There is no single price for developing an app, because the figure is derived rather than quoted. It comes out of three calculations, and a supplier who gives you a number without walking through them is guessing.
1. How many people, for how long
A standard app build needs a product manager, a UI designer, an iOS engineer, an Android engineer and a back-end engineer. Some projects need more than one of a role; a complex one needs a dedicated tester and someone on operations. Start here: the team composition tells you the person-months, and the person-months are the cost.
2. What those people cost
A workable estimate for internet roles is around 20,000 RMB per person per month, all-in. Five people for three months is 300,000 RMB before anything else. That is not what you will be quoted, though, because the supplier is a business rather than a payroll pass-through.
3. What the supplier adds
On top of the calculated cost sits the supplier’s margin, and the margin is where quotes for identical scope diverge. This is why the useful exercise is not comparing headline prices but comparing what is inside them: which roles are included, how many rounds of revision, who owns the source code, and what happens when the scope moves.
One thing that changes the number a lot
If what you want to build already exists as a template product, the price comes down — the work has been done, and you are buying a configuration of it rather than a build. Most of the time it does not exist, and what is needed is custom development, which is priced on the three calculations above.
So ask for the calculation, not just the total. A supplier who can show you the team, the timeline and the assumptions behind the figure is telling you something that a cheaper quote cannot.
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