Cost guide
What a Website Costs in Saudi Arabia in 2026
SAR ranges for company websites and online stores, what the Salla and Zid subscriptions add, the documents that hold projects up, and how to read a quote from Riyadh or Jeddah.
SAR 5k–22k
agency company site
The common range for a custom-designed bilingual site from a Saudi agency
SAR 99
per month
Entry paid plan on both Salla and Zid, paid by you directly to the platform
15%
VAT
Registration mandatory above SAR 375,000 of taxable supplies in twelve months
2–5 wks
to launch a store
For a branded Salla or Zid store with real product content
The short version
Key takeaways
- Entry-level template packages start around SAR 1,500–4,000; an agency-built company website is commonly SAR 5,000–22,000.
- For stores the platform decision comes before the design decision: most Saudi merchants sell on Salla or Zid, not WooCommerce or Shopify.
- Platform subscriptions are separate and modest: SAR 99 a month entry, SAR 299 for the tier that unlocks custom CSS and staff accounts.
- Arabic is the primary version in this market, not a translation of the English one — and that is a writing cost, not a plugin.
- Documents, not development, usually decide your launch date: a CR or freelance document, ID and a matching bank account.
- VAT is 15% above SAR 375,000, and ZATCA e-invoicing applies once you are registered.
What is on this page
The short answer
A company website in Saudi Arabia is commonly quoted between SAR 5,000 and 22,000 by an agency, with entry-level packages from around SAR 1,500 to 4,000 and custom platforms running well beyond SAR 30,000. An online store depends less on design than on the platform: on Salla or Zid, a properly branded store with real product content is usually SAR 4,000 to 12,000 of agency work on top of a subscription that starts at SAR 99 a month.
Saudi Arabia is the one Gulf market where the platform decision comes before the design decision, because most local merchants sell through Salla or Zid rather than WooCommerce or Shopify. Choosing the wrong one costs more than any design mistake.
Our own published prices start at SAR 4,800 for a bilingual five-page site, SAR 9,900 for a fifteen-page business site, and SAR 5,500 for a Salla or Zid store.
The rest of this guide breaks those numbers down: what the platforms charge, what agency work is actually being paid for, which documents decide your launch date, and how ZATCA e-invoicing changes the job if you are VAT-registered. If you are pricing across the region, the Dubai guide covers the UAE and the Qatar and Kuwait guides cover the smaller Gulf markets.
Saudi website prices by type
Ranges quoted publicly by Saudi agencies and freelancers in 2026. Use them for budgeting, not as a quote.
| Type | Typical range (SAR) | Timeline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer store setup | 200 – 2,000 | Days | Marketplace gigs; theme settings and product upload only |
| Entry-level company site | 1,500 – 4,000 | 1 – 3 weeks | Template with your logo and text |
| Agency company site | 5,000 – 22,000 | 3 – 8 weeks | Custom design, Arabic-first, SEO setup |
| Salla or Zid store (agency) | 4,000 – 12,000 | 2 – 5 weeks | Plus the platform subscription |
| Custom store or platform | 25,000 – 100,000+ | 2 – 6 months | Own build, integrations, large catalogues |
The gap between the freelancer row and the agency row is not mostly design. It is Arabic product content, tested payments, tracking that actually fires, and someone answering the phone in month three.
The price ladder at a glance
The same ranges as the table, in the shape people budget in. Note how far apart the two ends are: this is the widest price spread of any Gulf market we work in.
Most Saudi businesses belong in the middle two bars. The bottom bar is a reasonable way to test a product idea with ten items; the top bar is for merchants whose catalogue, integrations or order volume have outgrown a hosted platform.
Choosing the platform before choosing the designer
Almost every expensive mistake we are asked to fix in this market started as a platform chosen for the wrong reason. This is the decision in its simplest form.
Prices for both platforms are published: Salla’s plans and Zid’s plans are worth checking before you subscribe, because both change them from time to time.
Platform costs on top of the build
Whatever you pay a designer, the platform charges its own subscription. These are the published prices, checked in September 2026 — confirm them before subscribing, because both platforms change plans.
Salla
A free Basic plan exists but has no custom domain and no electronic payments. Plus is SAR 99 a month (SAR 990 a year) and covers payments, shipping and your own domain. Pro is SAR 299 a month (SAR 2,990 a year) and adds custom CSS and JavaScript, staff accounts and ERP integrations.
Zid
A free Starter plan takes bank transfer and cash on delivery only. Launch is SAR 99 a month and adds your own domain and full payment methods. Growth is SAR 299 a month and adds tax settings, custom CSS and five team accounts.
WooCommerce or Shopify
WooCommerce has no licence fee but needs hosting, plugins and maintenance. Shopify is billed in US dollars, and Shopify Payments is not available in Saudi Arabia, so a Saudi store needs a separate payment gateway.
Where an agency quote actually goes
For a typical Salla or Zid store build, this is roughly how the hours divide. It explains why the marketplace gigs are cheap: they do the second row and stop.
| Work | Share | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic content and product data | 30% | Names, descriptions, specifications and categories written for how Saudis search |
| Design and theme customisation | 25% | Brand identity applied to the theme, homepage and product pages |
| Build and configuration | 20% | Payments, shipping, tax settings, staff accounts, apps |
| Testing | 15% | Live test transactions on every payment method, on real devices |
| Training and launch | 10% | Handover, staff training, and support through the first orders |
If you supply finished Arabic product content yourself, you remove the largest line in that table. That is the single most effective way to cut a store quote, and it is the one clients most often overlook while negotiating over design.
What it actually costs over three years
A launch price is a poor way to compare options, because the platforms differ more in what they cost to run than in what they cost to start. A useful exercise before choosing is to add up three years.
