Tech giants across the globe are utilizing React Native for building mobile apps and scaling the user experience. And while this framework gives you solid reasons to utilize it for mobile app development, React Native cost is definitely a prominent one. According to the product development teams worldwide, it is a game-changing framework in terms of cost efficiency and hot reloading. And if you’re an app founder who just landed here, this post covers all the information you need about the smartest business move of estimating the cost first step of their journey, then analyzing the factors that add to the cost and optimizing it for even relatively lower budgets.
As a React Native app development company, we have seen why app founders appreciate how their dedicated development teams can write and maintain a single codebase to build apps for both of the leading operating systems – iOS and Android simultaneously. So as an app founder, our clients basically can save costs on three fronts: separate development, maintenance and subscription costs because of shorter launching timelines.
React Native gives product teams, investors and app-based businesses opportunities to:
utilize shared components and libraries
accelerate development timelines
minimize overhead expenses
To further solidify the positive attributes of React Native going popular, here is a list of organizations that were early adopters of this framework, and have since then utilized it to scale: Meta, Amazon, Wix, Shopify and Microsoft have used React Native.
Facebook
Skype
Messenger
Shopify
Microsoft Teams
Pinterest
Tesla
Duolingo
WordPress
Puma
PlayStation
Game Pass
Table Of Contents
React Native App Development Cost Estimates
As a starting point, the React Native developer hourly rate is between $40 and $65. Here are the ballpark figures for React Native app development price breakdown.
Basic react native applications start from $3500 and typically fall between $4000 to $10000. These apps have around 2 to 5 features.
Intermediate, multi-feature react native app development costs between $11000 and $30,000. Most mid-level applications, like ecommerce, real estate, food delivery and on-demand applications fall in tier.
Advanced React Native apps with integration of emerging tech features like AI and VR start from $31,000.
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After this quick rundown, keep reading to understand in detail what formulates the overall React Native cost.
Factors That Impact React Native App Development Cost
Here are the most important factors that impact the overall development costs.
Scope of the app – UI/UX design complexity, technology stack and platform, features
While this is a term widely used by business analysts, product strategists and project managers, this is the first factor and the most important one that adds to the overall React Native app development cost. In its simplest terms, scope of an app is everything your app does and will do and everything it will achieve that you have envisioned for your app at the moment. It includes its primary goals, users, the tasks your app will help users accomplish and the features it will offer.
UI/UX design is the visual representation of the scope. So the more complex the design is, more interactive elements and visuals in the app – the more development hours will be required and higher will be the cost.
A simple react native app with basic user interfaces, minimal micro-interactions and navigation will cost less than an app that has complex overall aesthetics:
Multiple user interfaces – for example, buyer and seller profiles
Multiple user flows – adding to more complex navigation
Custom art and illustrations
Animations, multimedia content like videos and audio
In the later stages, additional design iterations and revisions may also contribute to higher costs if they significantly add to the scope of work.
b) Technology Stack and Platform
The technology stack combines tools and technologies used for building a React Native app. Because React Native is a complete framework, libraries and development environments, and also it’s open-source, the cost stays low.
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However, with advanced features and APIs where developers have to integrate third-party services, you’ll have to allocate budget. Here, think map integrations, payment processing transaction fees, delivery status etc. All of these external services come with price tags.
In fact, integrating platform-specific features or third-party services may require additional development time and resources, translating into the cost additions.
c) Features
Features are the functionalities your app will offer. And they can be basic functionalities to advanced simulations or anything in between. That’s why, in a mobile app development cost calculator, you’ll always observe the cost going up as you add more features.
From a logical standpoint, more features will require UI/UX design and sometimes additional tools in the tech stack for incorporation.
Now there are two ways to look at this:
Some mobile app development companies in the USA and UAE will give you an upfront cost with features like social media integration, push notification, in-app purchases and user authentication inclusive
Other companies will give you a relative low react native cost as upfront, and would add to it with each feature.
In both of the cases, the overall cost remains almost equivalent – but any company will add app design cost, number of development hours required for features and additional APIs in the overall breakdown.
Now here are my two cents on optimizing the scope costs – and these come from a seasoned mobile product development strategist:
Ask your developers as many questions as you want during the discovery stage. This will make your scope comprehensive and your developers will factor in any and all features. With features added to the scope, you will get to work on the final app design cost as well as the entire technology stack the app will need.
With a comprehensive, and complete app scope, stay strictly on it and make sure your development team also follows it to the dot. Talk your development team earlier about how they handle changes in scope of work, and most importantly, how they classify a modification as ‘a change’ in scope.
Throughout development, only suggest modifications in design or features when you strongly feel its need – otherwise, follow the development roadmap and scope holistically to keep the costs under control.
Size and location of the react native app development team
Your hired developers’ location definitely impacts the overall react native development costs, and often times, it’s a complete team covering project management and testing.
