Higher

Quora: “Total cost for creating Tinder-like app for one platform would be about $5k – $10K.”

Charging $5-10$K for a Tinder-like application is how you go out of business. I’m speaking from experience here.

Back in 2014 I made my second run at freelancing. This time around I failed. I learned a lot about who I am and how not to run a business. Two of the primary reasons were charging too little for my work and not being a blazing fast coder.

I’m going to step out on a limb here and park a Tinder-like app — a service really — at around $100,000.00, not 10. Call me crazy, it’s fine. Let’s take a look at some estimates given by folks that have actually built some great software.

First up, Craig Hockenberry: “With such a short schedule, we worked some pretty long hours. Let’s be conservative and say it’s 10 hours per day for 6 days a week. That 60 hours for 9 weeks gives us 540 hours. With two developers, that’s pretty close to 1,100 hours. Our rate for clients is $150 per hour giving $165,000 just for new code. Remember also that we were reusing a bunch existing code: I’m going to lowball the value of that code at $35,000 giving a total development cost of $200,000.“

Emphasis is mine.

In the same Stack Overflow post we find Jonathan Wight weighing in on the cost for the Barack Obama App: “The Barack Obama app took 22 days to develop from first code to release. Three developers (although not all of them were full time). 10 people total. Figure 500-1000 man hours. Contracting rates are $100-150/hr. Figure $50,000-$150,000. Compare your app to Obama.app and scale accordingly.”

Both of these guys are world class software engineers. I have no reason to doubt their estimates because they have the experience needed to build any application.

Here’s Kyle Richter of the excellent Martian Craft: “In February 2013, the average cost of a house in the US was $152,000. By our estimates inside of MartianCraft, the average cost of an app is approximately $120,000.“

If you want a high quality application be prepared to pay for it. Sure, you might be able to get your Tinder-like experience for $5-10K, but it may behave and scale like a $5-10K application and service.

Know what you want and what you’re getting into before you talk to developers about building your dream application or service.