Driver one: native or web
This is the biggest fork. A WebAR experience runs from a link in the phone browser with no install, which makes it dramatically cheaper to build and distribute, and it is usually the right answer for a campaign, a product page or a one-off activation. A native ARKit or ARCore app costs more but gives better tracking, offline use and device features. Choosing native when WebAR would do is the most common way to double a budget for no gain.
Driver two: how many 3D assets
For product AR this is usually the largest single line, and it scales with your catalogue rather than your app. Ten accurate, optimised, real-scale models is a very different project from two hundred. This is why we tell retail clients to start with their ten best sellers: it proves the conversion lift and establishes the pipeline at a fraction of the cost.
Driver three: what the AR has to understand
Placing an object on a detected floor is well-trodden. Image and marker tracking is straightforward, and so is face tracking. It gets expensive when you need persistent anchors across sessions, multi-user shared AR, precise measurement, or occlusion behind real objects. Each of those is a real engineering problem rather than a configuration option.
Driver four: integration
A standalone demo is cheap. An AR viewer wired into a live product catalogue, with inventory, pricing, variant selection and analytics flowing back into your systems, is a software integration project that happens to have AR in it. Be clear which one you are buying.
Realistic ranges
A focused WebAR demo or single-product viewer starts at $999 in our Spark package. A full AR application with a real catalogue, custom interactions and analytics starts at $2,999 under Launch. Enterprise AR, meaning industrial work instructions, multi-user or deep systems integration, is quoted individually. The cost calculator gives a ballpark on your own spec.
Where teams overspend
Building native when WebAR would reach more people. Modelling the whole catalogue before proving anyone uses it. And commissioning photoreal assets that a phone cannot render smoothly anyway. All three are avoidable in the scoping conversation. Try our live WebAR demos before you decide.
Related: AR development · How AR furniture apps work · Cost calculator · AR furniture apps: pricing and scope
Originally published on A Plus Games Studio, a game, AR and VR development studio in Sacramento, CA.
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