Larger teams, from a logical perspective entail higher costs because more manpower requires more monitoring, strong project management and coordination efforts – considering it does optimize the development time.
Secondly, app development companies in the first world nations like USA, UK, Canada, and Australia charge more project-level costs as compared to Middle Eastern region, like Qatar and Kuwait. That’s why, a mobile app development company in USA that will typically charge USD 35,000 for an intermediate React Native app, while a mobile app development company in Dubai will charge relatively lower and the figure will most of the times stay under AED 58,000.
Some years back, let’s talk about 2016 or even 2018, you could feel a great difference in quality between the design and code of companies located in USA and UAE – but in 2024, Middle East is evolving faster as a tech hub, has become more competitive and more economical altogether.
Full-cycle development vs standalone services
Full-cycle react native app development services include all development execution steps from ideation to post-launch maintenance. As a quick rundown, here is what full-cycle coverage means:
Technical and business discovery including complete development roadmap and product monetization strategy
UI/UX design with style guides, style concept, visual elements and brand assets
Frontend and backend development, API integration, cloud migration and database setup
Testing and quality assurance including functional, integration, security, unit and device tests
Post-launch maintenance, user onboarding and app support
While this approach may seem costlier upfront, it often results in a more cohesive and efficient development process.
On the other hand, standalone services, such as hiring developers for specific phases (e.g., design or development only), can be cost-effective initially but may lead to challenges in integration and overall project management, potentially increasing costs in the long run.
App maintenance and marketing costs
Beyond development, app maintenance and marketing are ongoing costs that impact the overall budget of mobile app development.
While quality maintenance can prevent future issues and reduce long-term costs, it comes with a price tag of its own – often between 7 to 18% of the overall mobile app development budget.
In addition to maintenance, you need to acquire more users and retain the old ones, and for that you need strong promotion and solid marketing.
The marketing campaigns build brand awareness, attract users and drive ROI by directly impacting the monetization.
App marketing includes:
organic and paid social media marketing
App Store Optimization
SEO and Paid Google Ads through website and landing page
Know that most companies, like Trango Tech also does, offer FREE post-launch maintenance services for a standard time of 30 to 45 days as per the requirements of the app. After this period ends, you’ll have to hire a company for ongoing maintenance and development, especially if you plan to scale.
To save on app maintenance and marketing costs, hands down hire the same development company that completed the programming of your application. This means that if you had hired a full-cycle mobile app development company, they must offer maintenance services, and there are 85% chances they also offer efficient app marketing services.
To straightaway save on marketing and maintenance costs, add these factors in your initial scope and NDA so you can see your charges upfront.
How to Reduce React Native Costs as a Business Founder
Here are five practical ways to decrease the React Native cost for your app venture:
1. Consider building an MVP
An MVP is the Minimum Viable Product. In your case, it’s a mobile application that has essential features but complete functionality. With time, you can monetize your basic app, then scale it using the cashflows you generate from the app monetization. Gather user feedback, test the market waters and build on the experience you get as an app founder practically navigating the industry.
2. Hire experienced developers in the niche
Your app must have a target audience – for example students, patients, home buyers, or simple professionals looking for on-demand services. When you get an app idea, share it with a company that has dedicated niche development teams in ecommerce, real estate, healthcare etc. Niche development companies take lesser time in building the same app as compared to companies that are jack of all!
3. Hire smartly
There are several hiring arrangements for app development teams.
You can go in-house, but considering it’s the most expensive option because of recruitment benefits, wages and taxes, I would talk about other three:
Hire an offshore company from the Middle East. Work with a development team in Dubai, Qatar or maybe Kuwait. Their salaries are tax-free and so you can use this factor for solid cost negotiations.
Secondly, if you are not tight on deadlines and launch timelines, then consider hiring on subscription basis. Divide your development tenue into 12 months, then turn them into hours and ask the company to charge a monthly subscription. This works like a typical pay-as-you-go model and you can manage cashflow.
If you are from a technical background, or have an investor or cofounder that can act as technical lead and development manager, then pick and choose React Native developers on a staff augmentation model. Hand-pick talent based on technical expertise, niche experience, technology stack, budget and cultural fit, and complete the development KPIs.
4. Monitor development timelines
While some companies charge upfront, others work according to development hours. Though in both of these approaches, you will have to spend almost equivalent costs, but monitoring timelines means your app will not need excess development hours – hence no additional cost.
5. Build a cross-platform app
Native Android app development cost and iOS app development cost factor in two strong technology stacks. That’s why, crossplatform app development services typically offer 2 apps for the price of one. So with singular codebase, you get to develop and launch two applications for diverse target users. If you plan on building a web application in future, do it while building the mobile versions. This will significantly bring your overall app development budget under your planned figures.
