Feature & Cost To Develop An App like CapCut: Breakdown

Do you want to build an app like CapCut? This blog is for you!

Videos are captivating where you can see visuals, hear sound and smooth storytelling simply catches our attention easier than a block of text. As a result, there has been a huge shift from text-based content to video.

Seeing the craze for video editing, there is also an increase in demand for video editing tools & software such as CapCut.

As you know people respond to emotions that are easier to show through a video which is why they lead to more engagement. Consequently, people take the assistance of video editing apps to convert their scattered footage into a polished and eye-pleasing video.

These facts are also evident, the global video editing software market will be $1952 million in 2021 to $3245 million by 2030, showing an increase of CAGR of 5.6% during the forecast period.

Seeing such a surge, businesses are looking to enter the lucrative market with a top-notch video editing app like CapCut and wondering about the cost, factors affecting costs, features, and other aspects. This blog is for your help so that you can gain complete knowledge and plan beforehand.

What is CapCut Video Editing App?

Someone who often edits their videos knows well about CapCut. But, if you are new to the concept, it’s a free video editing application of Bytedance and was launched in April 2020.

Coming from the parent company of TikTok, the expectation was no less than perfection and they surely delivered it. If you don’t know the name CapCut, you might recognize it from its former name “Jianying”, a Chinese short-form video editing app. Nonetheless, they rebranded it with a slew of stickers, soundtracks, and more that users can cater to the needs of the users.

With CapCut, user can transform edits into templates & also create exquisite videos leveraging its unique features such as motion tracking, text-to-speech, motion tracking and showcase their uniqueness, ensuring a hit on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

Fast forward to today, it is the most popular free download video editing app on Apple’s App Store. As of 2023, it was the second most popular app with approximately 6.16 million downloads worldwide.

With CapCut’s user-centric design, it’s no surprise that businesses are climbing for mobile app development to develop video streaming apps like CapCut.

Overview of the Video Editing App Market

You must have questions like is it worth investing in this market? What’s the future of this market? To know the answer, it becomes necessary to have a quick overview of the market that will tell us market trends, user behavior, and much more.

The Global Video Editing Market Size is likely to reach $1.1 bn by 2025, showing a growth of CAGR of 4.4% CAGR during the forecast period. Apps like CapCut surely fuel the growth by providing user with unique features at their fingertips to make engaging videos.

Let’s see what other stats say:

• Video marketing is believed to convert leads to customers 83% of the time.
• 48% of marketers who used videos were able to show the benefits seamlessly.
• Talking about CapCut, it boasts 490M users which is nearly 25% of TikTok’s user count establishing global influence.
• CapCut is ByteDance’s 4^th most popular App.

With that said, are you inspired by CapCut’s success and ready to hire a mobile app developer? Understanding the development cost is a crucial step.

Let’s dive into what it might take to build your own video editing app like CapCut.

Cost to Develop an App like CapCut

So, “How much does it cost to make an app like CapCut?”This question might have been in your mind for a long time.

Considering there are many factors including development platform, feature, and ranging factors. However, the cost to develop an app like CapCut could range from anywhere from $40,000 to $200,000. This can change as per your above-mentioned features.

Be it creating a social media app, a video editing app, or any other app per se, the general way to calculate the cost is the formula:

App Development Cost = Total App Development Time (in Hours) * Hourly Rate.

Let’s move on to the next part where we shall be discussing the factors that are affecting the Cost of developing a Video Editing app like CapCut.

Key Factors Affecting CapCut Like App Development Costs

As we said, due to several elements affecting it, there is no fixed number for the cost to develop an app like CapCut.

In this section, we will get to know about the factors affecting CapCut clone app development cost. Let’s check them out in detail:

1. UI/UX Design

 UI/UX Design plays a huge role in attracting your users. Right? But, it is also one of those that affect the Cost to Build a Video Editing App like CapCut.

