Guide · 13 min read · 2026-08-18
Web design in Saudi Arabia
What web design costs in Saudi Arabia, how long it takes, what bilingual actually requires, and how to choose a company — with published price ranges.
Website cost in Saudi Arabia is set by scope, not by city: page count, whether content is written for you or supplied, integrations, and how many approval rounds the project carries. Most corporate projects take six to ten weeks. The variable that matters most to quality is whether Arabic is designed independently or mirrored from English.
| What sets the price | Scope — pages, content, integrations, approval rounds |
|---|---|
| What does not | Your city. The same brief costs the same everywhere |
| Brochure site | Typically 4–6 weeks |
| Corporate site with CMS | Typically 6–10 weeks |
| Ecommerce | Typically 10–16 weeks |
| VAT | 15%, added to any quote |
| What should transfer to you | Source code, design files, domain, hosting, analytics |
What actually drives the price
Nobody can quote a website from a category name, and any agency that gives you a number before understanding the scope is either guessing or anchoring you. What they can do is tell you which variables move the figure, so you can read two quotes side by side and understand why they differ.
Four things account for most of the spread between a cheap quote and an expensive one for what looks like the same site.
| Page count and depth | Not just how many pages, but how many are genuinely different. Twelve pages built from three templates is a fraction of the work of twelve individually composed pages. |
|---|---|
| Who writes the content | The single largest hidden variable. "Client supplies content" quotes look cheaper and then stall for months. Bilingual content written for you costs more and finishes. |
| Integrations | A contact form is trivial. A booking engine, a payment gateway with mada, a CRM handoff or an ERP lookup each add real engineering. |
| Approval rounds | The cost nobody quotes for. One accountable decision-maker versus four departments with sign-off can double the calendar and the effort on an identical brief. |
Why we do not publish a price list
We used to. It attracted enquiries that were shopping the number rather than the problem, and it anchored conversations before anyone had established what the site actually needed to do. A published range also punishes the honest quote: the agency that scopes properly looks expensive next to one that quotes low and bills the difference in change requests.
So we quote after a free thirty-minute scoping call, at a fixed price, in writing, usually within 48 hours. If the scope and the budget do not fit each other, we say so on the call rather than sending a proposal neither party believes in.
What to do with your budget: tell the agency the range you have in mind. Some people withhold it, expecting to be quoted up to it. In practice the opposite happens — without a range, the agency guesses, and guesses badly in both directions. With one, you find out quickly whether what you want is achievable for what you have.
What makes a quote suspicious
A number without a scope. If the proposal does not list what is included and, more importantly, what is excluded, it is designed to produce change requests.
A price far below the market for a bilingual site. Very cheap bilingual work almost always means a purchased theme with machine-translated Arabic. That is a legitimate product if you know that is what you are buying — the problem is when it is sold as custom.
A monthly "licence" for the website itself. Hosting, maintenance and support are fair monthly charges. The site is not.
Rankings promised as part of the build. Nobody can promise a position. Launch establishes the foundations; ranking is separate, ongoing work and should be quoted separately.
How long it takes
Six to ten weeks for a corporate site, from kickoff to launch. Brochure sites can be four to six. Ecommerce runs longer, typically ten to sixteen weeks depending on catalogue and integration complexity.
The honest caveat: the build is rarely what causes delay. Content approval is. Projects that slip almost always slip because copy, images and legal sign-off arrive late — which is why we agree the content model and the approval chain in writing before design begins, and why a project with one accountable decision-maker finishes faster than one with a committee.
What "bilingual" actually requires
This is the section worth reading carefully, because it is where the money is either well spent or wasted.
A bilingual Saudi website is not one design shown in two languages. Arabic and Latin scripts have different vertical rhythm, different optimal line lengths, and different relationships between weight and legibility. Arabic has no capital letters, so hierarchy has to be built with size, weight and space rather than case. And Arabic reads right to left, which changes layout, navigation and the direction of anything that implies movement.
