Telemedicine App Development Cost: A Line-Item Breakdown

A web-based telemedicine MVP with video, scheduling, intake, visit notes and payments comes to roughly 550–880 engineering hours in the illustrative breakdown below. At the $25–$99 hourly bands Clutch reports for most markets, that is about $14,000–$87,000 before e-prescribing, EHR integration or insurance billing. Running costs are small by comparison: video is about 16 cents per 20-minute visit.

If you would rather have it built for you, see how RAITHub would build this, at the end of this guide.

How much does it cost to develop a telemedicine app?

It depends mostly on scope and on the hourly rate of whoever builds it, so this guide gives you hours, which you can price at any rate, rather than one headline number. Market reference points:

• Agency rates. Clutch says most software development companies on its platform charge $24–$49 an hour, with typical bands of $50–$99 in the US and Poland and $100–$149 in Canada and Australia (Clutch software development pricing, updated September 2026).
• Freelance rates. Arc reports a median of $61–$80 an hour and an average of $81–$100 for freelance React developers (Arc rate explorer).
• Health app ranges. Knack puts a basic patient-facing app with intake, scheduling and a simple portal at $40,000–$80,000, with HIPAA-specific engineering adding 20–30% (Knack HIPAA app cost guide).

These are market figures, not RAITHub prices. RAITHub publishes no rates; it gives a written fixed quote after a free audit.

What does each feature of a telemedicine app cost in hours?

The table is illustrative: a reasonable range for a web app and PWA built by an experienced small team with automated tests, for one clinic or a small network, cash-pay, in one language. It is not a quote, and your scope will move every line.

Line item	What it covers	Illustrative hours
Discovery and spec	User journeys, data-flow map, vendor list for your compliance reviewer to sign off	30–50
Accounts and roles	Patient, clinician and admin sign-in, multi-factor authentication for staff, role checks	50–80
Scheduling	Availability, booking, time zones, double-booking prevention, reminders, cancellations	80–120
Intake and consent	Versioned forms, consent capture, answers shown to the clinician before the visit	50–80
Video integration	Private rooms, short-lived join tokens, waiting room, device check	40–70
Visit notes	Append-only notes, visit summaries, follow-up tasks	40–60
Payments	Visit fees, no-show rules, refunds, webhook handling	40–60
Records access	Patients view summaries and documents; carer or guardian proxy access	40–70
Audit logging	Logging of reads and changes, admin audit views	40–60
Clinic console	Clinician management, schedules, basic reporting	40–70
Test automation and CI	Access-isolation tests, booking race tests, payment and video token tests, pipeline	80–120
Deployment and runbooks	Hosting in a BAA-covered account, monitoring, backups, incident runbook	20–40
Total, core MVP		550–880

Multiply the total by a rate to get a market range: 550 hours at $25 is $13,750, and 880 hours at $99 is $87,120. A team on a fixed-scope quote will price risk in as well, so expect the upper half of the range if your scope is still moving.

Which add-ons cost the most?

Add-on	Illustrative extra hours	Why it costs what it does
E-prescribing	60–120	Integrating a certified vendor such as DoseSpot, prescriber onboarding, and in the US the controlled-substance rules in 21 CFR Part 1311
EHR integration (HL7 FHIR)	120–250	Mapping to FHIR resources, the EHR vendor's profiles and approval process; Knack prices one Epic or Cerner integration at $20,000–$40,000 on its own (Knack)
Insurance eligibility and claims	150 or more	Clearinghouse integration, payer rules and denial handling; often a separate project
Recording and transcription	30–60	Consent, storage, retention and access rules for recordings, plus per-minute fees
Async messaging with clinicians	50–90	Secure in-app messaging, attachments, notifications that reveal nothing clinical

How much does video cost per month on a telemedicine app?

Much less than people expect. Video providers charge per participant-minute, so a 20-minute visit with one patient and one clinician uses 40 participant-minutes.