Simply saying, if you go for simple and minimalistic design, you can create a better app that’s not only a joy to use for your customer but also easy on your wallet, unlike custom designing which requires additional effort, & resources leading to increased costs to develop an app.

Let’s understand that through this brief table:

With that, it’s time to look at another factor that influences Cost to Build an App like CapCut that is:

2. Complexity

Among other factor, complexity is the most basic and important one.

It is no secret that the intricacy of your app idea will increase the developer’s effort and time, translating to amplified video editing app development costs like CapCut.

The more you include the more it will take time to build. Overall, the development costs are proportional to the technical complexity of your video editing app.

3. Video Crunching and Rendering Capabilities

To cater to a broad audience, you need smooth and real-time video editing which requires powerful development machines leading to increased CapCut-like app development costs.

To make videos look great, edit them easily, and offer advanced editing tools are all trickier to build. As a result, powerful video processing is need of the hour to enhance user experience. But, this leads to increased cost, time, and effort.

4. Choosing Platform

The choice of platform also affects the Cost to Build a Video Editing App like CapCut. For which you get two choices which are native and hybrid.

Both have their own advantages & disadvantages which will discuss some other day.

However, Native requires more time, and resources due to separate coding, and testing whereas hybrid app development can be affordable but sometimes it might compromise speed and experience.

5. Selection of Features

The features you select for your app development are related to your cost to cost to develop an app like CapCut. Simply put, the development process becomes lengthy when you integrate more advanced features including smooth transitions, an extensive range of filters, special effects, and more.

Meanwhile, a basic app with simple features such as cutting, trimming, and adding transition requires less work compared to advancing features which simply reduces the cost to develop an app like CapCut.

With this, we believe you have an idea of how much it costs to create an app like CapCut & how several factors affect it. Now, it’s time to talk about the must-have feature that will give you a competitive edge.

Features That Determine the Success of Your Video Editing App

Keep in consideration that if you want to build an app like CapCut, then you should include some of the best features to stay fierce and get a competitive edge over your rivals. After all, Features can make or break your app’s success.

So, without any delay, let’s get to know about them:

• Filters and Effects

To enhance the experience of users, you need to integrate various filters and effects in your video streaming app. You can integrate royalty-free music for background and different sound effects to assist users in giving a personalized touch.

• Attractive User Interface

Taking inspiration from CapCut, you should make the UI attractive and easy to navigate, this will lead them to use your video editing app and execute different tasks efficiently.

One more thing to remember is to add different elements and updates timely to keep them engaged with your app.

• Integrating various templates

CapCut has a lot of templates and also adds new templates now and then. You can access them, save them to favorites, share them with friends, and more. Integrating such features in your app will attract different users and easily satisfy their needs.

• In-App Payment

Despite so many free apps in the market, CapCut offers its features through free and paid versions, you can do it too. For this, it is necessary to have amazing features as well as payment gateway integration so that users can pay to unlock new and amazing functionalities.

• Forums & Communities

If you want your customer to spend a longer time on your app, integrate the ‘communities’ feature into the CapCut-like app development. Let users connect and have conversations, but keep an eye to make sure they don’t fall prey to dangerous or inappropriate content.

• Text and Stickers

Another feature that might add cost to develop an app like CapCut but surely important. It allows users to add text overlays and stickers to their videos. Stickers are most likely implemented as image or video overlays that can be positioned and animated on the timeline.

• Audio Filters

Apps like TikTok & CapCut use a variety of audio filters to adjust the sound of your clips. Through this, you can set specific filter values at different points in the timeline. This requires audio editing functionality to integrate with the timeline component, allowing filters to be saved and applied at specific points in the video.

• Transition and Smooth Cuts

CapCut offers a plethora of transitions to seamlessly blend different clips. You can also take encouragement and implement animations and transitions between different screens within their apps. This way your user will have more fun and get seamless videos.

Some Advanced Features to Satisfy Your User

• Smart Cut & Auto Highlight

AI is transforming the fate of many apps. Using AI to finalize cuts at appropriate or highlighted action-packed edits will loved by your user.