Done properly, that means:
- Separate type scale per script
- Independent RTL layout, not a mirror
- Arabic written by Arabic writers
- Numerals kept LTR inside Arabic text
- Direction-aware icons and motion
- hreflang linking the two trees
- Both trees genuinely maintained
That last point causes more long-term damage than any design decision. Plenty of Saudi sites launch with excellent Arabic and then update only the English side for three years, because nobody resourced bilingual publishing. The Arabic tree slowly becomes wrong, and Arabic is usually where most of the search opportunity was.
A test before you sign: ask to see the agency's own Arabic pages, and ask who writes their Arabic. If the answer is "we use a translation plugin", you have learned what your Arabic will be.
What you should own when it is finished
All of it. Specifically: source code, design source files, domain registration in your own account, hosting account in your own name, and analytics and Search Console properties owned by you with the agency added as a user.
This matters more than it sounds. The most common bad outcome in this market is not a poor website — it is a decent website the client cannot move, because the domain sits in the agency's registrar account and the code was never handed over. Ask about handover in the first call, and get the answer in the proposal.
How to choose a web design company in Saudi Arabia
Six questions that separate serious suppliers from the rest:
1. Who writes the Arabic? If the answer involves a plugin, expect translated Arabic.
2. Can I see three sites you built that are still live? Not mockups. Live URLs you can open, in Arabic, on your phone.
3. What Core Web Vitals do those sites pass? A supplier who cannot answer this has not been measuring, and speed is not something you retrofit cheaply.
4. What exactly transfers to me at handover? The list above. In writing.
5. What is out of scope? A proposal that only lists inclusions is designed to produce change requests.
6. Who will actually do the work? Whether it is the people in the meeting or a subcontracted team you will never meet.
Does it matter which city your web designer is in?
Less than it used to, and less than local agencies imply. Design and development are remote-first now, and the meaningful differences are capability and accountability rather than postcode.
What does matter is whether the supplier understands your market. Search behaviour, language balance and buying process differ substantially between cities — Riyadh's formal procurement cycles look nothing like Jeddah's relationship-driven trading economy, and neither resembles the technical, English-heavy procurement in Dhahran or the seasonal tourism demand in Abha.
One caution worth stating plainly: be sceptical of agencies claiming a physical office in every Saudi city. It is easy to check, it is frequently untrue, and an agency willing to misrepresent its own address is telling you something about the schema it will write for you. We are in Jeddah, we serve every major Saudi city from there, and we say so on every page.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in Saudi Arabia?
It is set by scope rather than by city: how many genuinely different pages, whether the agency writes the bilingual content or you supply it, which systems it integrates with, and how many approval rounds the project carries. Reputable agencies quote a fixed price in writing after a scoping call rather than from a price list.
How long does it take to build a website?
Four to six weeks for a brochure site, six to ten for a corporate site, and ten to sixteen for ecommerce. Delays are usually caused by content approval rather than by build time.
Do I need both Arabic and English?
In almost every Saudi market, yes. Arabic is the primary search language outside a few technical and international segments, and English matters for government procurement, multinationals and expatriate audiences. Serving only one leaves a large share of the market unaddressed.
Is WordPress a good choice in Saudi Arabia?
It can be, with hardening, a strict plugin policy and managed updates — particularly if your team publishes frequently. For higher-assurance or high-complexity requirements, headless or custom builds are usually the better answer.
Will my website rank on Google after launch?
Launch establishes the foundations — structure, speed, schema and internal linking. Ranking for competitive commercial terms requires ongoing SEO work afterwards, which should be quoted separately so you are not paying for it twice.
What happens if I want to change agency later?
If handover was done properly — source code, design files, domain, hosting and analytics all in your name — you can move without friction. Confirm this in the proposal before you sign, because it is very difficult to negotiate afterwards.
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