Pricing4 min readBy Fuorix
Custom Software Cost in 2026: Real Price Bands for UAE and UK Small Businesses
Forget the '$50,000 to $500,000' articles written for enterprises. Here are the fixed-price bands we quote small and mid-sized businesses in the UAE and UK, three worked examples, and the five things that move the price.
The short answer
Most articles about custom software cost are written for enterprises and quote $50,000 to $500,000. If you run a 5 to 100 person business in Dubai, Manchester or Lahore, those numbers are useless to you.
Here is what we actually quote, as fixed prices, in 2026:
| What you need | Fixed price (USD) | Approx. AED | Approx. GBP | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business website (custom-coded, fast, SEO-ready) | $500 to $2,000 | AED 1,800 to 7,300 | £400 to £1,600 | 3 to 4 weeks |
| Replace a spreadsheet with a web app | $800 to $2,500 | AED 2,900 to 9,200 | £630 to £2,000 | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Business dashboard (one to three data sources) | $800 to $3,000 | AED 2,900 to 11,000 | £630 to £2,400 | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Customer-facing web app with logins and payments | $2,500 to $6,000 | AED 9,200 to 22,000 | £2,000 to £4,700 | 6 to 10 weeks |
| Custom ERP (2 to 3 modules) | $1,500 to $5,000 | AED 5,500 to 18,400 | £1,200 to £4,000 | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Custom ERP (full suite: inventory, HR, accounting, CRM) | $5,000 to $15,000 | AED 18,400 to 55,000 | £4,000 to £11,900 | 12 to 16 weeks |
| Mobile app plus backend | $3,000 to $12,000 | AED 11,000 to 44,000 | £2,400 to £9,500 | 8 to 14 weeks |
| Marketplace or multi-vendor platform | $6,000 to $15,000 | AED 22,000 to 55,000 | £4,700 to £11,900 | 10 to 16 weeks |
Every number is a fixed price agreed before work starts, not an hourly estimate that grows. If a quote you receive elsewhere has no number attached, it is not a quote.
Three worked examples
A trading company in Sharjah replacing its stock spreadsheet. Twelve staff, one Excel file that only the owner understood, stock counts on paper. We built a web app with product and supplier records, stock in and out on a phone, low-stock alerts and a daily summary email. Data was migrated from the spreadsheet. Fixed price $1,800 (AED 6,600), live in four weeks.
A real estate brokerage in Dubai that needed a CRM. Leads arriving from three portals and Instagram into separate inboxes. We built lead capture, automatic assignment to agents, viewing scheduling, a pipeline from enquiry to closing, and an owner dashboard. Fixed price $4,500 (AED 16,500), ten weeks, with a mobile agent app quoted separately as a later phase.
A UK consultancy productising its service. Clients were emailing documents and getting PDFs back. We built a client portal with logins, document upload, status tracking, Stripe payments and an admin queue. Fixed price £3,600 ($4,500), eight weeks.
The five things that move the price
- Number of user types. Owner-only is cheapest. Owner plus staff plus customers roughly doubles the screens, the permissions and the testing.
- Integrations. Each connection to accounting software, a POS, a payment gateway or a government portal adds $300 to $1,500 depending on how good its API is.
- Data migration. Clean spreadsheets migrate for almost nothing. Ten years of inconsistent Excel tabs can add 10 to 20 percent for cleaning and validation.
- Mobile. A responsive web app works on phones and is included. A native app in the stores is a separate build, usually $3,000 or more.
- Language and compliance. Arabic interfaces, UAE VAT and WPS reporting, UK GDPR data handling. Necessary, and each adds a little scope.
What is included in our fixed price
Discovery and a written scope, UI design, development, data migration, testing, deployment to hosting you own, training for each user role, and 30 days of post-launch support. Hosting after that is typically $20 to $80 a month for an SMB system.
What is not included, and what to budget for later
Ongoing feature changes (quoted per request or as a monthly retainer from $300), third-party subscriptions such as payment gateways or SMS, and app store fees.
How to get an accurate price in 48 hours
Send us a one-paragraph description of the problem, a screenshot or export of the spreadsheet or tool you use today, and the number of people who will use the system. That is enough for a fixed-price scope within two working days. Book a free call or send the details.
For ERP-specific pricing in the UAE, see How much does a custom ERP cost for a small business in the UAE?.
Need help with this?
We build the systems described in this article. Let’s talk about your project.
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