How to Create an App Like TikTok: 7-Step Process to Launch in 2025
Published On January 10th, 2025 How To
How to build an app like tiktok and make money as a business owner and video content creator hitting the right notes?
If you don’t have the answer for the above question, no worries we got you covered.
The struggle to be involved in the Short video app development, ends here!
The good news is post TikTok, Youtube shorts, and instagram reels, the space for a new-gen short-video app is missing! And you are at the right place at the right time, to create your tiktok like app.
But how to enter the game of building the next popular short-video app?
Or How to build your app like Tik-Tok or any app of that kind, here is how
Content creators, videographers and video marketers from popular video platforms use tiktok like apps for creating video engagement, to make monetization money, to market their short videos, and for selling digital products & merchandise.
We have come up with guided plans and route map for building it.
And here we will be discussing, what is the core function in the TikTok like app development, how to build an app like TikTok in a cost-effective way, and free of coding, read through to know them in detail.
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Table of Contents
What is a TikTok App?
To define tiktok in a single sentence, A short video app with interesting content, simplified features built for video engagement, and video monetization.
We all have used TikTok to define tiktok in a single sentence, it’s a short video app with interesting features for video engagement.
Which you can also build easily with a short-video platform provider.
How Was the Short-video App Like TikTok Created?
The Tik Tok app was devised in 2016 by Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok, from ByteDance, a Chinese company –for video sharing and engagement functionalities.
With millions of followers across the globe, now the TikTok application holds a space in most of our daily entertainment consumption areas.
How to Make a Short Video App like TikTok?
The ultimate route map
To build a short-video app like TikTok you require a plan with strategies, marketing tools, right short-video app provider and some effort to get you started,
And here are those steps to build your own TikTok like App,
Step 1 👉 Choosing the Best Short-video App Building Solution Provider
Who Builds Your TikTok App
If you are not aware of tech stacks or want to launch an app in days, choose an established app builder like VPlayed who will handle it for you.
Choosing VPlayed offers a set of benefits,
- Secure Video DRM
- Seamless video hosting
- Video monetization models
- White-label streaming
- In-app integrations
- Marketing tools
Or Either hire a team of developers from video OTT app builders like VPlayed to make your dream app come true.
Start by fixing a demo call and have a discussion with your demands, cost-structure, UI and software preferences.
Step 2 👉 Choose Your Streaming Genre
Find what works on the market and question yourself- what are you going to stream with your app to serve your audience.
Whether it’s going to be an entertainment app or church service video sharing app or science video sharing app or educational content app.
Once you come up with answer, move forward with these questions
- Are you going to build an app for a set audience or for a global audience?
- Choose a field or industry or mix of two worlds?
- What is your USP?
- What makes your app unique from others?
- How are you going to pull your audience? Marketing strategies
- What is your business model
- What is your Cost structure, Distribution channels, Revenue streams and value propositions.
Once you land with an answer, a clear path of building your own application awaits you.
Step 3 👉 Who is Your Short-video App Audiences
Making an app for one set of audiences and building based on your competitor’s strategy doesn’t work.
Build an app for a target audience, make sure you know your audience
Like what’s their age group, what are their interests, what do they most like.
Finding these out will help in the process of designing your app, fixing features from your end.
Step 4 👉 How to Design Your App UI
Viewing experience should be your primary goal-
The first step is to study your competitors in the market, don’t copy
Learn and make your own version with simplified solutions. The basic layout of your app should have these following
- Log in & Sign up
- User profile
- Video upload
- Filters
- Likes, comments and share
- Notifications
- Video Feed
Look at the simplified user interface guide for TikTok.
Step 5 👉 Invest in Application Security Measures
Protect with all your might-
Make essential norms and set terms and conditions on your platform’s usage, ensure copyrights reserved for the users data and not just your users, Admins should feel protected with their video data.
Build an admin management portal with complete authorization and an admin panel to super-admin.
Step 6 👉 Short- Video Monetization Models
Make money with Monetization based business models-
To gain your return on investments, choosing the right video monetization platform models and pricing plans are crucial. TikTok’s in-app revenue from user spending was almost $1 billion in 2024.
Advertising, in-app purchases, subscriptions are some of the most revenue generating models.
TikTok creator fund is the monetization model TikTok uses, come up with your own monetization models for your app.
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What are the Features Needed to Create a TikTok Like App?
TikTok application is in the global stage for two reasons, super- simple user-friendly TikTok features and updates that favors the trend.
In the recent times, to favor the fans, tiktok has recently launched updated features like Tiktok thumbnail feature- to find the video settings, tiktok IMDB feature to access movies, tiktok sleep reminder.
Here are the most prominent TikTok features that boosts the app’s exposure and gains the engagement,
you must also have them in your app as well!
1. Video Hosting
Go live with Video Hosting
Video hosting feature is crucial for streaming the video content and with the right video CDN you can deliver hassle-free content across the globe.
2. Video Content Management
Video Content Management for organizing
Video CMS platform is the management tool which helps you schedule, organize and upload content to your viewers and VPlayed is one platform which holds a strong CMS to host videos easily.
3. Customization of Front-end and Back-end
Customize as you like
Customization is the key for user interface personalization, making an app that’s fully customizable solves most of the problem with easy navigation.
When it comes to customization, VPlayed speak for it.
4. Cloud Encoding
Cloud Transcoding for a flow
With the help of cloud encoding features, streaming at different bitrates, resolutions and formats without losing the quality is achieved.
