How much does an app like Threads cost? An in-depth cost breakdown

Have you ever wondered how much a social media app like Threads costs to build?

Well, you don’t have to anymore.

In this article, we’ll give you a detailed breakdown of how much it costs to build a similar app and why you should build one.

Let’s dive in!

Why make an app like Threads?

So, you might ask the question – why make an app like Threads?

And the answer is simple – the market has opened up.

After Elon Musk’s controversial takeover in 2022, X (formerly Twitter) lost around a fifth of its daily users and this has opened the door for its competitors.

source: X

And Threads isn’t the only X competitor trying to get a slice of that pie – some of the other X alternatives are:

• Bluesky
• Mastodon
• Misskey

Still, Threads is the most successful out of the bunch, reaching a 100 million users in under a week after launch and with over 160 million users in April 2024.

Of course, the fact that it’s a part of Instagram played a huge role in these numbers because it had a ready-made audience and a very simple onboarding process.

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But, that’s not the only reason why Threads is a hit.

The simplicity of its user interface (UI) design and similarity to pre-takeover Twitter in functionality also played a large part in its success.

source: Meta

Of course, if you want to build a similar app, you won’t have the same advantages and backing from one of the biggest tech giants.

But, the success of Threads proves there’s market demand for microblogging social networks and that X/Twitter isn’t the only game in town anymore.

And that’s a pretty compelling reason to build an app like Threads.

How much does it cost to build an app like Threads?

Now, we’ll discuss the burning question – how much does an app like Threads cost to build?

Total cost and duration

Here’s what you’ll need to create the app:

Keep in mind that these numbers are just estimates for a minimum viable product (MVP), which would have only the core features.

Also, they don’t include other services like product design and product discovery, just MVP development.

But, why build an MVP? And what should your MVP development team look like?

There’s a simple reason – it’s a (relatively) low-cost way to validate your idea, get to a product-market fit, and have a product ready to present to investors to secure further funding.

As for your team, at a minimum it should include:

• 1 Android engineer
• 1 iOS engineer
• 1 web app front-end engineer 
• 1 back-end engineer

This is because you need native apps for both Android and iOS as well as a web app.

And all 3 need a back-end, which is the most important and expensive part of the app and takes the most time and effort to build.

The back-end handles the business logic and data processing for your app – or, in other words, it’s what powers your app and all of its features.

Now that we’ve covered what goes into the total cost, we’ll give you a detailed cost breakdown.

Detailed cost breakdown

Here’s how we approached this cost breakdown – we divided our estimation into Agile epics: 

• Onboarding
• Threads
• Thread actions
• Profile
• Settings

Then, we broke them down into individual features and estimated how many work days it would take to build these features.

But, keep in mind that we gave a range of days for the UI – that’s because some features take longer to build, depending on the platform.

These then form the basis for each sprint during development.

And there’s a good reason why we took this approach.

Agile development methodologies like Scrum are the gold standard in modern software product development and Agile teams work more efficiently and can iterate quickly.

This is especially useful for MVP development because this approach helps get your app to market quickly.

And that can mean the difference between success and failure if you’re targeting a competitive market like this one.

How we estimated the cost

To estimate how much Threads costs to build, we first estimated the number of work days required to build the features in each epic and the total cost involved.

Just a quick note: we gave a range of work days for the UI estimation because the time to build a specific feature differs for each platform (iOS, Android, and web app).

But, all 3 platforms use the same back-end so our estimation there is more specific.

Then, we took the average of each range and multiplied it by 3 to get the total cost of building the UI for all 3 platforms.

And finally, we added it up with our back-end estimation to get the total cost of each epic.

So, let’s dive in!

Onboarding

To start, here’s how much Threads’ onboarding features cost:

And here’s what they look like:

Threads feed

Here’s how much the feed for an app like Threads costs to build:

And here’s what it looks like:

Thread actions

Here’s how much the various thread actions cost:

Feature

UI estimation

Back-end

Report a thread

1-3

3

Change reply settings

1-2

2

Add to Instagram story

1-3

2

Post to Instagram feed

1-2

2

Share thread

3-5

3

Total work days

7-15

12

Total cost: $19,800

And here’s what they look like:

Profile

Here’s how much the user profile features will cost:

And here’s what they look like:

Settings

Here’s how much features in the settings will cost:

And here’s what they look like:

Overall total cost

Finally, all that’s left is to add everything up:

Want an app like Threads?

If you want to build an app like Threads, we’ve got you covered.

We can help you build it from scratch, from validating your idea all the way to post-launch maintenance and support.

So, feel free to get in touch with us and let’s make your idea a reality.