How Much Does it Cost to Build a Ride-Sharing App Like Grab Taxi in 2020–21?

8 min readNov 27, 2020

So finally you have decided to develop a ride-sharing application for your startup! But how much does it cost to develop a ride-booking app like GrabTaxi, is one of the most pressing questions for the business ranging from bootstrappers to leading entrepreneurs. This blog has outlined everything right development stages, features to its final development cost…

Over the few years, on-demand taxi booking services have revolutionized the way we book taxies with traditional car rental offices and have opened the doors for startups with plenty of options to earn a gigantic income within a short period.

According to the survey of MarketsAndMarkets, the ride-sharing market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.87% from 2018 to 2025 and expected to reach a market size of $218 billion by 2025 from $61.3 billion in 2018.

The significant segments of drivers from this segment are understanding the growing need for personal mobility in the wake of rising urbanization and leveraging the benefits of car ownership.

According to Statista, the global ride-sharing market is expected to grow to more than 50 percent between 2020 and 2021. The market value is expected to reach around $117 billion in 2021 from $75 billion in 2020.

Taxi booking market is divided into two segments — online taxi booking and offline booking services.But, with the increasing smartphone users spending 90% of their mobile time on mobile applications- it has been observed that 65% of people are using online taxi booking services. The on-demand taxi booking services recently come into high demand all across the world due to its various features ranging from the cost of riding to choosing the perfect type of vehicle for the ride.

And according to the survey, Uber, Lyft, Ola and Grab are the few major players of the taxi app booking platforms.

According to the survey, Uber was the leading taxi booking app in the Middle East in 2019 and making $3.1 billion. In contrast, Lyft was launched after Uber and started serving in over 200+ countries. On the other hand, Ola was launched in 2010 and claiming 1,50,000 bookings per day, whereas Grab is another taxi booking app that is operating in 65+ cities and has 50,000 taxis on the ride. Being simple and straightforward to use, Grab has become one of the most demanding clones for the businesses.

Now the question is how to develop a taxi booking app like Grab, what features you need to integrate and how much it cost you to create an app?

Let’s get started with the introduction of this app…

Overview of GrabTaxi: Background Of This Ride-Sharing App

Grab is a Singapore based company, engaged in ride-hailing, ride-sharing and food delivery services via mobile application in Southeast Asia. Just like Uber generating $14.1 billion annual revenue in 2019, and set the benchmark in the US taxi market.

Despite being developed in 2012, Grab is also the fastest growing taxi booking app with the same insights as like Uber. Without a doubt, it is becoming a motivational taxi booking app clone for many businesses these days. They provide seamless car booking services to the customers and allow them to choose the most favourable booking services ranging from well-maintained cars to taxis. Users can leverage these services from any district region of the Singapore and Southeast Asian nations. Being known for the cheapest private ride, trained drivers and well-maintained cars, Grab has quickly become one of the most popular ride-sharing apps.

So Appsted is a globally recognized certified app development company, empowering businesses ranging from startups, SMEs and leading brands with the robust solutions integrated with modern features that help in delivering the excellent user experience.

So what Makes The App Clone of Grab Taxi Stay Ahead Over Other Leaders?

According to the statistics, Grab is being used by 187 million users till 2020 and the average number of daily rides on Grab was approx 46 million per day in 2019.

As a startup or a leading brand, you must have evaluated other leading taxi-booking apps like Uber, Lyft, and Ola. Many of you must be wondering what additional features are making Grab stand out in the market. And many of are in a dilemma of picking their plan of action and integrate to your business to develop an app like Grab.

However, things are not as simple as you are interpreting. Following the app clone of leading taxi booking app is fair, but there is no scope of achieving success until or unless you didn’t add your unique business elements.

And for that, it is always worth to hire app development company that is backed by highly skilled and industry best experts, experienced in creating an application that perfectly syncs your business needs.

Here’s How Grab Taxi Used to Work!

To create a car booking application like Grab Taxi, it is essential to understand its working model and what types of services it is offering across the region. The basic principles of Grab taxi are focusing on two major aspects — one the drivers can make the maximum amount of money through this platform and second is to prioritize the safety of the passengers.

By keeping this in mind, Grab provides an opportunity for drivers to increase their income from 30 to 300% depending upon the quality of services they are offering to customers. If a passenger filed a complaint against the driver, then Grab Taxi would take strict action. Moreover, the performance of the drivers are subject to the ratings approved by the riders on the given platform.