• Mask Editing

You can enable precise editing on specific areas of video by creating different shapes and showcasing adjustments seamlessly.

• Time Effects

Offer your user to slow or fast motion effect like other successful apps through which they can manipulate time perception and freeze specific frames.

• Text Animation Presets

Provides a library of pre-animated text styles with customized fonts, different colors, and beautiful effects to add personalized titles or captions.

As we understand the feature you need, it’s time to share the time to develop an app like CapCut.

How Long Does It Take To Develop An App Like CapCut?

So, how long does it take to develop an app like CapCut?

See the factors that affect the cost to develop an app like CapCut are the ones that affect the time to develop an app like CapCut too. Considering those factors, a realistic estimate for a CapCut-like app would be around 16-22 weeks.

Table representing CapCut like-app development timeline (Estimated Weeks)

How to Monetize Your CapCut-like App? 

Investors take the risk to invest in an idea that they feel is profitable. But, to earn revenue, you need some app monetization model incorporated into your app.

Without any delay, let’s get to know about them:

1] Advertisement

An established approach that works well for businesses despite their industries. You can also incorporate this model in your app where you show relevant ads of goods and services from third parties. Even CapCut also shows advertisements to their user where they see banners, videos, or sponsored content. And, they earn money through Pay-per-click or Pay-per-impression.

2] Freemium Model

Through this model, businesses can show their basic version of the app for free, and then ask for a fee for advanced features. It not only attracts huge engagement for the app but also lets people explore the capabilities of the App creating a win-win situation for both parties.

3] In-App Purchase

Another top-notch approach is ‘’In-app purchase’’. See, if you are paying a substantial cost to develop an app like CapCut, then we believe you need to integrate multiple revenue-generating models.

Users can purchase to have a better experience, and for that, you can include premium effects and filters, sound libraries, higher resolution, removal of watermarks, and more.

4] Partnerships

Partnerships or as well call it sponsorships too. This might help you partner with brands for sponsored content creation or for any special feature within the app. And, you can get a commission on that.

By bearing in mind these monetization strategies, you can not only get a potential return on investment for developing an app like CapCut but also create a sustainable income stream.

How Nimble AppGenie Can Help You Build An App Like CapCut?

If you want to build an app like CapCut, you need to work with a company that not only understands your motive but also works for it.

With the guidance of the best social media app development company, Nimble AppGenie, you will reinvent new possibilities for your business.

Here are some of the key areas we can focus on to make your app a huge success as soon as it hits the market:

• Advanced Editing Features– Yes, we can integrate some of the best features that are ideal for your project such as Non-linear editing, Green Screen, Keyframe Animation, etc.
• AI-powered Enhancement- With AI development becoming a new standard, you can also enhance your user experience by getting AI in your apps such as Smart Trimming, Auto Re-framing, Smart Audio Mixing, and more.
• Unique Selling Proposition– One of the things that is common in other successful apps is their Unique Selling Proposition. This calls for developing functionalities that aren’t common and yet cater well to your target audience.
• Monetization and User Growth- By integrating different monetization models, we can help you build a community of your own that helps you in organic app promotion, and offers a considerable amount of revenue.

By working with us, you can leverage our expertise in these areas and create a video editing app like CapCut that stands out in the market. So, got an idea? Contact us.

Wrapping it Up…!!

In essence, the success of any app requires careful planning and consideration in which a top development company can be your partner. Apart from that, you should also analyze user preferences and trends they are looking for ensuring you stay relevant in the future.

While budgeting and planning are necessary, you also need to focus on enhancing user experience and prioritizing quality to unlock long-term success and attract a huge customer base.

FAQs

Niketan Sharma

Niketan Sharma is the CTO of Nimble AppGenie, a prominent website and mobile app development company in the USA that is delivering excellence with a commitment to boosting business growth & maximizing customer satisfaction. He is a highly motivated individual who helps SMEs and startups grow in this dynamic market with the latest technology and innovation.