A small-business website in Dubai costs AED 800 to AED 1,200 for a basic template site, AED 15,000 to AED 20,000 from a small local agency, and around AED 10,000 as the typical figure in 2026. Corporate sites run AED 15,000 to AED 275,000 and beyond; enterprise builds reach AED 500,000. A bilingual Arabic and English version adds AED 2,000 to AED 8,000 at local rates. Our own UAE business websites land between AED 5,000 and AED 12,000, with bilingual builds quoted on the same basis, and the rest of this post explains what each of those numbers buys.
Dubai's range is wider than most markets because the market itself is layered: template shops at the bottom, Western and Emirati agencies at the top, and a large middle where quotes routinely carry an offshore line item — AED 92 to AED 183 an hour — inside a local proposal. That means you are often already paying an Indian rate with a Dubai margin on top, whether or not the proposal says so. Reading a quote here starts with asking who does the work.
Dubai website pricing, 2026
Indicative figures in dirhams, dated to August 2026, from published UAE pricing guides. Most are written by agencies, so treat the ranges as market consensus rather than audited data.
| What you are buying | Typical range (AED) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic template site | AED 800 – AED 1,200 | Template with your logo; often no real CMS |
| Small-business site, small agency | AED 15,000 – AED 20,000 | Custom design, a CMS, the technical basics done properly |
| Small-business site, typical | AED 10,000 | The figure the guides converge on |
| Mid-sized or corporate site | AED 15,000 – AED 275,000+ | More pages, distinct layouts, integrations, often bilingual |
| Bilingual Arabic and English add-on | AED 2,000 – AED 8,000 | Right-to-left layout, mirrored UI, Arabic typography |
| Shopify store | AED 4,000 – AED 30,000 | Theme-based at the bottom, custom at the top |
| Custom ecommerce | AED 18,000 – AED 550,000 | Basic plug-in store to fully custom or headless |
Do you need an Arabic version?
For most private business-to-business work in Dubai, English is the functional language and an English-only site is normal. Arabic becomes necessary in three cases: government or semi-government work, regulated sectors where Arabic documentation is expected, and anything retail-facing where a meaningful share of your customers read Arabic first. If you are in one of those, budget for it as a real build rather than a translation, because a proper Arabic version means a right-to-left layout with the interface mirrored, Arabic typography that renders well on phones, and every form, menu and error message checked in both directions. That is why the local add-on runs AED 2,000 to AED 8,000 rather than the cost of translating the copy.
If you are unsure, the honest test is your enquiry inbox. If the questions arriving already come in Arabic, the site should answer in Arabic. If they come in English, an English site with the bilingual version planned as a second phase is usually the better use of the budget — and a well-structured English build is easy to extend later, which is worth asking any developer about before you sign.
What the Dubai hourly rates tell you
Every fixed quote is an hourly rate multiplied by an estimate of hours. Dubai agencies bill AED 300 to AED 800 an hour; freelancers AED 150 to AED 500; and the offshore line inside many local proposals sits at AED 92 to AED 183. So a AED 15,000 site from a local agency is somewhere between twenty and fifty hours of work depending on who does it, and a AED 1,000 template site is two or three hours once the template is chosen. Two or three hours cannot cover custom design, a content management system you can genuinely edit, image optimisation, and the technical work that decides whether the site loads fast and whether Google can read it — which is what the typical AED 10,000 pays for.
Where a build from India sits in this market
Our UAE business websites run AED 5,000 to AED 12,000 depending on page count and complexity — above the template band and inside the local small-agency range at its lower end. A Media City or DIFC address, a visa-sponsored team and expat salaries all sit inside the quote a local agency gives you; we carry none of that overhead, and it shows up as a lower number. Bilingual Arabic and English builds are quoted on the same basis. Shopify builds run AED 6,000 to AED 15,000, and the full UAE price list is on our pricing page so you can read it before you speak to anyone.
Every build ships with the same handover — code, hosting account, domain and analytics in your name from day one — a CMS walkthrough recording, and documentation another developer could pick up. Timelines are three to five weeks from kickoff for a straightforward business site and six to twelve for larger builds. We are building the UAE as a priced market rather than pointing you to a client list; what you get instead is published prices, a registration you can verify, and a small paid first step so you can judge the work before committing further.
The red flags Dubai buyers are warned about
UAE guides on checking whether an agency is legitimate name the same pattern rather than a price floor: vague or drip-fed pricing that only becomes clear after you have committed, no visible trade licence or registration, requests to pay into a personal bank account, and a business you can only reach on WhatsApp. Any one of those is a reason to slow down. The corresponding checks are simple — a written quote with the scope and the hours in it, a registration number you can look up, an invoice from a company account, and a named person with an email address who answers it.
- How many hours does the quote fund, and who does them — in Dubai or offshore?
- Is Arabic in the quote as a build, as a translation, or as a phase two?
- Can I edit my own pages after launch without paying you again?
- Who owns the code, the hosting, the domain and the analytics when it is finished?
- Is the price a fixed quote, and how are changes priced?
VAT, payment terms and the working day
The UAE's 5% VAT applies to us like any cross-border supplier: if your business is VAT-registered, the reverse charge means you self-account for it and we invoice without adding it. If you are not registered, tell us before we start and we will check the treatment rather than guess. Invoices are in dirhams as an export of services from India, with no Indian GST added, and payment goes to local AED account details held through a licensed provider, so it is an ordinary local transfer. Net 45 to 60 is common for mid-market work in the UAE, and we agree a staged schedule you see before you commit. The full mechanics are on our UAE page.
The time zone barely counts as a gap. India is an hour and a half behind the UAE, so a question asked at 11am in Dubai is answered the same afternoon — there is no overnight handover to plan around, and the weekend has aligned with the global Saturday–Sunday since 2022. It is the one market we serve where the working day is effectively shared.
Two things to budget for after launch. Hosting and small updates are modest and recurring. And because WhatsApp reaches roughly 90% of the UAE, an enquiry form is rarely the whole story — many businesses here connect the site to WhatsApp automation from day one, and we wrote up what Meta actually charges per message so that cost is visible before you decide. If you already have a site and want to know whether it needs replacing or repairing, run it through our free website grader first; it takes about a minute and the result is yours whatever you decide.