How much does a website cost in Dubai?

Search for website cost in Dubai and you will find figures that seem to contradict each other. One agency publishes a starter site at under AED 1,000. Another puts a basic business site at AED 15,000 or more. Both are describing something real.

The word website covers very different products. At one end is a ready-made template with your logo and text dropped in. At the other is a custom platform with its own design, several languages and connections to your other systems. The hours involved are not comparable, and neither is the price.

Who does the work matters as much as what is built. Carril Agency, a Dubai studio, sorts the market by supplier: AED 3,000 to 15,000 for a freelancer, AED 15,000 to 45,000 for a small agency or studio, and AED 45,000 to 150,000 or more for a full-service senior agency. A larger team brings more planning and testing, and charges for it.

Below all of these sit do-it-yourself website builders, which Carril puts at AED 200 to 600 a month. They suit a first test of an idea. You do the work yourself, within the limits of the builder's templates.

The table shows price ranges that five Dubai agencies publish on their own websites. We read each page on 27 September 2026. These are their figures, not ours, and we have not checked what each one includes.

The agencies disagree, sometimes by a wide margin. One puts a basic site at AED 800 to 3,000. Another starts at AED 15,000. Nobody has made an error. Each agency describes the tier of the market it works in. A studio that sells fixed-price starter sites is pricing a different product from one that builds for corporate marketing teams.

Within any tier, six things move the price. Ask how each one is handled in your quote.

• Distinct page designs. Cost follows the number of different layouts, not the number of pages. Twenty pages that share four layouts cost far less than twenty unique ones.
• Languages. Arabic is a second design pass. Layouts mirror, type changes and copy is rewritten. Our Arabic and English guide explains what is involved.
• Content. If copy, photography and translations arrive ready, the build moves quickly. If the agency writes, shoots or translates, expect a separate line in the quote. Ron Studios puts professional copywriting for a ten-page site at AED 5,000 to 15,000.
• Integrations. A payment gateway, booking engine, property feed or CRM, the system that holds your customer records, each needs design, build and testing time.
• Catalogue size. For an online store, the number of products, variants and delivery rules affects set-up and data import more than design does.
• Motion. Animation and custom interactions are priced by complexity. They are worth paying for only where they help a visitor decide.

The build is a one-off cost. Three costs continue for as long as the site is live. Two of the agencies above publish figures for them.

• Domain. Your address on the web, renewed each year. The Web Makers publishes AED 40 to 120 a year. Ron Studios publishes AED 50 to 300 a year, depending on the ending you choose.
• Hosting. The service that stores the site and delivers it to visitors. The Web Makers publishes roughly AED 200 to 800 a year for a small business site. Ron Studios publishes AED 500 to 3,000 a year.
• Maintenance. Software updates, backups, security patches and small changes. Ron Studios publishes AED 500 to 3,000 a month. The Web Makers lists its own care plan at AED 299 a month.

Ask who holds the domain and hosting accounts. They should be registered in your company's name, so you keep control if you change supplier. Our website maintenance page sets out what a care plan covers.

Two quotes are comparable only if they describe the same thing. Before you look at the totals, put these questions to each one. Set the answers side by side. The gaps between the quotes usually explain the gap between the prices.

1. Does it state the number of page designs, not only the number of pages?
2. Is Arabic included, and does that cover design and copy or only translation?
3. Who writes the content and supplies the images?
4. Is each integration listed by name?
5. How many rounds of design changes are included?
6. Who owns the design, the code and the accounts after final payment?
7. What happens after launch, and what does it cost each month?
8. Does the figure include VAT?

The UAE applies VAT at a standard rate of 5 per cent. A supplier adds it to an invoice only if it is registered for VAT, so ask each supplier whether its figures include it. For any question about VAT, check with the Federal Tax Authority.

Start from what the site must do, not from a number. Write down the pages you need, the languages, the systems it must connect to and who will supply the content. A supplier can price that list. Nobody can price the word website.

Then decide which tier suits the business. A new company testing an idea may be well served by a simple site. A company whose enquiries depend on its website should weigh what a weak one costs in lost business. In both cases, ask for a fixed price against a written scope, so the figure you approve is the figure you pay.

Finally, add the running costs. A site that is cheap to build and costly to maintain can cost more over three years than the reverse. Ask each supplier for both figures.