How Much Does It Cost To Create A Delivery App Like Grubhub Or UberEats?

As you know, Grubhub and UberEats are two popular services that partners with restaurants and cafes in your area, providing food delivery services to eateries that do not offer it, as well as offering a single, centralized web ordering system for customers. If you are interested in building such an on-demand mobile delivery app, you have probably been interested in the cost of its development. So if you want to get an answer to the question: “How much does it cost to create a delivery app like Grubhub or UberEats?”, you are in the right place.

What Features Have to Contain (and What Are Optional) an Average Food Delivery App?

When it comes to the average on-demand food delivery app, it usually has four separate parts for different types of users – customers, restaurants, delivery service, and administrators. Let’s find out what features are typical for each of these parts.

• Customer profile (usually, it takes 700-900 hours of development):
  • authorization and authentication window (in an accelerated version – through API of social networks);
  • search for restaurants based on the current geolocation of the customer;
  • shopping cart and integration with payment gateways to enable online payments;
  • courier tracking;
  • rating system and reviews;
  • window for contacting support service.
• Profile for eateries (usually, it takes 700-900 hours of development):
  • registration and authorization;
  • administration panel for menu items;
  • sending push messages to customers;
  • the option to view ratings and reviews.
• Delivery service profile (usually, it takes 700-900 hours of development):
  • registration and authorization;
  • managing orders and their statuses;
• Administrator profile (usually, it takes 400-500 hours of development):
  • authorization;
  • eateries control panel;
  • payment control panel;
  • application settings panel;
  • designer of discounts and coupons;
  • window for contacting support service.

Above we have listed the basic set of functions for MVP – start, cost-efficient version of your on-demand food delivery app that could be built with the lowest possible budget.

However, you can optionally add some extra features for each of these parts to provide more competitiveness for your project. Now we are talking about the functionality that embodies the three trendiest IT concepts widely used in on-demand mobile delivery apps:

• artificial reality and virtual reality. These two concepts will help you to present menu items to customers in the most effective and informative way. However, remember that for implementing the second concept – virtual reality – you will need to provide a special accessory for your users – VR smart glasses. Obviously, this imposes some restrictions on the target audience of your mobile solution;
• artificial intelligence and big data. Artificial intelligence and big data technologies are often used to implement “smart search” based on the previous search history of a particular user. This approach for on-demand food delivery app development provides the highest degree of personalization for the user experience. By the way, artificial intelligence also serves as the basis for voice search integration, allowing customers to navigate the application and place orders hands-free;
• The Internet of Things concept is actively used in the implementation of delivery services. For example, it was IoT that formed the basis for the trend and cost-effective delivery model with drones.

Factors That Affect Development Costs of Grubhub-like Mobile App

The cost of developing a mobile delivery app like GrubHub or UberEats depends on the following factors:

• mobile platform. When it comes to developing a mobile delivery app, you have the opportunity to choose one or several mobile platforms at once: for example, iOS and Android. For each of them, you will have to look for a separate development team, as these will be two full-fledged applications. However, to save money, you can choose cross-platform or hybrid development – in this case, you can save up to 30-40% of the budget for two native applications;
• number and complexity of functions. The number of functions and the complexity of their implementation also affect the development cost of the food delivery app. Therefore, in some cases, at the start of your business, you will have to limit your project to only the most necessary features;
• the number of specialists in the contractor’s team and the speed of product launch to the market. The size of the development team also plays an important role in overall costs: a large mobile app development company is likely to have higher costs than freelance developers or a small company, but in the former case, the food delivery app will be completed much faster;
• the location of the developers. As you may know, software development companies from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia have higher rates than their Eastern European counterparts. For example, the average hourly rate for one specialist from a team of companies from the USA, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia ranges from $ 50-300, while a similar rate for a specialist of the same level from an Eastern European company starts at $ 30.

What Is the Starting Cost of an UberEats-like Mobile Application?

The cost of developing a GrubHub-like delivery app with a basic set of features for each part we mentioned above (excluding the admin panel, which usually costs $ 10,000-20,000) starts at $ 30,000 (assuming you choose contractors from Eastern Europe for this project). If you wish to expand its functionality in the future, the cost of the updated solution is likely to reach 50-60 thousand US dollars.

Thus, the cost of developing a mobile delivery app, which includes all four parts, starts from 100 thousand US dollars.

Conclusion

As you can see, the cost of developing a food delivery app like Grubhub and UberEats is highly dependent on the number of functions and the location of your contractor team. In addition, if you have a limited budget, you should also think about creating an MVP. This will speed up the process of launching the product on the market, reduce the risks of your monetary losses, and allow you to invest in the product in stages. Whichever approach you choose, we sincerely wish you the best of luck!