Why Do App Founders and Investors Still Choose React Native Despite the Cost
According to Statista, an average 40% of developers used React Native as a crossplatform mobile framework. Despite the costs associated with the use of this framework, there are five solid reasons why React Native remains a favorite in the mobile app development business community.
1. Cross-Platform Compatibility
At Trango Tech, my product and development team utilize React native to build mobile applications that deliver a similar, near-native experience across Android as well as iOS and in fact desktop and web applications. This helps us in writing a single codebase, that, with the approval of the app founder, we deploy on more than one operating system.
As an app founder and investor, this approach can save you time and money because it significantly reduces the development effort required to complete one app. In the short run, instead of maintaining two applications and their codes separately, businesses can spend more time in boosting the user experience. In the long run, because react native is inter-operable, businesses do even choose to scale with platform-specific features.
1. Faster Time-to-Market
The next reason we choose React Native for development is the faster development time and all thanks to its hot reloading feature, teams can see instant updates while they make changes to the code.
This rapid iteration speeds up our debugging and testing phase, and allows our product teams to deploy and launch apps faster.
For investors, a shorter time-to-market means they can get quicker returns, monetize and start reporting ROI for future updates and scaling. This also helps app businesses get a competitive advantage because they can respond swiftly to user demands as well as feedback. And with React Native, they can tap the scaling opportunities before their competitors do.
2. Native-Like Performance
To start off, React Native is now widely used as a crossplatform framework – but at its core, it helps build near-native experiences. That’s because it utilizes native components, design libraries and APIs. These apps deliver smooth animations, are faster to load and impressively responsive – for users of Android and as well as iOS users.
In the long run, the experience leads to higher engagement and lower bounce rate, the costs are already lower than native development and so founders can scale whenever they are ready. In addition, the native-like performance makes the app more marketable. That’s why React Native development presents near-ideal business case studies.
1. Modular and Reusable Components
During our sprint scrums and standoffs, developers often comment that React Native’s modular architecture promotes component-based development. If you are from a non-technical background, I can tell you that it means that React Native makes apps highly scalable and maintainable.
Developers can create reusable UI components and share than across different parts of the app and in between different device versions – lesser design and development effort means lesser development hours.
For app founders, this modular approach simplifies app updates and expansions. You can easily integrate new features or scale the app without compromising its stability.
For investors, scalability and maintainability translate to reduced development costs over time and a solid foundation for future growth and innovation.
2. Thriving Developer Community
From a business and growth point of view, React Native benefits from a large and active developer community. Facebook and other open-source contributors support this community and help with issue resolution across the world and across industries.
With the cost saving benefits of using React Native, the app founders and their internal maintenance teams can get access to a number of resources, libraries and community-driven tools.
For app founders, this means easier recruitment of skilled developers and faster troubleshooting of issues – and both of these factors come in handy when you are scaling this app-based business.
While investors appreciate the stability and longevity of React Native as it continues to evolve and adapt to industry trends, a strong community helps with ongoing support and innovation and enhance the confidence in the sustainability of app-based businesses.
Final Thoughts
So this React Native app development cost guide for 2024 concludes here, but your smartest business move starts here. React Native is definitely a game-changing development framework in terms of cost efficiency. At Trango Tech, we have experienced firsthand how its crossplatform nature and code reusability save costs associated with development effort and time. If you’re already sold on building a mobile app, then React Native app development services will be your safest bet as an investor and founder.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the average React Native app developer hourly rate?
In USA, the average React Native app developer hourly rate is $45. In UAE, you can expect to pay anywhere between AED 95 to AED 110, which translates to $28 to $30. At Trango Tech, the hourly development rates for React Native fall between $38 and $42.
Which React Native app development services does Trango Tech offer?
At Trango Tech, we offer the following React Native app development services:
Mobile app UI/UX design
Native and crossplatform app development
React Native app consulting and monetization strategy
App migration, code review and app testing
App maintenance and marketing
How does cross platform app development save money?
Cross platform app development utilizes frameworks like React Native and Flutter. Both of these frameworks are ideal for crossplatform development, which means that developers write one, singular codebase, then deploy it on more than one platform, for example, Android, iOS, web and desktop.
How long does it take to build an app with React Native?
Basic React Native app development takes 3 months. Intermediate-level applications with 3 to 5 features take between 4 to 6 months and more advanced apps can take around 8 months.
Meet Ahsan, the wordsmith behind some of the most electrifying pieces on app development. Armed with a keyboard, a cup of coffee, and an insatiable curiosity, Ahsan has spent years exploring the wild and wonderful world of app development. Currently working at Trango Tech, an app development company, Ahsan brings his expertise to the forefront. So buckle up, grab a cup of coffee (or tea, we won't judge), and get ready to dive headfirst into the exciting and ever-changing world of app development with Ahsan as your guide.
