Guide

The app development process, and what each stage costs

Discovery, design, building, and testing and release, with project management running under all four. Upkeep starts once the app launches, and it’s the fifth. On a booking app that prices at $42,000 – $59,000, building takes 60% of the money, discovery and design take 22% ahead of it, and testing and management take the remaining 18%.

60%: Building: the app, the server, and the staff web page
22%: Discovery and design, before any production code
15–21 weeks: From kickoff to the app stores, for the same app

Written by

WhatWillMyAppCost

We build the estimator this site runs on, and we design and build custom mobile and web software for a living. Every figure below is the estimator’s own output, except the published vendor prices, which are read off each company’s own page and dated.

You want an app built, and somebody’s shown you a plan with a row of stages across the top. Discovery, design, development, QA. The names tell you the order. They don’t tell you what happens in each one, what it costs, or when it’s going to need something from you.

Below are the five stages in order, what happens in each one and what you’ll be asked for, what share of a $42,000 – $59,000 build each of the first four takes, and how those shares change when the app gets smaller or bigger. Every figure comes from running a booking app, and a smaller and a bigger version of it, through the estimator.

What are the stages of app development?

There are five: discovery, design, building, testing and release, and upkeep after launch. Lists online run anywhere from five stages to ten, and they’re cutting up the same work.

Discovery. Working out exactly what gets built: every step each person takes through the app, what it has to remember, and how it’ll be put together.
Design. Every screen drawn, the empty and error versions included, and signed off by you before anyone writes production code.
Building. The app on the phone, the server behind it, the web page your staff use, and the connections to software you already run.
Testing and release. Testing on real phones, submitting to the App Store and Google Play, and fixing whatever review sends back.
Upkeep. Keeping it running and up to date once people depend on it, which is a yearly cost separate from the build.

Project management sits under the first four. It’s the planning, coordination and demos that run from the first week to the last, and on this build it comes to 8% of the money.

How much of the budget does each stage take?

Building takes 60%. Design takes 14%, testing and release 10%, discovery 8% and project management 8%. That’s for a booking app where customers book, pay a deposit and get a reminder, staff run the day from a web page, and everything syncs with Google Calendar. It prices at $42,000 – $59,000.

Discovery & architecture, 8%: About $4,000. The steps a customer takes from opening the app to paying the deposit, the steps staff take to move a booking, what gets stored about each appointment, and how the calendar sync will work. Nothing you can tap yet.
Product & UI design, 14%: About $7,000. Every screen, and every state of every screen, drawn and approved.
Building, 60%: About $30,000, across four pieces of work: the customer app, the server, the staff web page and the calendar connection.
QA & release, 10%: About $5,000, for checking every screen on real phones and getting through review at both stores.
Project management, 8%: About $4,000, spread across every week of the project.

Of a $42,000 – $59,000 booking app, about $11,000 pays for the screens customers use. Everything else is planning, drawing, the server, the staff side, testing and running the project.

What happens in the discovery stage?

Somebody works out what’s being built, closely enough that it can be designed and priced without guessing. It’s 8% of this build, and it runs on your answers.

Who uses it, and how many different kinds of person. Here that’s customers and staff.
What each of them does, step by step, including the awkward cases. What happens when a customer cancels the night before?
What it connects to. Which Google account the bookings land in, and who owns it.

A written brief answers most of this before the first meeting.

What happens in the design stage?

Every screen gets drawn and you approve it before production code gets written. That includes the ones nobody pictures: the day with no bookings yet, the card that gets declined, the appointment that clashes with something already in the calendar. Design is 14% of this build.

A change here means redrawing a screen. Once it’s built, changing it means building that part again. If you already have finished designs, most of this stage is already paid for, and what design costs inside a build puts dollars on both cases.

What happens while the app is being built?

Four pieces of work make up the build, and you see them come together in demos. On the booking app, one tap can touch all four.

A customer books Thursday at 2 and pays the deposit: The booking screens on their phone, the booking and the payment stored on the server, a new entry in Google Calendar, and the appointment showing up on the staff web page.
Staff move it to Friday: The staff web page, the server, the calendar entry moved to match, and a notification on the customer’s phone.

