How Much Does It Cost to Make an App like Snapchat?
If you’re searching for the cost of building an app like Snapchat, chances are, you already know what Snapchat is all about. In simple terms, Snapchat is a mobile app for iOS and Android users that allows you to send pictures, videos, and text messages, which are only available to the receiver for a short period of time. It also supports in-app calling and several other features. The fact that it is constantly updating to improve the user experience contributes to its increasing popularity. As of Q3 2020, there are 249 million daily active Snapchat users worldwide.
It all started with a bunch of college kids who had this idea of a messenger app with disappearing photos and texts that everybody disapproved of. A couple of years down the road, Facebook offered to buy this app for $3 billion but got turned down by Evan Speigel, the CEO of Snapchat.
If Snapchat can make it this far, it makes one wonder if they can do the same by making a similar app, bringing us back to the million-dollar question: “How much does it cost to build an app like Snapchat?” Well, it costs approximately $45,000 to $70,000 to make an app like Snapchat, depending on the complexity of features and functionality within the app.
Cost of Core Features and Functionality of Snapchat
Let’s breakdown the cost of building an app like Snapchat step by step by delineating the features of the app and the number of hours it takes to develop each feature.
Registration & Log in
Unlike most apps, Snapchat does not provide an option to log in or register using another social media account. The basic idea behind this was to improve user privacy and avoid having to add parents, relatives and distant acquaintances. Snapchat asks for an individual’s name, birth-date, contact number, and a nickname/username to register. Once users have filled in the information, they receive a code on their phone number to complete the registration process. Users can then log in using their username and password.
Time & Cost: It takes about 70 to 80 hours or about a week to develop this functionality and costs around $3,000 for each platform.
Disappearing Snaps & Messages
To make communication more fun, Snapchat created a feature called ‘snaps.’ These snaps comprise either photos or videos where you can add text, filters, effects, and drawings. The user has the liberty to set the time limit anywhere from 1 second to 10 seconds on the visibility of their snaps. You can send these snaps privately to an individual or add them to your Story, where everyone in your friend-list can view them for 24 hours.
Snapchat also allows users to send text messages that disappear instantly or after 24 hours. It gives the users the liberty to save the text messages and audio notes in the chat if they wish to.
Time & Cost: It will take around 200 to 500 hours or 1 to 6 months to develop these features depending on the advancement and complexity of each feature for two platforms, i.e., iOS and Android, and cost about $9,000 to $10,000.
Audio & Video Calls
Snapchat didn’t limit its features to snaps and messages but also included in-app audio and video calling features that ultimately put it against the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. Snapchat uses technology from a real-time communication provider, AddLive, to provide the video call feature.
Time & Cost: It takes about 200 to 300 hours or two months to develop this option and costs anywhere between $12,000 to $14,000 depending on the platform you’re developing it for. Android costs a bit more than iOS because it needs to be tested against many devices.
Lens
One of the most exciting features of Snapchat is the “lens” that enables the users to alter pictures, videos, and voice by adding real-time effects. Snapchat adopted this feature by acquiring Looksery, a startup that developed the facial modification feature.
It will take a lot of resources and capital to build a similar technology; however, there’s a cost-effective alternative that you can use to add this feature to your app. Mirror Reality SDK allows iOS and Android apps to integrate a facial recognition feature that enables real-time video face-swapping.
Time & Cost: It takes about 100 to 150 hours or a month to implement this solution and costs around $8,000 for each of the iOS and Android platforms.
Geofilters
Geofilters decorate snaps by pasting a custom graphical overlay based on the location of the user. The location can be a city, an event, or a restaurant/cinema. This feature uses the technology of geotagging, which converts the geographical coordinates into the description of a location. It lets Snapchat users share their location along with a picture or a video with their friends.
Time & Cost: The development of this feature about 30 to 40 hours or three weeks and costs about $4K per platform.
Snap Map:
SnapMap is a location-sharing feature, but it is different from geofilters. It allows the users to make their current location visible to their friends or specific people in their friend-list. Developers typically use Google Location SDK and Apple MapKit for the implementation of this feature.
Time & Cost: Implementing the feature of location sharing in your app is fairly simple and doesn’t require a lot of time. It costs about $2K to $4K for both platforms.
Stories & Discover:
Stories is a functionality that allows users to broadcast their photos and videos to their friends. Adding a picture or a video allows your friends to view it for 24 hours. There is an option of keeping your Story limited to your friends and an option that allows anyone who searches your username to view your Story.
This feature has now expanded to ‘Live Stories’, which enables all Snapchat users, who are at the same event location such as music festivals, to contribute snaps to the same Story.
Discover functionality enables sponsored short-form content from major publishers, such as BuzzFeed, CNN, and others, to be visible to all Snapchat users in the form of stories. These stories are updated every 24 hours.
Time & Cost: It takes about 100 to 200 hours or about one to two months to develop this functionality. It can cost anywhere between $4,000 and $8,000.
Adding Friends
Snapchat stepped up and made it easier to add people on Snapchat by providing other smart channels besides adding via usernames and contact numbers.
Snapcodes
Snapchat provides every user with a unique personalized QR code. Another user can add you instantly by scanning it using Snapchat’s camera. This feature uses recognition algorithms.
Time & Cost: These algorithms take roughly 100 to 200 hours or a month and costs around $8,000 to $10,000.
Add Nearby function
This feature allows you to add other users in your proximity who have opened the Add Nearby screen. This functionality uses your location to send the device’s coordinates to the server, and the server compares the geolocations of devices that have Add Nearby open.
Time & Cost: It takes about 40 to 50 hours or a week to implement this feature, and it costs about $3,000 for each platform.
Conclusion
To sum up, with all the features and functionality discussed above, Snapchat seems to be an advanced and complex app with innumerable features. It will take about a year or more to create a similar app. The cost, however, depends on the number of features and complexity of functionality of the app you want to develop. An app like Snapchat with basic functionality will cost approximately $45,000 to $70,000 per platform. Nevertheless, if you find the whole process of cost-estimation confusing, get in touch with us to get a free quote.