Here are the few simple steps to book a ride with Grab Taxi app:

Book A Ride In Two Taps: Grab Taxi has the most simple and easy interface, allowing users to book a ride by using two keys. One is entering the pickup address and another is a drop-off address that makes it straightforward to access.
Get a Driver: Grab will help you search the nearest driver available to your location to get started with the ride as quickly as possible.
Track You Driver: Instead, keep calling the driver, you can track the live location of the driver and be able to know how long he will take to reach your destination.
Arrive Safely: It provides the option to share your ride details with your loved ones to stay connected and protected throughout the ride.

For smooth and hassle-free ride experience, Grab provides you with multiple services to meet different needs of the users, including:

GrabBike: When you are in a rush, book a bike ride with Grab and get around the city at the fast-paced.
GrabCar: Hire a private car and pay a fixed fare that suggests before you start the ride.
GrabExpress: Grab is not just limited to car sharing or ride services. With GrabExpress services, you can get your parcel and documents delivered safely to any destination.
GrabHitch: This service allows you to pool a car and share it with other members in the carpool community.
GrabFamily: It is a unique on-demand ride service with a special seat arrangement for children aged 1–7 years old. There are two categories to choose from:
GrabFamily (Ages 1–3)
GrabFamily (Ages 4–7)
Just Grab: Just Grab is the latest service added in Grab, that combines the cars and taxi fleets, and automatically helps you select the nearest and cheapest available option for the ride.

Key Features of Developing An App Like GrabTaxi and Its Cost

Like every taxi booking app, GrabTaxi is also consist of three-tier structure, including:

App for Customers: Which allows passengers to book a ride conveniently.
App For Drivers: That allows drivers to receive a ride request and provide the services.
App for Admin: That manages every bit of driver and orders. It keeps control of the web-panel and ensures seamless processing of the app.

So here are the few key features that you need to integrate while creating an app like GrabTaxi.

Now the question is how much does it cost to develop a taxi app like Grab with all such features?

While it is hard to interpret the actual cost of the application with all these features as it depends on various factors including:

The choice of operating system (Android/iOS),
The complexity of the app (Basic, Medium or Advanced)
Level of the development team you choose to hire
Location of the development team
Choice of features and functionality of the app
Technologies that you choose to develop an app

There are several app development companies out there in the market that claims to get your taxi booking app developed from $5,000 to $7,000 but before falling to the estimations, it is worth to know that, it was just a marketing trap.

So how much does it overall cost to develop a taxi booking app like Grab?

How Much Does it Cost To Create a Ride-Sharing App Like Grab?

While developing an application like Grab Taxi, one of the most critical questions is — how much does it cost to make an app like Grab? Let’s face it!

To provide the estimated cost and hours of app development, our dedicated taxi app development team has framewout the accurate estimation that best fits to the budget of startups. With their basic price idea, you can easily determine what type of team you required for the app development, what factors are contributing to the cost of development and estimated cost and development hours.

Here’s the kind of development team you need to hire while creating an app like Grab Taxi:

UX/UI Designer for beautiful, interactive and engaging app design.
Native application advancement on iOS and Android.
Developer for the backend and frontend development.
Project management to coordinate with you and get your app idea executed from the team.
Quality testing to ensure your app is bug free.

Estimated Hours to Develop Each Module of the App On both Platforms

App for drivers (iOS) — 120 hours
App for drivers (Android) — 135 hours
App for travelers (iOS) — 140 hours
App for travelers (Android) — 125 hours
Administrative board — 250 hours

Now you can easily estimate the app development cost by applying the formula of “Per hour cost of the developer * Total number of hours of development = Final cost of app development”.

Conclusion

Hopefully, with the end of this post, you can determine all key factors associated with the taxi booking app development. If you are also in search of developing a car/taxi booking app that can give a kickstart to your business and looking to get a quote for Grab like app along with exclusive features, then drop a query here.

Appsted is a team of app developers strive to deliver industry-best app development services. By keeping in mind your app development needs, the team create a solution that perfectly sync your needs and boost your ROI.

For more details, you can go through the portfolio of the Appsted or get connected with the experts for the detailed discussion!

Originally published at https://www.appsted.com on November 27, 2020.