Those four pieces come to about $11,000 for the customer app, $10,000 for the server, $7,000 for the staff web page and $2,000 for the calendar connection.

Your part during this stage is watching demos and answering the questions building raises.

What happens in testing and release?

Every screen gets checked on real phones, the empty and error states from design included, and the app goes through review at both stores. It’s 10% of this build.

It grows with everything else, because the more that’s built, the more there is to test. Every feature added brings its own testing with it.

Do the stages change when the app is bigger or smaller?

The order stays the same. Two shares move and the rest barely do. Discovery falls from 11% of a two-feature app to 8% of the booking app and 7% of a bigger version with nine features, and building grows by about as much as discovery gives up.

Sign-in and notifications, nothing else: 11–16 weeks. Discovery 11%, design 15%, building 57%.
The booking app: $42,000 – $59,000 over 15–21 weeks. Discovery 8%, design 14%, building 60%.
The booking app plus chat, search, reports and a third kind of user: 16–23 weeks. Discovery 7%, design 14%, building 61%.

Discovery shrinks because every project pays for the same base of planning before a single feature exists, and most features add none of their own.

The schedule grows more slowly than the price. The nine-feature version costs $16,000 more in the middle of its range and runs 16–23 weeks against 15–21 weeks, because bigger builds run bigger teams. A few weeks at the start and the end don’t shrink with team size, for reasons the iOS guide goes through.

What happens after the app launches?

Upkeep starts, and it’s priced by the year, separately from the build. Phones get updated, the services the app connects to change, and people ask for new things once they use it every day. What a year of it costs has a guide of its own.

If the whole build is more than you want to spend before you know customers will use it, a smaller first version goes through the same stages with less in each one.

Five stages, and the first four are where the build budget goes. A $42,000 – $59,000 booking app takes 15–21 weeks and splits 60% to building, 14% to design, 10% to testing and release, 8% to discovery and 8% to project management.

A bigger app puts a little less into discovery and a little more into building, and everything else holds close to the same share. Upkeep comes after, priced by the year.

FAQ

Questions about the app development process

What are the 7 stages of app development?

The estimator splits a build into seven lines of work, with project management running under them: discovery and architecture, product and UI design, application development, backend and data, integrations, the admin application, and QA and release. Put the four building lines together and you get four stages, and upkeep after launch makes five. On a $42,000 – $59,000 booking app, those four building lines come to 60% of the money.

What are the 5 phases of the app development process?

Discovery, design, building, testing and release, and upkeep after launch, with project management running under the first four. On a $42,000 – $59,000 booking app those first four take 8%, 14%, 60% and 10% of the money, and management takes 8%.

How long does the app development process take?

A booking app with deposits, reminders, a staff web page and a Google Calendar connection runs 15–21 weeks from kickoff to the app stores. An app that only does sign-in and notifications runs 11–16 weeks, and a nine-feature one 16–23 weeks. How long it takes to build an app has where the weeks go.

Which stage of app development costs the most?

Building, at 60% of a $42,000 – $59,000 booking app. Inside it, the app on the phone is about $11,000 and the server about $10,000. Design comes next at 14%.

Do I need to be involved in the app development process?

Yes, at set points. Discovery runs on your answers about who uses the app and what they do. Design needs your approval on the screens before production code starts. During the build you watch demos and answer the questions it raises. A slow answer at any of those points moves the launch date.

Is project management a separate stage of app development?

No. It runs from the first week to the last: planning, coordination, demos, and keeping the scope and the schedule honest. It’s 8% of a $42,000 – $59,000 booking app’s budget, and it grows the longer a project runs.

Can you skip a stage of app development?

You can shorten one with work you’ve already done. Finished designs cut most of the design stage, and testing drops a little with it, because testing is priced as a share of everything built, design included. What design costs inside a build has what’s left. A written brief doesn’t make discovery cheaper. It narrows the range around the price.