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