Running cost	Published price	Example: 2,000 visits a month
Twilio Video	$0.004 per participant-minute (Twilio); a BAA needs the Security or Enterprise Edition (Twilio HIPAA)	80,000 minutes, about $320, plus the edition cost
Daily	$0.0015–$0.004 per participant-minute, 10,000 free minutes a month, and a $500-a-month healthcare add-on with a BAA (Daily)	At most about $280 in minutes, plus $500 for the add-on
Vonage Video API	On Vonage's pricing page	Check current rates and BAA terms with Vonage
SMS reminders (US)	$0.0083 per segment plus a carrier fee of $0.0035–$0.005 (Twilio SMS)	Two reminders per visit, about $50
Cloud recording	Daily lists $0.01349 per recorded minute	20-minute visits, all recorded: about $540

The pattern is clear: the BAA plan costs more than the minutes for a small service, and recording costs more than the live video. Decide early whether you record at all.

If you want to model it, the arithmetic is short. This TypeScript function estimates monthly video spend from your visit volume and a provider's published rates:

type VideoRates = {
  perParticipantMinute: number // e.g. 0.004
  freeMinutes: number          // e.g. 10000 on Daily, 0 on Twilio
  monthlyPlan: number          // BAA plan or add-on, e.g. 500
  perRecordedMinute: number    // 0 if you never record
}

export function monthlyVideoCost(
  visits: number,
  minutesPerVisit: number,
  participants: number,
  recordShare: number, // 0 to 1: share of visits recorded
  r: VideoRates,
): number {
  const participantMinutes = visits * minutesPerVisit * participants
  const billable = Math.max(0, participantMinutes - r.freeMinutes)
  const recording = visits * recordShare * minutesPerVisit * r.perRecordedMinute
  return billable * r.perParticipantMinute + recording + r.monthlyPlan
}

// 2,000 visits, 20 minutes, 2 people, no recording, Daily list rates:
// monthlyVideoCost(2000, 20, 2, 0, { perParticipantMinute: 0.004,
//   freeMinutes: 10000, monthlyPlan: 500, perRecordedMinute: 0 }) => 780

Add hosting in a cloud account covered by a BAA; AWS, for example, lets you accept its Business Associate Addendum in AWS Artifact and limits PHI to its HIPAA-eligible services (AWS HIPAA page). For a wider view of running costs, see what a SaaS costs to run per month.

What moves the price of a telemedicine app up or down?

Three things, in this order: integrations, compliance work and scope creep. Video minutes barely register.

• Integrations. Each external system (e-prescribing, an EHR, an insurance clearinghouse, a lab) brings its own sandbox, approval process and failure modes. One EHR integration can cost as much as the whole core MVP.
• Compliance work. If HIPAA, GDPR or UK GDPR applies to you, budget for read logging, BAA-covered vendors, encryption and your compliance reviewer's time. Knack estimates HIPAA-specific engineering adds 20–30% to the base build, and that retrofitting the controls after launch costs 40–80% of the original build (Knack). This is general information; confirm with your adviser what applies to you.
• Video minutes and recording. Live video is cents per visit; recording, transcription and storage cost more, and add retention duties.
• Roles and proxy access. Every new relationship (carer, guardian, care coordinator) adds states, screens and tests.
• Native apps. A native iOS and Android app means separate builds, store reviews and more testing. RAITHub builds web apps and PWAs only, and does not offer native apps; a PWA lets patients join from a browser link or a home-screen icon.

Fixed price versus hourly billing also changes what you pay for uncertainty; see fixed price vs time and materials.

Buy, build or hire: is a custom telemedicine app worth the cost?

Route	Example and price	Choose this when	Watch out for
Off-the-shelf tool	doxy.me (free plan; paid plan includes a BAA) or SimplePractice ($49–$99 a month per solo practitioner)	You are a practice that wants to see patients online now with a standard workflow	Per-seat fees grow with headcount, and you cannot change the patient journey
Low-code or template	A hosted scheduler plus a prebuilt video interface, on the providers' BAA plans	You are testing demand with one clinic before investing	Several vendors means several BAAs, and access rules that do not match across tools
Custom web app or PWA	About 550–880 hours for the core MVP above, plus add-ons	Telehealth is your product: your own triage, pricing, clinic network or workflows	Highest upfront cost, and you own the maintenance

At SimplePractice's $99 top solo price, ten clinicians cost under $12,000 a year, well below most custom builds. Custom pays off when the workflow is your competitive advantage, not when you only need video visits. To sketch your own scope, use the MVP cost estimator, and for what a fixed budget buys in general, see what a $30k MVP budget gets you.