5. HTML 5 Player with Adaptive Streaming
Fit everywhere with Adaptive Streaming
Irrespective of resolutions and bitrates a good streaming HLS video player adapts to the conditions and streams without video quality loss, making user experience smoother.
6. Content Delivery Network
Seamless delivery with Content Delivery Network
CDN are servers which help in delivering videos without buffer and zero latency irrespective of the demographics of the user.
A low latency makes streaming more troublesome, whereas a flexible video CDN eases the streaming process.
7. Monetization Models
Make money with easy Monetization Models
The right monetization model helps content owners to generate revenue from video content and some of the best monetization models are AVOD, SVOD, TVOD and merchandise sales.
TikTok follows the TikTok Creator Fund– a process that lets content creators earn money from their TikTok videos – and there are plenty of rules in it, to win the short-video monetization race it’s better you develop an app with minimal protocols.
Here are the TikTok Creator Fund rules, TikTok Creators need to follow to monetize
- You should be 18 years old or above
- You must have at least 10,000 followers
- You must have 100,000 video views in the last 30 days
- No duplicate video content post original content
- Published videos must be of at least one minute
- You should be in TikTok supported countries
- Your account should not have any violations of the history of Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
How to enable TikTok Creator Fund in the app
Navigation steps to TikTok Creator Fund,
- Open the TikTok app
- Go to Profile
- Go to Menu button (☰), then Settings
- Select Creator tools and then Creator Fund
8. Security
Safeguarding Security Tools
A secure video platform welcomes more viewers, so build a platform that’s secure in all levels- Enable Video DRM, Video AES and video watermarks to secure your videos at all levels.
Recommended Reading
9. Marketing and Sharing
Express with Marketing
Develop an app with video marketing tools like social media sharing, local file sharing to help creators gain more viewers into their channel.
The one platform you can count on for building marketing tools is VPlayed.
10. Analytics
Get into the details with the Analytics tool
Video Analytics as a feature helps during the downfalls by boosting the video performance with metrics like Play time, Average views based on devices, geographical location ensuring the best growth.
What is The Making Cost for Developing an App Like TikTok
The average cost of developing a short-video app like TikTok is about $10,000 to $50,000. The Cost is calculated by the formula- Total development hours x Hourly rate of developers.
If you want to develop your tiktok like app in web, ios and android the costs might vary, here are the expected numbers
Cost
Hybrid App- $40,000 – $80,000 (Android and IOS) ,
Web App- $30,000 – $60,000
Hours
The hours associated with the development of tiktok-like apps is around 90-100 hours.
As an alternate plan you can hire developers from short-video app providers like VPlayed and the general costs globally for hiring app developers is mentioned below
Team of developers
- To Hire a Frontend Developer- $61 – $80/per hour ,
- The cost to hire a Backend Developer is $61 – $80/per hour,
- The Cost to hire Cloud Architect is $68 – $86/per hour,
- The cost of Hiring Designer is $32 – $40/per hour.
Apart from this the costs could also vary based on the geographic locations and here are the details
What are the Hourly rate for developing an app like tiktok,
Country wise costs-
The Cost of developing TikTok like apps in the US is $75,000 – $300,000
The Cost of developing TikTok like apps in India is $40,000 – $80,000.
| Geo-location | IOS | Android |
| North america | $110-$250 | $150-170 |
| Western europe | $37-$175 | $70 |
| Eastern europe | $23-$80 | $35-$50 |
| Australia | $35-$150 | $110 |
| Asia | $35–$55 | $50-$65 |
Based on app complexity factors like add-on features, development cycle, tech stacks used, design requirements, platform choice (iOS, Android, or both), the costs can vary.
Is TikTok Getting Banned?
In the recent news, post trumps sworn in ceremony a bill was passed to ban Chinese owned TikTok, in the United States, which will take effect on January 19, 2025.
Countries like India have also banned TikTok for data infringement and other political reasons,
What is replacing TikTok?
Apps like YouTube, Instagram have been updated with short-video functionality like reels and shorts to compete with TikTok, but a dedicated TikTok replacement app with rich features is still missing?
Develop a Short-video App Like TikTok With VPlayed?
Building a short-video app with VPlayed is more achievable with their guided plan and resources. VPlayed ensures that the app performs better without any technical challenges.
What is the Cost Charged by VPlayed?
VPlayed is the most-affordable and cost-effective platform to build your short-video app.
Considering all of its features they offer, and the budget-friendly video solutions, they will get the job done for $10,000 to $30,000.
You can also hire an app developer or team for hourly rates with VPlayed cutting down the extra expenses that comes with fancy platforms.
If you are in the middle of a short-video development stage, VPlayed’s experienced developers specialize in delivering promising app performance with high scalability.
As an advantage, post-launch updates are supported by VPlayed’s team to effectively manage your app infrastructure.
Our Verdict
Considering the market gap, this is a gateway for new TikTok-like apps to take the stage in huge marketplaces like India and the US.
Now is the right time you start developing your app!
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Very informative blog! Could you elaborate on the monetization strategies for an app like TikTok and what works best for smaller audiences?
This blog is so insightful! I’m curious, how can I start an app like TikTok with minimal investment while ensuring good functionality?
Quite insightful blog! Great analysis on how to build an app like tiktok app. Fantastic Content! .We appreciate your sharing.
Thank you for this post! How much time and budget would it take to develop an app like TikTok for a startup?
Great content! I’d like to know how to ensure data security and user privacy while creating an app like tiktok.
Excellent article on how to create an app like tiktok. I appreciate you sharing. I would like to learn more about your offerings.