Dow Jones Cuts Development Costs 50% With Flutter

Financial Services
Flutter

We built the mobile version of MarketWatch’s Virtual Stock Exchange game for Dow Jones in Flutter, one code base for iOS and Android. It launched in three months, at half the cost of building it natively.

lower development cost: 50%

1QuoteChart(

2 line: ,

3 fill: ,

4 grid: ,

5 stroke: ,

Hot reload ready

01The ask

Beat the new semester onto iOS and Android.

Dow Jones has brought business information to the world since 1882, starting as a niche news agency in a Wall Street basement. Its brands include The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Factiva, Dow Jones Newswires, and Financial News.

The MarketWatch team wanted to reach the education and university market with a feature-rich mobile version of its Virtual Stock Exchange game. It had to launch on iOS and Android before the new academic year began, about three months out.

In their words

“Thanks to Flutter and VGV, we delivered on our goal of building a fun, engaging, and performant app for all screens and mobile devices in significantly less time and cost than if we built it natively. The team and thousands of players are very happy with the results.”

SVP Consumer Technology, Dow Jones Clarence Kwei

02The build

Built once in Flutter, shipped to both stores.

Instead of writing and maintaining two native apps, the team built the game once in Flutter and deployed it to iOS and Android, with no duplicate engineering. Hot Reload and Flutter’s widget-based design let us iterate quickly without giving up design quality.

The app became an internal proof point at Dow Jones that modern frameworks can deliver cost savings and strategic value, and it set the company up to reuse code across future products.

03What changed

Half the price, and on time.

Three months

Launched on iOS and Android.

The game reached both app stores on a fast-tracked three-month timeline.
Half the cost

50% less than building it natively.

One Flutter code base took the place of two native builds.
A proof point

Flutter proved itself inside Dow Jones.

Cost savings and strategic value from one modern framework, and code ready to reuse on future products.

04If you’re next

What we’d tell a team in MarketWatch’s seat.

01
When the date is fixed, count the platforms first. Two native apps means two builds in the same window.
02
Keep the loop between design and code short. Hot Reload let the team polish while it built.
03
Treat the first Flutter app as a proof point. The code and the lessons carry into the next product.