Why RAITHub for this

RAITHub is a founder-led, QA-first software studio founded in 2024 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working with clients worldwide in English. Its health work to date is a healthcare scheduling app for a client, among 8 client projects; it has not shipped a regulated health product.

• Testing is in the estimate, not an extra. PropDesk, a property management platform with Stripe rent collection and 4 roles, ships with 1,024 automated tests. Telehealth booking and payment logic needs the same coverage.
• Isolation enforced in the database. Sundor Skin uses row-level security across 146 PostgreSQL tables with 530+ tests, the pattern you want for patient records.
• PWAs with many payment options. PadhAI, an AI tutoring platform RAITHub built, runs as a PWA with 9 payment gateways.
• Your data stays yours. RAITHub signs NDAs and DPAs and works inside your controls. Production and patient data stay in your own covered cloud account; development uses synthetic data.

When you don't need us

• You need video visits for one practice. Subscribe to a telehealth tool with a BAA; it costs far less than a build.
• You need native iOS or Android apps. RAITHub does not build them.
• Your buyers require a vendor with shipped regulated health products, or a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certified vendor. RAITHub has neither.
• Your core need is insurance billing or an EHR integration. A team that has already integrated your target system will get there with fewer surprises.

For the wider context on health software, read the HealthTech software guide.

How RAITHub would build this

• Scope: the core MVP line items above, as a web app and PWA with patient, clinician and admin portals.
• Integrations: a video provider on its BAA plan, card payments with no clinical detail in payment records, and e-prescribing through a certified vendor if you prescribe.
• Controls: role-based access, row-level security, read and write audit logs, and access-isolation tests.
• Estimate: each line item and add-on priced separately, with written assumptions, so you can cut scope line by line.

Timeline: a fixed-scope MVP typically takes 4–6 weeks, as on the MVP development service. Larger builds with EHR or e-prescribing integrations fall in the 6–12 week range of backend and API work.

What you receive: automated tests and CI, handover docs and runbooks, and full IP ownership under NDA. How quotes work is on the pricing page.

Next step: see the HealthTech page, then book the free 15-minute technical audit. You get a written fixed quote afterwards. Please do not send patient data in your first message.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum cost to build a telemedicine app?

For a custom web MVP, the illustrative breakdown here comes to 550–880 hours, about $14,000–$87,000 at the $25–$99 hourly bands Clutch reports. An off-the-shelf tool such as SimplePractice starts at $49 a month per solo practitioner.

How much does video cost per telemedicine visit?

At Twilio's published $0.004 per participant-minute, a 20-minute two-person visit costs about 16 cents. BAA plans, such as Daily's $500-a-month healthcare add-on, and recording usually cost more than the minutes.

Does HIPAA make a telemedicine app more expensive?

Usually yes. Knack estimates HIPAA-specific engineering adds 20–30% to a base build, and retrofitting controls after launch costs 40–80% of the original build. Whether HIPAA applies is general information to confirm with your adviser.

How long does it take to build a telemedicine MVP?

A fixed-scope MVP with video, scheduling, intake, notes and payments typically takes 4–6 weeks with a focused team. EHR, e-prescribing or insurance integrations extend that, often into a 6–12 week range.

Is a PWA enough for a telemedicine app?

For most patient journeys, yes. A PWA runs video in the browser and can be installed on a phone's home screen, with one codebase. RAITHub builds web apps and PWAs only and does not offer native apps.

What is the most expensive part of a telemedicine app?

Integrations. A single EHR integration can cost as much as the core MVP; Knack puts one Epic or Cerner integration at $20,000–$40,000. Insurance claims handling is often a separate project.