How To Make an App Like TikTok

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Tl;DR:

• Short videos are appealing and engaging, especially to younger audiences.
• Competing with established companies is hard, but you can find a unique niche, a distinct feature, or a market gap.
• Plan your minimum viable product features and monetization strategy in advance.
• Building an app like TikTok takes a lot of time, money and effort. It can be made easier through the use of video editing SDKs and other similar tools.

The allure of short-form video

TikToks and Reels are at the top of the content totem pole right now. They have the engaging nature of a video but deliver on their promise quickly. No wonder they receive 2.5 times the engagement rate of long-form videos.

Part of it comes from the peer-to-peer nature of this content. Making a TikTok is easy, as there are plenty of tools to turn any footage into a viral clip. This makes it accessible to anyone, and people are more inclined to trust someone like them.

Another part is its length (or lack thereof). While the correlation between TikTok and short attention spans is a chicken-or-an-egg question, modern viewers like short videos. Most of TikTok’s viewers are 18-24 years old.

Finally, there is a matter of filters and effects. From subtle retouching to impressive 3D masks, social media like TikTok offer a huge number of options to spice up the videos. They can be applied with a couple of clicks, which means anyone can create viral content and become an influencer.

Exploring existing platforms

There was a short video app before TikTok – Vine, where many of today’s popular influencers (e.g. Paul brothers) had their start. The technology has gone a long way since then, so if you want to create your own video sharing app, you need to see what modern social media are like.

TikTok

The Chinese powerhouse got to where it is thanks to a combination of easy content creation, straightforward monetization, and addictive content delivery algorithms. TikTok’s feed is automated, as it monitors the user’s preferences and shows the videos that they might like. A virtually endless stream of content ensures high engagement and long session time.

TikTok features include:

• AI-curated feed
• Video creation and editing
• Music provider integration
• Picture-in-picture mode (Duet)
• Filters and effects for people and pets
• In-app currency
• Connection to Facebook and Instagram
• Live streaming 
• Etc.

Over the years, the network also had to build expansive and robust infrastructure. Massive popularity also means massive bandwidth and storage requirements. Geeks for Geeks have made a great estimation of TikTok system design showcasing how much it needs. 

The same company also own Capcut – a powerful video editing tool for short-form content.

Recently, this platform’s main vulnerability has been a political one. TikTok has been sanctioned in 16 countries, with the latest threat coming from the USA – its most lucrative market.

Likee

How to make a TikTok clone? Make Likee. Its design and functionality are similar, but its positioning is more focused on children and teenagers. Likee is also not as popular, although with 300M+ users it still maintains a significant market share.

It had its share of controversies too. However, in the case of Likee, they are centered around its moderation (or lack thereof). Various bad actors often post content that is inappropriate for the platform and the admins take too long to remove it.

Instagram Reels

Reels is a social media like TikTok built into an already existing platform. It lets users create, modify, and share clips up to 90 seconds in length. While watching Reels is accessible to anyone, not every user can create them. 

They are also known for pioneering templates – presets with certain music and timing. They are available for any video with at least three clips, and the clips themselves are selected by each individual user. While templates are convenient, there is a more advanced option – AI clipping.

Building your vision: from idea to app

You might be asking “can I create an app like TikTok?” The answer is yes, as long as you are methodical about it. In this section, we will show you a step-by step process of how to make a video sharing app.

Ideation

The market can seem to be saturated, with giant corporations holding most of it. While it’s true that it’s extremely hard to break into the general-purpose social media industry, you can definitely make it if you focus on a specific niche. 

For example, the founder of Press Sports chose to target student athletes, their parents, coaches, talent scouts and everyone else involved in sports. The goal was to connect them and streamline the process of finding the best players for college teams – and get scholarships to the prospective MVPs. As a result, the app found popularity among both its target audience and investors. Not to mention that it brought athletes and scouts the desired results, strengthening Press Sports’ reputation.

Another option is to exploit the gap in the market. When India decided to outright ban TikTok, the founder of Chingari quickly made an app to replace it and got over 30 million downloads. 

Finally, you can offer certain features that no one else has. This will let you immediately stand out from the crowd. House of Rock went this way and became the first social network to offer concert and plane tickets, as well as car and apartment rentals. Their target audience – young people that enjoy music and travel – was excited and impressed. 

Bruteforcing your way would require a lot of money and effort, but if you find an opportunity, you won’t have to worry about the competition.

Feature planning

Even the most well-established platforms regularly expand their scope with new functionalities, which means the idea of launching with decades worth of features is naive. The most balanced approach is starting with a minimum viable product (MVP) – the version of your app that contains enough features to serve the users and stand out from the crowd.

There are many ways to select the right scope for the initial release, for example:

• Value/complexity quadrant. Draw a vertical and a horizontal axes. One would signify how much benefit will a certain feature grant, the other would stand for how hard it would be to develop. Place your planned functionalities accordingly. The ones that are low-complexity but high-value should definitely go into the MVP. Others will depend on your budget.
• Feature buckets. Split your features into three groups (“buckets”): requests, metric movers, and ribbons. The first ones are those that users specifically ask for. The second ones are those that can improve important metrics (e.g. session time). The third ones are minor improvements that are just nice to have.
• MoSCoW matrix. It’s similar to the value/complexity quadrant and is basically an acronym for “Must-haves, Should-haves, Could-haves, Won’t-haves.”
• Priority list. Assign a number to each feature. The lower (or higher, whatever you prefer) its number, the more important it is for your MVP.

