered in the app store for 1,576hrs of billable work at $56/h total cost to me including any overhead you may have (like your market street sf office)?
- nathan_f77 11y agoSounds very reasonable to me. $56/h is above the market rate for Thailand, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc.
- djb_hackernews 11y agoI think the point was you get what you pay for. $56/hr is probably above market rate in those locations for straight up development work, not the fully loaded costs of a project that size which will need to include requirements gathering, design, UX, testing, integration, etc outside of straight up development work.
- dynjo 11y ago
- nso95 11y agoWhy the hell don't the buttons work on mobile safari?
- marpalmin 11y agoWe have a similar concept, with a far less fancy estimator. http://www.decemberlabs.com/appEstimator.html http://www.decemberlabs.com/appEstimator.html I think these estimators are good at helping non savvy potential customers tu understand the actual costs of making an app.
- omouse 11y agoThis is clever but it definitely needs to be backed by real data and adjusted in the future. This would be a great use case for all the data that's been collected for research into programmer productivity!
- jheriko 11y agoreally doesn't fit my style of apps at all. but i can see how this might be useful for cookie cutter style work...
- ylg 11y agoThis seems to me to be estimating the cost to get from a fixed spec to "works on my machine (or simulator)" rather than the total cost to go from an idea to shipped product with non-technical stakeholders (whom your estimator is targeting), a diverse product team, changing understanding of the target, i.e., all the bits that investors struggle to understand seem to be omitted or minimized. I've found in many years of building apps for clients, the easy part is forecasting simple programming costs. The hard part is helping folks understand time spent keying in code is only a small part of shipping successful software--and one of the more predictable ones. So, the cynic in me reacts with: "great, another over-simplification that instills more of those unreal expectations that so often cause failure." Minor points worth reiterating from others: * The rates are off for areas other than yours (how about making rates/regions an option?). And, I'd make it much clearer that the viewer is likely looking at offshore outsourcing pricing as that is a very, shall we say, unique approach to new product development. * "Man" hours is a small, visual irritant due to the problematic gender relations and inequities in our field at the moment.
- dynjo 11y agoYou can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details" Man hours will be changed to something much more gender non-specific once traffic calms a bit, good spot. We have many female developers and none pointed it out! :-)
- amichal 11y ago> You can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details" Didn't see that and it helps. Still i think the parent comment is important. If what you selling is just UI design and coding hours then you are not selling a completed app. Working with the client to go from a napkin sketch or idea to a shipped product involves a lot more work. Perhaps you could update the footnote at the bottom of the page about hosting costs etc to also mention the costs of requirements gathering and shipping. Nearly all of my past clients assume these costs are marginal at most if they think of them at all. Some of the more naive ones have assumed that ongoing support and training was somehow magicly included for free.
- evook 11y agoIs there any advantage over an excel sheet?
- brandonmenc 11y agoThey must be trying to undercut everyone else, because those prices are way too low. I wonder how many times they go over these budgets themselves.
- CodeSheikh 11y agoI hope none of my future clients come to me with a reference to this app for cost estimation. This estimation is vague and garbage. Good effort though.
- buro9 11y agoWould love to see examples of their work, showing how that translates into the options in the estimation tool. i.e. What is their definition of "polished"?
- dynjo 11y agohttps://slimwiki.com https://slimwiki.com
- sarciszewski 11y agoSo, if we go off the market rates for a business consultant skilled at developing a web application ($1k to $2k per day per consultant), and plug in the numbers here: 35 Man Days UX/UI Design -> probably $35k to $70k 178 Man Days Development -> $178k to $356k The total cost is: $208k to $416k The calculator's estimate: $95,850 So the actual cost is going to be anywhere from 2x to 5x higher than what this projects.
- dynjo 11y agoWe are based in Bangkok. btw you can plug your own rates in at the bottom "Show Details"
- hcbogdan 11y agoSite with Access-Control-Allow-Origin header error: XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://d3h99m5mv5zvgz.cloudfront.net/api/v1/features/list https://d3h99m5mv5zvgz.cloudfront.net/api/v1/features/list. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'https://estimatemyapp.com' https://estimatemyapp.com' is therefore not allowed access.
- tonyjstark 11y agosame for me, Mac OS 10.10.3 with FirefoxDeveloperEdition, but also with Safari
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- quakenou 11y agoMost sites do it already: http://www.compesis.com/ http://www.compesis.com/
- fullwedgewhale 11y agoSo having done cost estimation before, this is horrible. About all it would be good for is the initial swag at brochure ware. Generally speaking cost estimates should never be a fixed point and should be done in a range, with assumptions (that when violated) would allow the cost numbers to change. In addition, there's no measurement of complexity through requirements. Basically all these estimators are useful for only the simplest software projects with extremely limited requirements and scope. The cost of the software is a function of the known requirements which are carefully enumerated during costing to generate some sort of complexity model. (For example, function point analysis). That's fed into a cost model that translates that complexity model into a dollar range. That interval is then used to generate a final, contractual, number. But notice all the work that went into that estimate. What's more is that the estimate is refined during the work such that new data is incorporated into the complexity model, allowing changes in scope or requirements to be re-priced.
