Tool
What the UAE market charges.
The short answer
UAE software builds run from around AED 18,000 for a proof of concept to over AED 1,470,000 for an enterprise platform, with most mid-sized business builds landing at AED 92,000–294,000. Set the inputs below to narrow that to your kind of project.
What this is not
This is published market data, not a Qanat price. We do not quote from a rate card, because the price of any real project is decided by its scope rather than its category. Use this to set a budget and to sanity-check the quotes you receive — including ours.
Qanat builds custom web applications for UAE companies — dashboards, portals, booking systems, marketplaces. Every build is scoped in writing before it is priced, quoted once against that scope, and delivered with the repository sitting in your own organisation from the first commit.
What the market charges
AED 90,000 – AED 300,000
Published third-party market data, not a Qanat quote.
- Base band
- AED 90,000 – AED 300,000
- Your multiplier
- ×1.00
- Maintenance, per year
- AED 14,000 – AED 75,000
The base band is a published UAE market figure. The multipliers are our own rule of thumb from quoting this work — useful for budgeting, not a quote. Qanat prices a written scope, never a category — and doing that costs you nothing.
How this is calculated
Published bands, our multipliers, stated openly.
Base bands
Published 2026 UAE market figures where they exist — mobile, web, MVP, AI and chatbot builds. Where nobody publishes a figure for a scope, the band is derived from the AED 150–450 UAE agency hourly range, and the page says so.
GoodFirms — Mobile App Development Cost in Dubai 2026AI and automation bands
SME automation commonly runs AED 5,000–50,000 fixed price or AED 3,000–15,000 monthly; focused AI tools start around AED 80,000; enterprise LLM and RAG systems run far higher.
Skyline Advanced Technology — AI Solutions Cost in UAE 2026Multipliers
Complexity and the four modifiers are our own rule of thumb from quoting this work. They are not published market data and we do not present them as such.
Decipher Zone — Mobile App Development Cost in Dubai UAE: 2026 GuideMaintenance
15–25% of the original build cost per year, the UAE norm. It covers dependency and OS updates, store resubmissions, monitoring and small changes.
GoodFirms — Mobile App Development Cost in Dubai 2026
Want the reasoning rather than the arithmetic? The full UAE software cost guide breaks down where the money goes.
Questions
Estimating a build, answered
How accurate is a software cost estimator?
Useful for budgeting, not for signing. It tells you whether a project is a AED 50,000 conversation or a AED 300,000 one, which is the decision most people actually need. The variance inside a band comes from details no estimator can see, which is why nobody honest quotes from a category.
Why is the range so wide?
Because the same brief genuinely produces different builds. UAE software costs run from around AED 18,000 for a proof of concept to over AED 1,470,000 for an enterprise platform. Narrowing the range means narrowing the scope, and that is what the scoping call does.
What is not included in the estimate?
VAT, third-party licences and subscriptions, paid infrastructure beyond the first months, and content or data preparation on your side. Annual maintenance is shown separately at 15–25% of the build cost, which is the UAE norm.
Is this what Qanat would charge?
No. These are published market figures from third parties, shown so you can budget before speaking to anyone. Qanat quotes once, against a written scope, and that price is fixed. We publish this precisely because a category cannot be priced — only a scope can.
Start here
Want a real number for your project? Tell us the scope.
A scope call, then a written scope and one fixed price against it. 20% of that price is held back until you accept the finished build, and the scope is yours to take elsewhere either way.
- Who reads it
- Alexandre Arnaud, Founder & Engineer. Not a coordinator, not an inbox.
- What happens
- A 20-minute call to pin the outcome, then a written scope and one fixed price against it.
- What it costs
- Nothing to get scoped and quoted. The quote is free and the scope is yours to take elsewhere.