An Estimation to Develop Uber-Like Taxi Booking Mobile App: Its Cost, Features, Business Model

When it comes to building an on-demand taxi booking app, undoubtedly, the majority of ride-hailing businesses are following the app clone of Uber. The app like Uber has revamped the whole concept of taxing booking and replaced the traditional taxi booking business with a frictionless application that connects riders with drivers in just a few clicks.

The success of the uber has not just set the new trend for existing businesses, startups and even enterprises to invest in taxi app development  but also convinced them to follow the app clone of Uber.

WHY?

For that, we need to dive deep to understand the reasons behind Uber’s success!

Market Insights of Uber Application That Makes It Worth to Follow!

• Since it works on a simple app model, therefore, it has hit a global market value of $75.4 billion and holding 37.2% market share.

• There is no doubt in this fact that the market for booking taxi applications has significantly grown in the past few years. Still, Uber has remained titan of the industry and expected to reach 539 billion users in 2021.
• 78 million people are using Uber app every month, that is 42% higher in comparison to the second quarter of 2020.
• Global net revenue amounted to $14.1 billion in 2019 and generated $26 billion in gross bookings worldwide in 2020. 
• 14 million Uber trips are completed daily, and Uber drivers have completed over 10 billion trips worldwide and become a dominant leader in the field of taxi booking.

Uber has redefined the ride-sharing marketplace and provided a most economical option to get around than a traditional taxi. On the other side, it offers an optional platform for drivers to make money on the side while driving their vehicle.

There were two main objectives to launch Uber- one is to book a cab in seconds and cut down the hassle of making dozens of calls to book a cab. Uber has provided a simplified solution to all travellers chasing with these booking problems almost every day.

It allow users to book a ride with full clarity regarding price, car type, and other things within a few seconds. The app clone is based on a customer-centric business approach that offers easy bookings via smartphone.

Moreover, cost and time saving are the primary reasons for businesses to go with the Uber clan app. Since conceptualizing, designing and developing a taxi booking app right from scratch, actually requires a vast amount of time and money. However, with the Uber clan app, you can reduce the cost of the app and save a lot of time that businesses usually spent on collecting basic requirements – features, ideation or app structure.

Since uber app clone is entirely scalable, therefore, you can easily customize the working model with the integration of advanced features.

Feature and Tech Stack of Developing Uber Like Taxi Booking App?

The typical cost of building an app can be ranging from $10,000 to $50,000+, depending upon the features, operating platform and complexity of functionality and design of the app.

So if you are a startup and planning to develop a taxi booking app with a low budget, then it is recommended to follow the native app development approach. It allows you to create platform-specific applications that ensure better performance, speed, security and ability to get access to the built-in capabilities of smartphone-like geolocation and maps.

To ensure excellent user experience, Uber app is divided into three segments but all these are interconnected – a consumer, driver and an admin panel to manage entire business operations.

Here are the core features that you need to integrate into each version of the app:

Key Features of Uber – Customers/Driver/Admin App Version

These are the essential yet advanced features that you need to consider while developing an app like Uber. However, with COVID-19 pandemic, you need to take little extra efforts to ensure a safe and secure ride to the passengers.

COVID-19 Related Safety Features to Include in Taxi Booking App

No doubt, people from all across the world have learned to live with this new normal and returning back to their routines after the lockdown. To avoid contributing to the increasing number of Covid cases, it is worth to include modern safety features that keep drivers and riders safe during a ride.

1. Verification Checklist

To ensure a safe and secure ride experience, make sure the driver starts the ride by going through a checklist. A real-time selfie of the driver ensures that he/she has wearing a mask along with the list of other information like sanitization, COVID-19 symptoms, body temperature and more. The driver is allowed to take rides only after clarifying all the details.

And the same goes with the passengers!

2. Zero Ride Cancellation Chargers

If the driver feels that the location of the requested ride is not safe to take, then allow cancelling the ride without charging any cancellation fees. Allow COVID-19 tracker to capture the details of that region and intimate the other drivers about the red zones of the city.

3. Reviews and Ratings of the Drivers

While using a taxi booking app, riders are always asked to rate the driver based on multiple factors including vehicle, behaviour and quality of experience. So you can hire a mobile app developer to update this feature asking “whether a driver has followed safety measures during the ride”. Does he/she have taken all the safety precautions?

Adding a few safety features in your app may increase your mobile app development budget, but you need to add some unique features to it that make sense and help you stand out in the competition.

How Does a Taxi booking App like Uber Works?

Before you start developing the taxi booking app with the choice of features, it is worth understanding how it works. Otherwise, it’s like navigating the route without knowing the right pathway of destination!

So, here’s how Uber clone app works:

• To start a ride with an Uber-like app, users have to choose from the options whether they want to request a car now or schedule it for later. Accordingly, the rider can book a car via app. 
• Once you raise the request, drivers around the location can accept or either reject the request as per his/her choice. 
• If the driver rejects the request, then the request is sent to the second driver. 
• Once, the driver will accept the request – the user will get the notification along with the estimated cost and time. 

