How to Build an App Like IKEA Place: Features Tech and Cost

You have seen IKEA Place in action. A shopper holds up a phone, drops a sofa into an empty corner, walks around it, and sees whether it fits before spending a rupee or a dollar. Now you want something like it for your own furniture or homeware brand. This page is the honest engineering and money picture: what the app really does, the technology under it, where the cost actually goes, how long it takes, and when you should not build it at all.

What is IKEA Place, and is it hard to copy?

IKEA Place is IKEA's free augmented reality app, launched in 2017 on Apple's ARKit, that lets shoppers place true to scale 3D furniture in their own room through the phone camera. Copying the app idea is not hard. Copying the catalogue of thousands of products, kept current every season, is the hard part.

IKEA is a reference brand here, not an appico client. Their own newsroom is the best source for what the app does. IKEA states that all of the products in the app are 3D and true to scale, and that the app scales products with 98 percent accuracy, with more than 2,000 products at launch. When the app came to Android, IKEA put more than 3,200 IKEA products in 3D on ARCore compatible devices. Hold that 3,200 figure in mind. It is the reason the catalogue, not the camera, is the mountain you have to climb.

So the honest framing is this. The AR part is a solved problem you assemble from Apple and Google frameworks. The moat is the 3D catalogue and the operation that keeps it fresh. If you understand that from the start, you scope the project correctly. If you do not, you spend on a slick AR demo and then run out of budget making models.

What features does an app like IKEA Place need?

An app like IKEA Place needs three feature groups: an AR layer to place an item in the room at true scale and move it, a catalogue to search, filter and save products, and a commerce layer to add to cart, check stock and buy. Occlusion, so a chair hides behind a real table, and placing more than one item, are what make it feel real.

Split the work the way your users experience it. The AR must-haves are a live camera view, automatic floor detection, true to scale placement, the ability to move and rotate an item, and placing several pieces at once so someone can lay out a whole corner. Occlusion, where virtual furniture is hidden by real objects in front of it, is the single feature that separates a toy from a tool. Deciding which of these ship in version one is its own exercise, and our guide to the features that matter most in an AR furniture app goes deeper on that call.

Then comes the part most agency posts skip: the buy path. A view in room feature with no way to purchase is a marketing gadget, not a shopping app. You need catalogue browse and search, colour and size variants, saved favourites, a cart, checkout, delivery and stock information, and order history. The reason to bother is commercial: shoppers who see an item at true scale in their room buy with more confidence and are less shocked on delivery, which is how these apps reduce returns and lift sales when the models are good.

What technology powers an app like IKEA Place?

Two frameworks do the heavy lifting: Apple's ARKit on iPhone and iPad, and Google's ARCore on Android. Both use the camera and the phone's motion sensors to track where the device is in the room and to find flat surfaces like the floor, so a virtual item stays put at the right size while the user walks around it. Models ship as USDZ on Apple and glTF on Android.

Under the hood, Google describes ARCore as using simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM, to understand where the phone is relative to the world, plus plane detection, a Depth API and light estimation. ARKit does the same job on Apple devices. The two are close in capability but differ in device reach, APIs and the fine detail, which is why the choice deserves its own read: see ARKit vs ARCore compared for AR apps. If you would rather skip native apps entirely at first, weigh that against WebAR vs a native AR app before you commit.

The two file formats matter more than they sound. Apple's AR relies on USDZ, the format behind AR Quick Look in Safari, Messages and native apps. Android and the open web use glTF, usually the binary GLB form. A single product therefore needs both, exported from one source model. The trade offs between them are covered in what USDZ and glTF are and when to use each.

How the 98 percent accuracy actually works, and when it fails

IKEA's 98 percent scale accuracy is a real claim from IKEA, and it is worth explaining rather than repeating. The app does not measure your room with a tape. It estimates the floor plane and the real world scale from the camera and the motion sensors, then anchors the model to that plane. When lighting is good and the floor has texture, the estimate is close. Accuracy drops on plain single colour floors, in dim light, on shiny or reflective surfaces, and when the user moves the phone too fast and tracking drifts.

This is where depth hardware helps. A LiDAR sensor, found on Pro iPhones and iPads, measures distance directly and improves floor detection, occlusion and room scanning. It is an enhancement, not a requirement, and whether it earns its place is a real decision we cover in do you need LiDAR for an AR furniture app. LiDAR also powers Apple RoomPlan, which Apple describes as a Swift API that uses the camera and LiDAR scanner to create a 3D floor plan of a room, including dimensions and types of furniture. If a full room planner is on your roadmap, start with what Apple RoomPlan is and what it can do. And if precise sizing is core to your product, the mechanics of getting accurate AR measurements deserve their own study.

The real cost mountain: your 3D model catalogue

Here is the part every competing article glosses over. The single biggest driver of cost in an app like IKEA Place is not the AR code. It is producing and maintaining a 3D model for every product you want people to place. Remember IKEA's 3,200 products. Each one is a separate model that has to look right, sit at true scale, and load fast on a phone.

