Question for the gurus, A client of mine has asked how much it would cost to design a tinder style app for both IOS and Android, I of coarse explained that this was way out of my skills set and that i would ask my code gurus. I did explain that it wouldn't be cheap and that it would involve a separate server running some kind of database and lots of money just promoting the app, probably spending more on PR than the cost of the app, this didn't flinch him, so some around quotes from you guys would be helpful and i will pass this on to him. cheers Guys

Hello There is an inherent problem with requests like this. They expect everything to gain and very little to invest. Instead of a broad wannabe request like "I must have Tinder like app", much better for a discussion would be to have a complete project or at least some kind of a blueprint and then we could better state the price. For instance, let us say that you have 15 screens in the entire app and that all of them require access to the server. My price for a vanilla version of one such screen would be $300 for Android, $300 for iOS, and $300 for the server side code. So, we are speaking here, at the very start, about cost of 13-15000 USD and please note that I said "vanilla", not the best protocols, not optimized code, no nothing special, just enough code for the app to do what it is supposed to do. Also note that there needs to be a back end kind of site, for administrative purposes. The development of that would add almost as half of the costs above, since many different people, with different needs would use it: administrators for the site, administrators for users (problems, disputes...). So, once again, a mater of scale. That price does not include design of any kind, I would expect icons, images etc. to be handed to me beforehand. So, to finish such an app in any reasonable amount of time, I would also have to hire someone else to help me... which would also raise the price, maybe not considerably, but it would sure do. If you read about Tinder, it was started by no less than seven people, so scratch the idea of one man band to create it on its own from the very start. What I want to say is that programming itself in case like this would be a smaller part of the enterprise. Several people would have to take part, in concert, from the very start... and so on. If we are talking about a startup here, then the programmers, designers, administrators etc. would have to become employees, and the startup company would have to be financed for at least a year or two. I mean, in 2015 you do not start a new Facebook single-handedly.