How Much Do Augmented Reality Projects Cost?
January 2, 2025
People are often confused why creating augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) content is expensive. To answer these questions, Live Animations’ CTO Egor Pavlenko breaks down two major AR projects with creative app ideas to look at the different factors that influenced their application development cost.
Updated July 6, 2022
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Big AR projects can be costly. As CTO of a studio that has been developing AR for five years, people are always shocked by AR’s price tag.
Augmented reality applications became more accessible almost a decade ago, but companies eager to include it in their marketing repertoire and app development projects are almost always misinformed of the real-time cost of AR solutions.
Hire an AR app development specialist while browsing our directory of the top virtual reality and augmented reality developers.
AR Can Be a Valuable Marketing Tool
AR blends the digital world with reality and has been used extensively to impress, excite, and build connections between brands and customers through mobile devices.
Since AR is still new compared to other marketing tools, businesses have been experimenting with different ways they could use AR to connect with real world customers.
AR is even being used in the healthcare sector.
The popularity of the Deadpool franchise (the first film was released in 2016) and the great variety of available in-store AR experiences made this campaign totally worth it for 7-Eleven: They won a prestigious Auggie tech award, in addition to keeping customers in their stores for a longer time.
7-Eleven, for example, has been using AR to engage their customers for quite some time now. Their 2018 Deadpool campaign included 30 unique AR experiences activated throughout the stores. It received a warm response with more than 10 million user interactions and an average interaction time of 85 seconds.
The Brazilian branch of Burger King in 2018 used AR to have a go at competitors. Their “Burn That Ad” AR advertising campaign encouraged mobile users to overlay digital images of a blazing fire on the fast-food’s competitors ad banners.
As a reward, Burger King offered a coupon for a free Whopper sandwich.
Pepsi used AR in a different way in their London AR bus stops campaign. This campaign went viral and helped to create buzz around its brand on social media. In turn, this exposure creates the opportunity for app store downloads and other worldwide recognition.
Recently, Pokemon Go took the world by storm – using geolocation (with simultaneous localization and mapping), animation, other virtual objects, and more to put users in the real world of Pokemon. Companies are trying to mimic how they can use AR technologies and algorithms in their current app development process.
While 7-Eleven, Pepsi, and the Brazilian branch of Burger King used AR successfully in their marketing campaigns, other companies haven’t been so lucky.
As AR technology becomes more mainstream, businesses will have a more difficult time finding meaningful ways to use AR.
AR Prices Vary in Different Markets
Every company’s journey into the world of AR begins with a search of a vendor that could deliver AR content matching to the goal and budget.
When this article was originally written in 2018, the average pricing for AR development started at $30 per hour in India and goes all the way up to $150 per hour in North America.
Just a brief glance at AR vendors’ lists on B2B marketplaces such as Clutch would give you the full list of rates by region:
- India: from $30/hour
- Eastern Europe: from $35/hour
- South America: from $43/hour
- United Kingdom: from $70/hour
- Australia: from $110/hour
- North America: from $150/hour
When it comes to the AR development process, the most expensive option is not necessarily the option with the highest quality. The average rate is just a reflection of the level of wages in different parts of the world, and the global scale availability of specialized software and hardware for AR development makes it possible for companies from different parts of the world to create quality content.
It’s important to choose your AR developer wisely and keep in mind the different components of the total price tag of a project. To better understand how the cost of an AR application project is determined, we’ll explore two recent case studies: Toy Story and Wonderscope.
Each of these AR apps contained the same 5 elements but at different complexity levels:
- The app (for iOS and Android)
- 3D modeling
- Animations
- Optimization
- Testing
Toy Story 4’s AR App: How a Simple App Can Require Up to 900 Hours
AR apps can serve as a platform for AR experiences that double as digital campaigns for movies.
For example, a Toy Story 4 AR experience shows that AR projects can be simple, not requiring much from the user or hardware. Yet, it still offers virtual interactions with seven main characters from the latest movie.
Users are encouraged to scan a Toy Story 4 poster to bring the beloved protagonists Sherriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear to life and take a photo or video with them.
Each character has one unique animation/action and one general “freeze” action should you press the alarming “Bonnie’s Coming!” button.
Additional Features for the Toy Story AR Application:
Element 1: The App
The app itself is simple with basic functionality relying on AR-kit 2.0 which features:
- Image recognition
- Flat surface recognition
- Tidy user experience and interface
Even though this app is simple, it still took between 230-300 hours to produce.
Remember - a lot of an augmented reality app development cost factors in a development team’s hourly rate.
Element 2: 3D Models
One of the key components of Toy Story 4’s AR project was the life-like visuals: The characters seem like they just stepped out from the big screen.
