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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!
Table of Contents
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:
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.
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:
4
Team members
4
Months
$120K
Total cost
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:
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.
So, let’s dive in!
Onboarding
For our cost breakdown, we first estimated the number of work days required to build the features in each epic and the total cost involved.
Just note that we gave a range of work days for the UI estimation – that’s because the time to build a specific feature differs for each platform, while all 3 (iOS, Android, and web app) use the same back-end.
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.
To start, here’s how much Threads’ onboarding features cost:
Feature
UI estimation
Back-end
Account registration
1-3
5
Create a profile
1-2
5
Follow other profiles
3-5
2
How it works
3-5
0
Total work days
8-15
12
Total cost: $21,120
And here’s what they look like:
Threads feed
Here’s how much the feed for an app like Threads costs to build:
Feature
UI estimation
Back-end
Create a new thread
5-8
10
Reply to a thread
3-5
5
Repost/quote thread
3-5
5
Thread detail
1-3
2
Total work days
12-21
22
Total cost: $32,120
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:
Feature
UI estimation
Back-end
Followers and following
5-8
3
Edit profile
2-5
3
Privacy settings
5-8
3
Total work days
12-21
9
Total cost: $26,400
And here’s what they look like:
Settings
Here’s how much features in the settings will cost:
Feature
UI estimation
Back-end
Invite friends
1-2
3
Pause notifications
2-5
3
Set break reminder
1-2
2
Report a problem
3-5
3
Privacy policy
1-2
0
Total work days
8-16
11
Total cost: $20,680
And here’s what they look like:
Overall total cost
Finally, all that’s left is to add everything up:
Agile epic
Cost
Onboarding
$21,120
Threads feed
$32,120
Thread actions
$19,800
Profile
$26,400
Settings
$20,680
Total cost
$120,120
Overall total cost: $120,120
Want an app like Threads?
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We can help you build it from scratch, from validating your idea all the way to post-launch maintenance and support.
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