Further, riders have two options to pay for the ride, either pay cash or choose a cashless ride to make this process smoother for both parties.

If you are following the Uber Clone app, then always aim to ensure excellent user interface to the users. And to make the entire process simpler, it is worth to include multiple payment options, geolocation, fare estimation, scheduled bookings and more.

How to Monetize from a Taxi Booking App Like Uber?

No matter how brilliant your app idea is, it is a waste to invest your efforts and money if it is not earning any money to your business. So users have broadly two primary options to make money from the taxi booking application:

• Commission from Drivers: Charging commission from drivers and passengers is one of the best ways of making money from the app. Uber used to charge 20-25% commission of the total ride cost when they receive online booking through the app. 

Apart from drivers, Uber also charges a flat booking rate from passengers in the form of service. If you are choosing to earn from this method, then you can choose to add another cost in the form of security fees, money transaction charges and more.

Besides, add a model to earn money from the passenger when they cancel the ride.

• Advertisement and Promotional Collaboration: Third-party promotional campaigns or promotional collaborations with the leading brands like Spotify, Pepsi, Hilltop and more can be advantageous for your app.

But, what if, you are not ready for the campaign collaborations. In that case, you can choose to go with advertising and charge a cost-per-click or cost-per-mile commission from local businesses to run their advertisements in your application.

So, now you have everything on the plate, what features, tech stack and business model you can choose to develop an app like Uber.

All you need to understand is the development stages and its development cost!

Stages and Cost To Create Uber-Like Taxi Booking App in 2021

Developing an app like Uber may sound like replicating the existing app structure. But there is no sense of creating a duplicate taxi booking app with another name. To launch a winning application, you need to go beyond market needs and integrate unique features to offer something new yet engaging to your customers.

So here are the few stages of app development that you need to follow:

• Technical Research and Planning the App Structure

No matter how unique your app development idea is, it is always worth going through market analysis to identify further scope and opportunities of the app idea. Also, make sure to evaluate the app idea with the perspectives of revenue generation.

At this phase of development, determine and gather requirements for building a taxi booking app and identify the scope of improvements to be made in an app. This will help you create a better product with an accurate project roadmap.

With detailed market research and technical analysis, you can set a realistic budget for an app MVP.

• Creating Documentation of Taxi Booking App 

Here you need to hire a development team, that will:

Develop detailed and project-specific documentation that defines everything right from app functionality, architecture to the final tech stack to be used in the app. The team will describe all the project requirements such as non-functional requirements, features, the general functionality of the app, and more.

The documentation will further be shared with the app owners for the approval. After the final approval, the team will get started with the next stage.

• Development of the Uber Type App

At the stage of app development, firstly you need a team consisting of project manager, frontend and backend developer, UI/UX designer, app tester and marketing team.

Once you have an efficient team, they will divide each project part into the different team and start implementing each task on priority.

Once the team is done with app development, then Uber-like app developers conduct unit testing to find all the bugs and errors by running it on the multiple platforms.

After a successful app testing, the app will be moving to the next stage.

• Technical Support and Maintenance of Taxi App Like Uber

The taxi app developers provide customers with app technical support and maintenance to ensure:

• The smooth functioning of the app even after the app launch as some errors occur later.
• Latest upgrade integration in the app to further enhance the performance of the app.
• Operating systems such as Android and iOS might release new versions that may impact app functionality.

Now its time for final calculations of the app development!

How Much Does It Cost To Develop An App Like Grabtaxi or Uber in 2021?

To be very loyal, there is no standard cost of app development as there are several factors affecting the development cost including app type, the complexity of the functions, operating systems, development team, features and more.

However, with the careful evaluation of each phase of development, still estimated development time and cost can be determined. So let’s start with it.

Instead, putting a vast amount of effort and budget on building an advanced level of Uber-like taxi booking app, it is recommended to start your development process with building MVP. The basic version of the app will help you meet the needs of the users with limited functionality. For example, an MVP version of the taxi booking app will allow drivers to start taking ride requests without having any cost-splitting features, but still, help drivers and passengers to make payments rightly.

Above all, there is an essential set of parameters that need to be taken into account and calculated at the early stage of development while developing an app like Uber:

These are the rough estimations of the basic functionalities of taxi booking app. Still, how much does the app cost?

Now, the final pricing will be depending upon the per hour cost of the developer or app development company’s rate. According to the survey report, the cost of hiring app developers is greatly varied according to the geolocation as:

• Western Europe – $40 – 120/hr
• Eastern Europe – $20 – 100/hr
• UK- $60- 150/hr
• India – $10 -50/hr

Let’s sum up the things!

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, Uber is already dominating the largest segments of the app market and adopting aggressive strategies, but there is a scope of innovations in the app.

Hopefully, this guide has made you understand all the essential things that help you develop an Uber-like app, including features, monetizing method, development stages and cost.

But, we recommend you to don’t chase the standard features and sophisticated technological solutions. With the collaboration of an experienced and expert uber app development team, create a solution that fits your requirements and help you achieve your goals and may enable you to save up to 40% on the standard app development cost.