How Much Are Contracted iPhone Developers Earning? $100-200 Per Hour

By
On November 30, 2008

moneymoney.png Last week, Raven Zachary wrote Turning Ideas into iPhone Applications, a post about the “significant gap between individuals with ideas and those who are actually capable of turning the ideas into iPhone applications.”

Zachary notes that the supply of iPhone developers is significantly lower than the demand – primarily because the iPhone is still a “hot” and new platform – and that the going rate amongst developers he knows is at least $125 an hour – with several booked out for months at a time at $200 an hour. It’s anecdotal evidence but hardly surprising. In the comments, however, a couple of responders claim that they charge $50-$55 an hour but are very keen to find higher paying clients. Despite this, it’s natural that any developers who can command a higher rate in the near future will do so because of the current excitement around the iPhone.

My advice is twofold:

You want an app developed. If you want an application developed and $100 is too rich for your blood, work hard to find cheap and reliable developers (there are some around, but they won’t be the “top guys”) or wait six months when the most lucrative work will be starting to dry up..

You’re a developer? If you’re a developer right now, consider putting your rates up if you fall underneath this band.

0 responses to “How Much Are Contracted iPhone Developers Earning? $100-200 Per Hour”

  1. Aleh says:

    I charge $15 per hour now and going to move to $20-30 per hour in December. Although my consulting company is registered in the US, I am technically not in the US at the moment, so probably should not be counted in your stats 🙂

    I do not think I have skills below average. With 3 real iPhone projects made for my clients (one is on AppStore now) I am pretty confident I could be charging $50 or so as other guys around.

    Aleh

  2. Steven Arnold says:

    Aleh, I think $15 per hour is WAY below market in the United States. That’s the rate for being a waiter at a decent restaurant. If you’re even moderately skilled and charge that much, I’ll hire you right now. 🙂

    I think an iPhone programmer with moderate skills, meaning you can handle the basics, like nav bars, tab bars, tables, pickers, and the like, should charge $75ish per hour, probably less than $100. The more thoroughly versed you are on the various technologies, such as the touch API, networking, audio/video, etc, the more you’re worth. Also, the faster you are able to crank out a quality product, the more you are worth. I do think a high-end iPhone programmer can reasonably charge $150-$200 per hour in the current market.

  3. German Bejarano says:

    Hi Steve, I don’t know what kind of iPhone Developer you’re looking for, but I could charge you $50 per hour.
    I live in Argentina, so if you can read this and that’s not a problem for you, feel free to drop me an email at german [dot] bejarano [at] gmail [dot] com.

    Thank you,

    – German

  4. Mike Litoris says:

    I charge .99 cents per hour and I do all my code in ascii.

  5. Sumeru Chatterjee says:

    well…i am working on my first iphone application since one month and one point that everyone seems to miss is CODE REUSE!!!!….making generic classes for your application that perfect,efficient and free of memory leaks can save you a lot of time and get u a lot of $$$…..for example the Asynchronous Image View class that I have written which inherits UIView has a in-memory cache(with a singleton in-memory cache class),a disk cache(with a singleton disk-cache class) and can also download the image from the internet if required…..I can sell this class as at least 30 hours of work to all my future clients…..it is so cool!!!…..

  6. Ajoy says:

    Hi,
    We charge $30 per hour

  7. Man says:

    I also need a programmer. I have little money and would only be able to pay about 1-2 dollars an hour. Or I could split profits w/ whoever. Contact me at [email protected]