- dynjo 11y agoTo be clear, this does not replace an official estimate (we also do not like fixed estimates and prefer agile pricing). What it does give though is ballpark ideas for people with no information at all. Oozou is a 6 year old agency, we understand the problem deeply but wanted to give people something to get started without full blown proposals, RFP's etc
- numbsafari 11y agoA ballpark estimate should be given within a range. If you aren't communicating the probability of it either being less or more expensive, then you are setting a false expectation.
- fullwedgewhale 11y agoI view it as dangerous because it spits out a definitive answer without clear explanation of the model used to generate the estimate. If you look at other cost estimation tools (even closed source tools) will explain the model and assumptions used to generate the estimate. You can then make the determination if the model and assumptions apply to you. It also doesn't indicate the kind of application (which is probably a largely stand-alone application). You can't stop some clients from going on to these sites and looking up a cost and not understanding what goes into an estimate. What would be even worse, in my mind, is to have other developers use a tool like this to generate a cost and then fail because they grossly underestimate complexity.
- AznHisoka 11y agoYep, it costs $38,000 to make a Google. Except you won't have the search algorithm, machine learning algorithms, and Hadoop stuff. But at least you'll just have a nice polished UI, with integration with Facebook, Twitter and Google+!
- slamus 11y agoI'm against this website.
- kemiller 11y agoI don't buy that Android is less than iOS for development, unless it's reflecting some shared work.
- avivlander 11y agoI think it really depends on the project.
- CameronBanga 11y agoSecond this. Done over 140 mobile apps, and never found Android projects to fall below iOS with time cost.
- oliwarner 11y agoThere are some outrageous time estimates in this. 7 days to create an auth system with the big 3 social integrations? 6 days for private messaging? 2 days to dump a prefab social sharing blob in your template?! I'd do all of that in a morning. I'd just be careful if you're considering using this to quote your jobs. If somebody working for me quoted these sorts of numbers, I'd fire them on the spot. I wouldn't even give them a second chance. It would clearly demonstrate you didn't know what you were talking about.
- s73v3r 11y agoThen go right ahead and do it. And when you're behind, because you keep underestimating difficulty, and the client is tired of your excuses, one of us will swoop in and show them how a real developer works.
- ommunist 11y agook. How much will you charge for such a morning?
- danenania 11y agoYou could do it all in a morning if you didn't do any of the following: - Create and implement a high fidelity design. - Include the project-specific requirements that every feature has... the auth system needs to work via ajax, connect with a legacy db, and include animated transitions. Private messaging needs responsive design and realtime updates. Etc. etc. etc. - Deal with scope creep, clarifications of the specs, and hours of related discussions. - Write automated tests. - Do live QA. - Fix inevitable bugs, browser and device inconsistencies, ux problems, etc. etc. etc. - System administration and deployment. - Load testing, caching, performance tuning. If a client tried to tell me I should be able to do all this in a morning, I'd fire THEM on the spot.
- oliwarner 11y agoYou're not reading what I said. The design is accounted for elsewhere in the calculations (that's actually a bit closer to the mark) and that includes many of the things you're talking about above. My "morning", is literally plugging django-social-auth, a custom User Model, a private messaging Model and few views to make it all work. I'll grant you that testing might eat up the afternoon, but these are all solved problems that ship in libraries, many of which include their own tests. Perhaps the people downvoting need to change how they build stuff.
- ommunist 11y agoCuriously the page does not work on iPad in built-in HN browser. Anyway, its priceless since will give exact answer to most of those wanting "my own branded messenger, and I only have €500 for this".
- CameronBanga 11y agoBiggest issue I have is that for anyone who uses this calculator, they will always see their app as "small" when it's really medium or large. Non-technical project stake holders will never grasp the depth of what they want built. Second big issue is that there really isn't a good way in this calculator to estimate/account for proper testing and subsequently, time spent when a client changes their mind on a feature and wants to redesign/re-work.
- skazka16 11y agoI wonder if they could add a "weight" to each feature and then automatically determine the application size summarizing all the weights.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- berns 11y agoLets see... web app... small... click here... click there... one more click... $ 14.000 I don't know what I've been doing the last 25 years but now I know that I need the next 7 years to be a millionaire. Thank you!
- dynjo 11y agoBy popular request, 'man days' has now been banished from the site :-) In our defence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-hour
- j45 11y agoWhat I like about this is it introduces the concepts that can impact mobile app development to a crowd that has no way to know where one feature ends and another starts. If it's meant to be a conversation starter, I bet it might for non-experts.