Web Design & Development · the UAE
What a website costs in the UAE
Ask three agencies in the UAE what a website costs and you can get three answers an order of magnitude apart. That is not evasion — the same two-word brief covers a template landing page and a custom platform with authentication, integrations and an audit trail. This page sets out what the market actually publishes, and what moves a project between those extremes.
The figures below were taken from 17 published price lists and cost guides read in August 2026. They are stated in dirhams exactly as published — nothing converted, rounded or averaged. They are market rates, not Intrazero's prices.
Published AED ranges
Each line is the span between the lowest and highest published figure we found for that service in the UAE. Where only one source publishes a service, that is stated — one agency's price list is a data point, not a market rate.
- Landing page or simple site: 850 – 28,000 AED (6 published sources)
- Corporate or business website: 1,500 – 145,000 AED (9 published sources)
- E-commerce store: 500 – 250,000 AED (12 published sources)
- Custom web platform or portal: 40,000 – 1,800,000 AED (3 published sources)
- Mobile application: 12,000 – 750,000 AED (6 published sources)
Why the same brief varies 97×
The spread is real and it is explainable. Most of the difference is not margin — it is scope that the word "website" hides. One more thing worth knowing in this market specifically: Arabic-language price guides tend to quote figures far below English-language ones for the same brief. Neither is dishonest — they are describing different tiers of the market — but a buyer reading only one language will form an expectation the other half of the market will not meet.
The cheapest tier is a template configured with your content: fast, cheap, and genuinely right for a small brochure site. The most expensive is bespoke software that happens to be reached through a browser. Between them sit decisions about design, content, integration and compliance that each move the number.
- Template versus bespoke design — the single biggest factor
- Number of distinct page templates, not number of pages
- Whether content is static or driven by a CMS your team edits
- Authentication, user roles and permissions
- Integrations with existing systems — ERP, CRM, payment, government services
- Bilingual Arabic-English scope, which affects design, content and QA
- Compliance review, security testing, and whether hosting must be in-country
Arabic and English price guides describe two different markets
This is the one finding in the whole survey that changes how you should read a quote. In the UAE, Arabic-language price guides anchor buyers roughly ten times below English-language ones for the same brief — one Arabic source puts an e-commerce store at AED 1,500 to 5,000 while English guides for the same thing say AED 15,000 to 110,000. Neither is dishonest; they describe different tiers of a genuinely split market. But a buyer who reads only one language will form an expectation the other half will not meet. Above roughly AED 15,000 the published data thins out sharply: no UAE agency we found publishes a mobile app, custom platform or enterprise rate card at all.
How to compare quotes that look nothing alike
When two quotes differ by a factor of ten, the useful question is not which is cheaper but what each includes. These are the questions that make quotes comparable — and the ones that surface the costs that appear after launch rather than in the proposal.
- Is the design bespoke or a configured template?
- Who owns the code and the hosting account at the end?
- Is the CMS included, and can non-technical staff edit without a developer?
- What happens to Arabic — is right-to-left designed in, or added afterwards?
- What is excluded: content, photography, translation, SEO, training?
- What does year two cost — hosting, maintenance, support?
FAQ
How much does a website cost in the UAE?
Published price lists in the UAE span 850 – 28,000 AED (6 published sources) at the simplest end, rising to the figures shown above for custom platforms. The honest answer is that "website" describes both a template brochure site and bespoke software, and the price follows the scope rather than the label. The ranges here come from 17 published sources read in August 2026.
Why do quotes differ so much for the same brief?
Because the brief is doing a lot of hidden work. A template configured with your content and a custom-designed site with authentication, integrations and an audit trail are different engagements that share a name. Most of a serious project's budget goes to things a visitor never sees — permissions, integrations, security review, and the bilingual QA that Arabic and English both need.
Are these Intrazero's prices?
No. Every figure on this page is what other companies publish about the the UAE market, taken from 17 published price lists and cost guides in August 2026. We publish them because buyers search for cost and deserve a straight answer. For what a specific project would cost with us, the scope has to be discussed first — anyone quoting before that is guessing.
Is a cheaper website a false economy?
Not necessarily. For a small brochure site a template is often exactly right, and paying for bespoke design would be waste. It becomes a false economy when the site has to do something — take payments, hold user accounts, integrate with another system, or serve two languages properly — because retrofitting those into a template usually costs more than building for them from the start.
What does bilingual Arabic and English add?
More than a translation line. Right-to-left changes layout mirroring, form and table alignment, icon direction, number and date formatting, and how mixed Arabic-Latin strings break across lines. Each language also needs its own metadata, URLs and structured data to rank independently. Designed in from the start it is a modest addition; retrofitted after launch it is consistently more expensive.
What are the costs that appear after launch?
Hosting, maintenance, content updates and support. Some published price lists in this market quote these separately and some fold them into year one, which is a common reason two quotes stop being comparable. Ask explicitly what year two costs before signing.
How current are these figures?
They were read from live published pages in August 2026 and are stated in dirhams exactly as published. Where a source page carried an older date, that is reflected in our records. Prices move, so treat these as a survey of what the market was publishing at that time rather than a quote.
Get a figure that reflects your actual scope
Tell us what the site has to do and we will scope it properly rather than quote a range. Intrazero has built corporate sites, citizen portals and custom platforms across MENA since 2016.
Tell us what the site has to do and we will scope it properly rather than quote a range. Intrazero has built corporate sites, citizen portals and custom platforms across MENA since 2016.
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