How much does a website cost in Dubai?
Nobody will give you a straight answer to this, which is why you are reading a fourth article about it. Most agency pricing pages say 'contact us', because a number you cannot compare is a number you cannot reject. We publish ours, so here is the honest version, including the parts that do not flatter us.
The actual ranges in this market
For a small business in Dubai in 2026, a custom website generally lands in one of three bands. Under 3,000 AED you are buying a template with your logo dropped into it, usually assembled offshore. Between 3,500 and 14,000 AED you are buying design work and a build made for your business specifically. Above 15,000 AED you are buying either scale, a storefront, complex integrations, or an agency with an office and a team to pay for.
All three are legitimate purchases. The mistake is not picking the cheap one; it is paying middle-band money for the template, which happens constantly because from the outside the two are hard to tell apart.
What actually moves the number
- Page count. Not linearly. Ten pages does not cost five times two pages, because the system is built once and the pages sit inside it.
- Whether the content exists. This is the biggest hidden cost. A client with copy and photography ready is a fundamentally cheaper project than one where somebody has to write it.
- What it has to connect to. Payments, bookings, a CRM, a delivery service. Each integration is a thing that can break and therefore a thing that has to be tested.
- Whether you need to edit it yourself. Editable content is a genuine cost and worth every dirham if you post more than a few times a year.
- Motion and custom interaction. Real work, and the first thing to cut if the budget is tight.
Three quotes to be suspicious of
A quote of 1,500 AED for a full custom website. Nobody in this city can design, build and test a real site for that. It is either a template, a subcontract to somebody being paid very little, or a low number that grows once you are committed.
A quote with no scope attached. A fixed price against an unfixed scope is not a fixed price; it is a change request waiting to be raised the moment you ask for something reasonable. Ask for the scope in writing before you ask for a discount.
A monthly fee with no ownership. Some 'website subscriptions' never hand you anything. Stop paying and the site disappears, because you were renting it. That can be fine if you know it. It is not fine if nobody told you.
A cheap website that produces no enquiries is not cheap. It is the most expensive thing on the list, because you pay for it twice.
The questions that change the price
Before you ask anyone for a number, you can narrow your own range by answering four things: roughly how many pages, do you have photos and words ready, does it need to take bookings or payments, and will you edit it yourself. A studio that cannot quote from those four answers is not quoting, it is guessing.
Ours are published rather than hidden:
What we charge, and why
Most of our projects land between 3,500 and 14,000 AED, and larger builds go above that. We publish the ranges because the alternative wastes an hour of your time and an hour of ours discovering we were never in the same bracket. And because a studio unwilling to say what it charges is telling you something before the call even starts.
The one thing we do differently on money: you see and sign off the full design before the final invoice. If it is not right, you do not pay the balance. That is not generosity, it is what removes the risk that stops most people commissioning a site at all.