You won’t have the time or the budget for everything, so you will have to choose. Moreover, quick and cheap launch will ensure that you will quickly start getting user feedback and risk less money.

Monetization strategy

Many companies prefer to focus on user acquisition first and think about monetization later. But in the case of social media there already are proven methods of creating a revenue stream.

• Advertising. Running targeted ads on your platform is the most straightforward way to monetize your users.
• Subscriptions. Selling access to premium options or special features (like verification on X) is a way to make money from social media.
• Portion of the donations. TikTok allows users to reward streamers with digital gifts from the social network’s store. The creators can convert these gifts back into real money, but the platform takes a small cut of the donations.
• Live commerce. Integrating product detection and a payment processing system lets you attract merchants that would benefit from your audience in exchange for a cut of the profits.
• Data monetization. Selling anonymized user data to interested parties (e.g. for market research) is a popular monetization option. However, the gathering policy should be ethical and compliant with regulations like GDPR.

Development

This topic alone could take several articles, as TikTok app development is a complicated topic with many things that warrant attention. We will try to condense the basics so that you have a general overview.

Firstly, you need to decide on the team that will deliver your app. The two main choices are in-house developers or a custom development company. 

Your own development team will be more expensive and take time to put together. It will also be easier to control and be more reliable. Custom software companies are usually cheaper, as they often have offshore development centers in countries with lower living standards. They could also have experience in social media apps, ensuring quicker and more reliable product. However, they could also be harder to manage, and finding a reputable one is a task in itself. 

Then it’s a matter of choosing a technology stack. For mobile app part (there is also a back end supporting it), you have two main options. The first is native technologies endorsed by the creators of the respective platforms (Java/Kotlin for Android and Swift/C# for iOS). The second is cross-platform frameworks, e.g. React Native or Flutter.

Native technologies offer the best performance and the easiest access to platform-specific features like biometric authentication. However, they are also more expensive, as you need to make two apps – one for each platform.

React Native and Flutter can let you create your video sharing app up to 30% faster and cheaper. That is, if you are willing to compromise on performance a bit.

How much does it cost to make an app like TikTok?

We have an entire article on this topic. 

In short, it’s going to be expensive, though giving a precise number is impossible. The MVP of a TikTok competitor is estimated to take around 15,152 man-hours to complete. This includes everything from setting the project up and drawing buttons to testing the features. 

To make an MVP version of an app like TikTok, you’ll need the following specialists:

• 2-5 Android developers
• 2-5 iOS developers
• 2-3 backend developers
• 2-3 QA engineers
• 1 designer
• 1 product manager

If their blended rate (average hourly cost) is $50, the total development costs would be $757.600. 

However, this all depends on the scope, the team rates, and possible complications along the way. 

How to make the development cheaper?

There are ways to make the development cheaper. Besides using cross-platform frameworks, you can implement software development kits (SDKs) and get certain features quickly and cheaply. 

An SDK is a ready-made module that comes prepackaged with many features and usually takes under an hour to integrate. For example, Banuba Video Editor SDK is a full-fledged audiovisual content creation suite that usually takes under an hour to install. And it includes:

• Video recording
• Trimming/merging
• Transition effects
• 3D masks
• Background changer
• Rapid/slo-mo
• Picture-in-picture
• Color filters
• Music provider integration
• AI clipping
• Etc.

It is compatible with both native and cross-platform technologies. 

Advantages of Banuba Video Editor SDK:

• Quick integration. Implementing it usually takes under an hour, while developing similar functionality from scratch could take many months.
• Large feature set. All the tools your users need to create viral videos.
• Flexible integration options. Choose SDK or API version depending on whether you prefer the standard settings or need deep customization.
• Cost-effectiveness. A yearly license costs a small fraction of what it would cost to develop same features from the ground up.
• Feel free to try it out and see everything for yourself.

The Road to Success: Resources and Considerations

Besides building the app, remember, that you will also need to promote it, so that your target audience learns about your product’s existence. Budget accordingly.

To learn more about app development and meet like-minded people, you can use the following resources:

• Online tutorials and learning platforms. Udemy, Coursera, and even dedicated YouTube channels could help guide you through each step of the development process.
• Development communities and forums. StackOverflow, GitHub, and certain subreddits are good places to ask questions and join communities.
• Meetups and hackathons. These are places where you can find partners, developers, or other useful connections.
• Open source projects. Collaborating on such applications can teach you something new and help meet someone to start your own project with.

Conclusion: turn your vision into reality

Short videos are the most popular kind of content, and all the top social media capitalize on it. TikTok, Likee, and Instagram are the leaders in this trend. To develop your own social media like TikTok, you need to find something to distinguish yourself (e.g. unique niche or feature), gather a team, prioritize features for an MVP and get to work. This is a project that requires a lot of time and money, but you can make it faster by using a video editor SDK. Don’t hesitate to start a free trial and see it for yourself.