Each model has to be built or captured, cleaned up, given realistic materials, tested at scale in AR, and then exported to both USDZ and GLB. Two levers control quality against speed. The first is how you make the model: hand modelling in a tool like Blender gives control, while photogrammetry, building a model from many photos of the real product, is faster for some items but needs cleanup. The second is optimisation, because a phone cannot load a film grade model. You keep polygon counts sensible, compress geometry and textures so files stay small, and target a few megabytes per item so downloads are quick and the app does not overheat. Our walkthrough of making 3D models for an AR furniture app covers the whole pipeline.

Then it repeats. Every new season brings new products and retires old ones, and each change is another model through the same pipeline, checked on real devices, versioned and published to both platforms. That ongoing operation, not the one time build, is what separates a demo of ten items from a shopping app with thousands. Building that machine so it runs cheaply at volume is a discipline of its own, which is why we wrote how to build a 3D model catalogue at scale. Scope this honestly and the rest of the project falls into place.

How much does it cost to build an app like IKEA Place?

The honest answer is a range, because the drivers move a lot. On appico published pricing, a website starts from $1,000, an MVP from about $10,000, a mobile app from $12,000, and a larger catalogue driven build can run up toward $150,000. Maintenance is a separate monthly plan. Where you land inside that range depends mostly on catalogue size, platforms and AR depth.

We do not invent competitor price ranges or market size figures. What we can do is show you the levers, so you can see why one quote is $15,000 and another is six figures. The table below is the honest iceberg.

Read it as a set of dials, not a menu. A single platform build with a few dozen hero products, links out to your existing web store, and basic placement sits near the bottom of the range. Native iOS and Android from day one, thousands of models refreshed every season, occlusion and LiDAR, and a full in app store, sits near the top. Most brands should start low on these dials and turn them up once the app earns its place. For a deeper module by module view, read our dedicated breakdown of the cost to build an AR furniture app, and if you want a quick figure for your own scope, our project cost calculator is a faster start than a sales call. It also helps to see the same shape in a related retail build, our look at the cost and time to develop a virtual try on fashion app, where the model pipeline drives cost in the same way.

How long does it take to build an app like IKEA Place?

A focused first version usually takes a few months, not weeks, and runs across five phases: scope and a model pilot, core AR, the catalogue pipeline, commerce and backend, then testing and store review. The phase that stretches is the catalogue, because it grows with the number of products, not with the number of screens.

The most important phase is the first one. Take a single product all the way from source model to true scale placement in AR on a real phone, on both platforms, before you commit to hundreds. That pilot tells you your real cost per model and surfaces the ugly surprises early, when they are cheap to fix. Skipping it is the most common way these projects overrun. The full sequence, with what to build in each phase, is laid out in how to make an AR furniture app step by step. If you are earlier still and shaping the concept, start with how to turn an idea into an app.

What is the smallest useful version one?

The smallest useful version is often not a native app at all. WebAR lets a shopper tap a product on your website and view it in their room with no install, using AR Quick Look on iPhone and Scene Viewer on Android behind a tool like model-viewer. For many brands that is the right first step: cheaper, faster to ship, and enough to prove that customers actually use it.

WebAR has real limits. Tracking is less smooth, occlusion is weaker, and there is no offline catalogue or built in checkout. But it answers the only question that matters at the start, which is whether your customers place items and buy more when they can. If they do, you build the native app with confidence. The full comparison is in WebAR vs a native AR app. A native version one can also stay small: one product category, the best sellers, iOS first if that is where your customers are, and a link out to your existing store instead of a full in app checkout.

When is an app like IKEA Place not worth building?

Sometimes the honest answer is do not build it. An app like IKEA Place is not worth it when your range is small and simple, your average order value is low, or your customers already know exactly what they are buying. AR earns its cost when an item is expensive, hard to picture in a space, or often returned because it did not fit. It does little for a set of cushions.

Be honest about the catalogue moat too. IKEA's advantage is not the app, it is the thousands of true to scale models behind it and the operation that keeps them current. If you cannot commit to making and maintaining models for the products that matter, a beautiful AR shell over ten items will disappoint. A single embeddable 3D viewer on your product pages, or WebAR for your hero range, may deliver more value for less money.

Two more cases. If your buyers are mostly on older or budget Android phones, check the supported device list before you assume AR will reach them, and plan a non AR fallback so no one hits a dead end. And if AR is being added because a competitor has it, rather than because it solves a real sizing or confidence problem for your customer, the money is usually better spent elsewhere first.

Our take

An app like IKEA Place is very buildable in 2026. The AR frameworks from Apple and Google are mature, the file formats are settled, and the hard technical questions have known answers. The project succeeds or fails on two things that have nothing to do with the camera: the 3D catalogue and an honest scope. Get those right and the app feels like magic. Get them wrong and you ship an expensive demo.

appico builds these as a US and UK facing brand with a senior India team, on fixed scope transparent pricing, and you own the source code, the models and the accounts from day one. If you want to pressure test your idea, our app development team can scope the catalogue and the AR depth with you before a single model is made. When you are ready to move, you can start your AR build with us and we will begin with the one product pilot, not the sales deck.

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