How much does UX design cost in Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Project quotes and subscriptions, in SAR and AED

The short answer: UX design in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is bought five ways, and only some of them have public prices. Dubai agencies that publish figures quote from AED 5,000 for a landing page to AED 150,000 or more for a complex mobile app, and AED 185 to AED 1,470 an hour depending on who does the work. A design subscription is a flat monthly fee; Recast's is $3,900, about SAR 14,625 or AED 14,323. Retainers and salaries are agreed in private, so this guide describes how they are built instead of guessing at them.

Every figure below names whose it is and links to where it is published. Where we could not find a figure we could attribute, the table says so. For prices in the US and UK, see the general cost guide.

How is UX design usually bought in the Gulf?

There are five ways to buy it.

• A project quote is a fixed price for a fixed scope, usually from a local agency. You agree the screens and the research up front and pay in stages.
• A retainer is a monthly fee for an agreed block of an agency's hours or days. It suits work that continues after a project ends.
• A freelancer is one designer billing by the hour or the day, directed by you.
• An in-house hire is a salaried designer on your payroll.
• A design subscription is a flat monthly fee for a design team that works through your requests as a queue. What a subscription is and is not covers the model in detail.

A project quote is the shape a purchase order expects: one scope, one number, one end date. The other four trade that certainty for flexibility, and they suit work that does not stop on a date.

What does each option cost?

Option	How it is priced	Published figure	Whose figure
Project quote from a local agency	Fixed price for a fixed scope, paid in stages	AED 5,000 for a simple landing page to AED 100,000+ for a full SaaS platform. Mobile app design: AED 15,000 to AED 150,000+	Katbi and Emirates Graphic, both Dubai agencies
Agency by the hour	Hourly or daily rate	AED 550 to AED 920 an hour at mid-size studios; AED 920 to AED 1,470 at top agencies	Katbi
Freelancer	Hourly or daily rate	AED 185 to AED 375 an hour	Katbi
Agency retainer	Monthly fee for a block of hours or days	No published figure found	Ask for the day rate behind it
In-house hire	Salary, allowances and recruitment	No figure we could verify at its source	Use a current salary survey
Subscription	Flat monthly fee	$3,900 a month, about SAR 14,625 or AED 14,323	Recast

At the dirham's fixed rate, the hourly figures run from about $50 to about $400.

Two cautions. These are two agencies' own published figures, not a market survey, and each agency frames the range its own way. And they are Dubai figures. We did not find a Saudi agency with a published price page to cite, so treat them as the nearest public reference for Riyadh or Jeddah, not as a Saudi quote.

What drives the price?

Four things move a quote more than the agency's name does.

Arabic and English versions. An Arabic screen is a version of the design, not a flipped copy. Type, numerals, icons and mixed-direction strings are all set again, and there are twelve places it usually goes wrong. Ask whether the quote prices Arabic as a second deliverable, as a percentage on top, or includes it. A quote that does not mention Arabic has not priced it.

Research. Interviews and usability sessions are priced per session or per round. Katbi's guide lists user interviews at AED 500 to AED 2,000 a session. Ask who recruits participants in the country and who runs the sessions in Arabic.

Procurement. A government or enterprise buyer may require vendor registration, a tender response, a security review and long payment terms. That is real work for the supplier and it is priced in. It can also decide who is allowed to bid.

Number of flows. Count flows and states, not screens. A sign-up flow is one flow, and a dozen frames once the empty, loading, error and success states exist in both languages. Katbi sizes a mobile app at 30 to 60 screens; ask any agency what it counts as a screen.

How do the dollar pegs and VAT change the comparison?

Both currencies are pegged to the US dollar, so a dollar price converts to the same local amount every month. The Saudi Central Bank holds the riyal at the official rate of 3.75 to the dollar. The dirham is fixed at 3.6725 to the dollar, and keeping that peg is the Central Bank of the UAE's stated policy. One dirham is therefore about SAR 1.02.

VAT is the other fixed number. The standard rate is 15% in Saudi Arabia, in force since 1 July 2020, and 5% in the UAE, in force since 1 January 2018. Check whether a quote includes it. SAR 100,000 before VAT is SAR 115,000 on the invoice; AED 100,000 is AED 105,000. How VAT applies to a service bought from a supplier outside the country is a question for your accountant.

Recast bills in US dollars. The plan is $3,900 a month, about SAR 14,625 or AED 14,323. The pilot is $490 once, about SAR 1,838 or AED 1,800.

How does a three-month project compare with three months of a subscription?

Take the design of a mobile app, a common three-month project. The project figures are the published ones above, converted at the pegs. Katbi's row for a 30 to 60 screen app tops out at AED 80,000 and 12 weeks.

Three months of design	USD	SAR	AED
Basic mobile app, Emirates Graphic's low figure	$4,084	SAR 15,317	AED 15,000
App of 30 to 60 screens, top of Katbi's range	$21,784	SAR 81,688	AED 80,000
Complex app with research, Emirates Graphic's high figure	$40,844	SAR 153,165	AED 150,000 and up
Recast plan, three months	$11,700	SAR 43,875	AED 42,968

Read it honestly in both directions. Against the low figure, the subscription costs nearly three times as much: a small, fixed scope is cheaper as a project. Against the AED 80,000 figure it costs a little over half, and against the AED 150,000 figure under a third.

The two also buy different things. A project buys one defined app by a date. Three months of a subscription buys a queue: unlimited tasks with five worked in parallel, unlimited revisions, Arabic and English on the same flow, a design system that is built and maintained, and front-end build hours. It does not buy forty screens by a fixed Friday. For a hard launch date with a large scope, a project team is the right shape.

Which option fits which situation?

• Project quote: a fixed scope, a hard date, or a tender that asks for one number.
• Retainer: continuing work with the agency that built the product.
• Freelancer: a defined piece of work, when someone in-house can direct and review it.
• In-house hire: enough continuous work for a full-time designer, and someone senior to review them.
• Subscription: a product that ships every week, a small team, and both languages on every flow.

What should you get in writing before comparing quotes?

Six things, whichever option you choose:

1. The currency, and whether VAT is included.
2. The name of the person doing the work, and who reviews it.
3. Whether Arabic is designed by someone who reads it, and whether it is in the price.
4. What a finished screen includes: every state, both languages, a spec and the source file.
5. Time to the first concept, in hours or days.
6. How it ends: notice, refunds and who owns the files.

The guide to choosing a design partner in the Gulf turns these into ten questions, with what a good answer sounds like.

Where Recast fits

Recast is a product design studio in Amman, Jordan, led by Daniel Makhamreh. It works remotely on one plan: $3,900 a month, billed monthly in US dollars, with no annual contract, a 14-day full refund, and a pause or a one-click cancel in any month. First concepts arrive in 48 hours, and Arabic is set by designers who read it. There are pages on how that works for teams in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

If a subscription looks like the right shape, the pricing page has the detail, and a free 20-minute pilot call, in English or Arabic, is the quickest way to find out whether your work fits. The $490 pilot is one week of the plan with up to three active tasks, credited against the first month.