However, they still need to be adapted to an AR environment, which takes 10-20 hours per model.
Given this baseline, making all of the characters compatible with the AR environment likely took 70-140 hours.
Element 3: Animations
The animations in the AR program are smooth and well-done, which are signs that quality was chosen over quantity.
Each character has one unique animation, while the “freeze” animation is the same for all characters.
Focusing on custom AR is a benefit but does lead to an increase in development time and development rates. This likely took 30-50 hours per model and 210-350 hours total.
Additional Reading: ‘4 Benefits of Annotated Wireframes’
Element 4: Optimization
After the app is built and the characters and animations are complete, the AR engineers must combine these elements.
When importing animations into a mobile app, they also have to optimize lighting and sound.
This can take 4-8 hours per model, so for the Toy Story 4 AR project, it took 28-56 hours.
In need of a mobile app development company? Browse our directory of skilled developers.
Element 5: Don’t Overlook the Little Things
While the app, animations, 3D modeling, and optimization are the main components and most time-intensive tasks, companies shouldn’t overlook the smaller tasks that contribute to an AR project’s success.
These “little things” include:
- Concepting (i.e., creating the project’s blueprint)
- Voiceovers
- Testing and bug clearance
These smaller tasks take 100-150 hours to complete.
All of these elements combined took 638-996 hours to complete. AR projects consist of many different parts that must be built, assembled, and then testing to ensure for a smooth, realistic user experience.
Wonderscope’s AR App: Complex Apps Can Require Up to 1960 Hours
Think about what type of app you want for your company – all of them have different components, features, and costs.
Unlike Toy Story 4’s AR app, Wonderscope’s app is more complex and features tons of interactive content, 3D graphics, cool AR tricks, and stunning visuals.
Wonderscope’s story is a familiar one, but is interactive and unfolds right in front of your eyes wherever you are, whether you’re in your room, a quiet park, or a conference room.
In this app, not only characters come to life but entire scenes, adding layers of dimension to interactive storytelling.
Let’s look under the hood of this app using the example of one of the available Wonderscope stories in AR developed by Within Unlimited.
The story features four locations, four characters, and contains eight minutes of AR animations.
Additional Features for the Wonderscope AR Application:
Element 1: The App
Wonderscope’s app is aesthetically pleasing with vivid colors and an accessible and well thought out UX, accented by a stylish UI full of 3D objects and animations.
It is addictive to navigate through the app, scrolling between the screens and clicking on menu items.
Smooth transitions between screens contribute to smooth user experience.
In addition to surface recognition functions of AR-kit 2.0, Wonderscope boasts the speech recognition function.
This app likely required 140-160 for UX and another 350-400 for UI.
Start planning for AR app development costs by exploring our guide on how to hire during the app development process.
Element 2: Models
Like in the Toy Story 4 AR app, this story in Wonderscope featured only a few characters (Blob, Ball, Rabbit, and Caterpillar) plus four high-quality locations.
Creating these models required 350-450 hours.
Element 3: Animations
This story features 8 full minutes of animation complete with elaborate interactive scripting involving four characters in four locations.
[Wonderscope Animation.gif] [Wonderscope Animation 1.gif]
Perfecting these animations required 550-650 hours to complete.
Element 4: Additional Tasks
Similar to the Toy Story 4 app, this story required smaller tasks for a smooth AR experience such as concepting, voiceovers, testing, and bug clearance.
For such a polished app, 200-300 hours were likely spent on these little details that add up to a positive user experience.
All of these elements combined took 1590-1960 hours to complete.
More complicated AR projects consist of more parts and require more time to assemble.
Consider outsourcing for your next app development project.
Companies Can Better Plan Their AR Projects If They Know How Much Time Is Required
What goes into augmented reality or virtual reality projects? Cost is a major factor.
The examples provided by Toy Story 4 and Wonderscope demonstrate rough estimates of how much AR projects cost and how long it takes to get an AR-based project off the ground.
Companies should decide whether an AR project is worth the investment by looking at examples of how big brands benefitted from adding AR to their marketing mix, as shown by 7-Eleven, Burger King, and Pepsi.
If companies want to get the most out of their AR project, they should not compromise on the quality of its content: AR is something that should amaze and make users’ jaws drop, and prompt social media posts.
If the reaction to your AR project will be “meh,” it’s not AR at all; investing in “cost-optimized” AR is a waste of money.
When looking for an AR vendor, keep in mind how you want your app to look, work, and feel to the intended user, and remember: Never compromise on quality.
Do you know what type of AR project will benefit your business? Consult our directory.
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