What is a budgeting app?
A budgeting application is a web, mobile, or desktop application that allows users to create budgets and track expenses. Most applications for this type of app include reminders with alerts that are sent when users reach certain spending thresholds.
Budgeting apps are similar to other household management apps, such as home inventory apps and home improvement apps. Mint.com is one of the most popular budgeting applications on the market today.
Examples of budgeting apps built with Crowdbotics:
- A budgeting app built for families with household staff that allows them to create and issue digital debit cards for each member of their staff, send money for supplies, set spending limits, and track transactions.
- A neobank app for teenagers based in Indonesia that that allows parents to assign chores and review their child’s account and allows child users to see the chores they’ve been assigned and mark them as “complete”, set savings goals and budget their money, and manually enter purchases to track.
- An app that provides a subscription service, just like Triple A, but for things like haircuts. In this app, customer will pay $15 monthly fee and will be able to redeem 1 service per quarter (90 days) for free through the app. The app will pay for that service under their subscription.
What is the typical cost to build a budgeting app?
A budgeting app usually costs about $37,500 to build. However, the total cost can be as low as $25,000 or as high as $50,000. A budgeting app with a low number of features (also known as a minimum viable product, or MVP) will be more affordable than an app that includes all intended functionality.
For example, here are some previous budgeting app price quotes from Crowdbotics:
How long does it take to build a budgeting app?
A budgeting app usually takes 356 hours to build. However, a budgeting app can be built in as few as 133 hours, or in as many as 800 hours. The exact timeline mostly depends on how complicated your specific app is. As a general rule, it will take longer if you require highly custom designs, niche features, complex logic, or non-standard release platforms.
For example, some previous budgeting apps build with Crowdbotics received the following hourly estimates:
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Crowdbotics has quoted and built hundreds of applications for teams of all sizes. Browse our historical estimates by industry and app type to understand possible costs and considerations.
How to successfully grow your budgeting application
A budgeting app can grow through referrals by appealing to users with shared financial goals. For example, if two people have the goal of saving up enough money to take a vacation, they might both sign up for a budgeting app that specifically helps them save money for their trip. Like other apps in the finance category, budgeting apps can also increase customer loyalty by providing in-app education about how to better manage personal finances.
Risks and challenges of building a budgeting application
A budgeting app faces risk related to the mishandling of personal financial information and the violation of banking laws. It is recommended that budgeting apps store sensitive financial data in a secure manner, and it is advisable to seek legal counsel to determine whether your application is subject to standard banking regulation. You will likely need to build logic within your app to ensure that it meets capitalization standards regardless of user behavior, and it is often recommended to leverage secure third-party payment processing APIs for transferring money.
