Facebook is one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of Q3 2022. With so many users, Facebook has become a ubiquitous part of modern digital life. But have you ever wondered how much it would cost to create a platform like Facebook from scratch today?
In this article, we’ll explore the key factors that go into building a social media platform like Facebook and make some estimates around the costs involved at different scales. Some of the key questions we’ll look to answer include:
- How much did it cost Mark Zuckerberg to initially build Facebook?
- What are the core components needed to build a basic social media platform?
- How much do key elements like servers, bandwidth, and developers cost at different scales?
- What additional costs come with scaling a platform to hundreds of millions of users?
By breaking the build down into its core elements, we can come up with a rough estimate of the total costs involved at different milestones in a hypothetical new platform’s growth.
How Much Did It Cost Mark Zuckerberg to Initially Build Facebook?
Facebook was originally created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard students as a campus social network called “TheFacebook”.
The initial development costs were likely very low, as Zuckerberg built the first version of the site in his dorm room using his own coding skills along with the help of a small group of friends.
At the time, Zuckerberg was a 19-year old student so he did not need to pay himself or other developers. Servers and bandwidth costs would have also been negligible when the site was limited to Harvard students.
Overall, the initial costs to build TheFacebook would have been minimal, likely adding up to just a few thousand dollars at most funded out of Zuckerberg’s own pocket. Once the site opened up to other colleges, Zuckerberg was able to secure his first outside funding of $500k from Peter Thiel.
Core Components Needed for a Basic Social Media Platform
While the initial version of Facebook required minimal resources, building a comparable social media platform today from scratch would require funding even at a very basic stage. Here are some of the main components that would be needed:
Servers/Hosting
Any social platform needs servers to host the website and databases to store information like user profiles, posts, photos, videos, comments, likes, etc. For a very small-scale platform, basic shared hosting and a database server may be sufficient at first.
Bandwidth
To support users uploading and downloading data like videos and photos, substantial bandwidth is required. Costs scale up as the site gains more users and activity.
Development Team
A team of full-stack developers, UI/UX designers, and product managers is needed to build and maintain the platform. Outsourced or offshore teams can help reduce costs.
Legal, Compliance, and Moderation
Lawyers, compliance specialists, and moderators are needed to ensure adherence to regulations as well as prevent abuse.
Marketing
User acquisition and growth requires marketing spend for areas like social media advertising, influencer campaigns, and app store optimization.
Let’s look at some sample costs to build out and run these components for a very basic social media app with limited features and 1,000 daily active users:
Estimated Costs for a Basic Social Media App
| Component | Sample Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Shared Hosting | $100 |
| Database Server | $50 |
| Bandwidth | $100 |
| Initial Development | $25,000 |
| Ongoing Engineering | $5,000 |
| Legal | $1,000 |
| Marketing | $500 |
| Total | $6,750 |
So at very small scale of 1,000 daily active users, a basic social platform could be built and run for approximately $6,750 per month in ongoing costs, plus around $25,000 in initial development costs.
Of course, at such a small scale, it would be very hard to monetize the app to profitability with advertising or other business models. But this gives a sense of the minimum costs.
Scaling Costs Up for Millions of Users
The costs change dramatically once we start looking at scaling up to support millions or billions of users like the leading social platforms.
Let’s look at how some of the key cost elements would grow for a platform reaching 100 million daily active users:
Servers and Bandwidth
Supporting 100 million DAU would require a robust cloud infrastructure with thousands of servers across multiple regions. Bandwidth needs would be in the petabytes per month range.
Total monthly costs just for servers and bandwidth could easily scale up to millions of dollars per month.
Development Team
A much larger team would be needed to maintain the platform and rapidly develop new features at massive scale.
Facebook today employs over 60,000 people with around 20,000 focused just on engineering.
For our hypothetical 100 million user platform, an engineering team of at least 200-300 could be required at a monthly cost of $10 million or more.
Legal, Compliance, and Moderation
At major social media scale, thousands of people would be needed to moderate content, comply with regulations across different countries, and handle legal issues.
These teams and associated costs could easily grow to tens of millions of dollars per month.
Marketing
User acquisition costs also scale exponentially. Facebook spends over $10 billion per year just on sales, general, and administrative expenses including marketing.
For a new platform to gain 100 million users, many billions in marketing spend could be required over several years to rise above the incumbents.
Here is a summary of how monthly costs for a hypothetical social platform might look at 100 million DAU scale:
Estimated Monthly Costs at 100 Million Daily Active Users
| Component | Sample Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Servers and Bandwidth | $5,000,000 |
| Engineering Team | $10,000,000 |
| Legal, Compliance, Moderation | $20,000,000 |
| Marketing | $50,000,000 |
| Total | $85,000,000 |
So while a basic social media app can be built for tens of thousands of dollars, once you reach massive scale, the monthly costs can easily exceed $85 million.
And this doesn’t even include office rent, payroll, customer support and other operating expenses that could add tens or hundreds of millions more per month.
Nor does it account for the billions likely required in venture capital or other financing to fund losses during the initial years as the platform is scaled up.
Conclusion
In summary, creating a full-scale social platform similar to Facebook would likely cost:
- Tens of thousands of dollars for an initial basic product
- Hundreds of millions in startup funding to scale users and operations
- Billions in marketing and operating expenses over several years to reach hundreds of millions of users
- Over $85 million per month in ongoing costs once at massive scale
While Mark Zuckerberg was able to build the foundations for Facebook from his dorm room, replicating that scale today would be a massive financial undertaking. Still, for entrepreneurs and investors willing to make bold bets, the potential rewards of building the next great social platform continue to drive interest and funding in the space.
The staggering user bases and revenue generated by the leading social apps tend to outweigh their multi-billion-dollar price tags for those pursuing the dream of creating the next Facebook. Whether such a meteoric rise can be replicated in today’s crowded market remains to be seen.