On Salla or Zid, the recurring cost is the subscription — SAR 99 a month at entry, SAR 299 on the tier most growing stores end up on — plus transaction fees and shipping, which scale with sales rather than sitting as fixed overhead. There is no hosting bill, no plugin renewals and no maintenance retainer for the platform itself, because the platform maintains itself. Over three years, a Zid or Salla store on the SAR 299 tier costs roughly SAR 10,800 in subscriptions.
On WooCommerce, the licence is free and everything else is not: managed hosting appropriate for a store, premium plugins for payments and shipping, a maintenance arrangement, and someone to apply updates without breaking checkout. That typically lands in the same range or a little above — but it buys unlimited design freedom and no platform commission, which matters at higher volumes.
Our advice is unromantic. Below a few hundred orders a month, take the hosted platform and spend the difference on product content and advertising. Above that, or if your operation needs integrations the platform cannot reach, the economics start to favour a custom build. The switch is a business decision about margin and volume, not a technical preference, and any agency that tells you otherwise is selling what it prefers to build.
The paperwork that decides your timeline
In Saudi Arabia the build is rarely what delays a launch. Payments are. You can design and fill a store while documents are in progress, but before electronic payments can be switched on you generally need:
- A commercial registration (CR), or a freelance document (وثيقة العمل الحر) if you trade as an individual
- The national ID of the owner or an authorised signatory
- A Saudi bank account in the same name as the business
- VAT registration once taxable sales pass SAR 375,000 in twelve months, with voluntary registration available from SAR 187,500
- E-invoicing through ZATCA if you are VAT-registered, which both Salla and Zid support through their own integrations
One thing to ignore: older guides that tell you to register on Maroof. The Ministry of Commerce moved e-store authentication to the Saudi Business Center’s Business Platform in 2023.
VAT and ZATCA e-invoicing
Saudi Arabia is the strictest Gulf market for invoicing, and it affects online stores directly. General information, not tax advice:
- VAT is 15%. Registration is mandatory once taxable supplies pass SAR 375,000 in twelve months, and voluntary from SAR 187,500.
- A non-resident supplier must register from its first taxable supply, with no threshold.
- If you buy services from a foreign agency, a Saudi VAT-registered business normally self-accounts for the VAT under ZATCA's reverse-charge mechanism in its own return.
- ZATCA e-invoicing is in its integration phase, rolling out in waves by turnover: Wave 24 (above SAR 375,000) had a 30 June 2026 deadline, and Wave 25 (above SAR 187,500) is due by 1 February 2027.
- Both Salla and Zid provide their own ZATCA integrations, so a store on either platform can issue compliant invoices once you are registered.
Practical effect: if you are near the VAT threshold, plan e-invoicing into the store build rather than bolting it on afterwards. Retrofitting it while orders are flowing is how merchants end up issuing invoices manually for a month.
What raises a Saudi quote
Arabic-first, not Arabic-added
In this market Arabic is the main version and English is the translation. Copy written in Saudi business Arabic costs more than translated English, and reads as though you belong here.
Product content
For stores, writing names, specifications and descriptions for hundreds of products is the single biggest line after design. A clean spreadsheet from you cuts it sharply.
Payments and instalments
Mada is essential. Apple Pay, STC Pay, Tabby and Tamara are each an approval process and a test cycle, not a switch.
Theme customisation depth
Working within a Salla or Zid theme’s own settings is quick. Custom CSS needs the higher plan, and a fully bespoke theme is a development project.
Integrations
ERP, accounting, warehouse or delivery connections are quoted separately on every platform, and they are where timelines slip.
Ongoing marketing
Most Saudi stores buy traffic from Snapchat, TikTok and Google from day one. That budget is separate from the build and usually larger.
One more factor deserves its own line, because it is invisible in every proposal: how ready your product data is. A merchant who arrives with a clean spreadsheet — names, prices, variants, weights, images that are actually the right products — can be launched in two weeks. A merchant whose catalogue lives in WhatsApp photographs and a notebook will spend a month on data entry before anyone touches a design. That difference is worth several thousand riyals, and it is entirely within your control before you even choose an agency.
Why Arabic-first costs more, and earns more
In the UAE and Qatar, English is often the primary version and Arabic the second. In Saudi Arabia that is backwards. Your customers search in Arabic, read in Arabic and buy in Arabic, and the English version exists for suppliers, partners and expatriate staff.
That changes the work. Arabic-first means the copy is written in Saudi business Arabic rather than translated from English, the layout is designed right-to-left from the first sketch rather than mirrored afterwards, product data is written in the words shoppers actually use, and the English version is the translation.
It costs more than adding a translation plugin to an English site. It also produces a site that competes in the searches with the most commercial intent and the least competent competition, because most agencies in this market still build English-first and translate. Our multilingual platform case study shows what a genuinely multilingual build looks like when it is done properly.
There is a commercial argument as well as a linguistic one. Arabic search results in Saudi Arabia are thinner than English ones in almost every commercial category, which means the same effort produces a better position. An agency that writes forty genuinely useful Arabic pages will outrank one that translates forty English pages, and it will do so against fewer competitors than it would face in English. That gap is closing, but it is still open, and it is the cheapest advantage available to a Saudi business right now.
“In Saudi Arabia, the Arabic site is not the translation. It is the site.”
A sensible order to spend in
Spending in the wrong order is the most expensive mistake in this market: merchants routinely pay for advertising before the store can take a payment. This sequence avoids that.
01
Decide the platform
Salla, Zid, WooCommerce or Shopify. Base it on catalogue size, who runs the store daily, and where you want to sell beyond Saudi Arabia.
02
Start the paperwork
CR or freelance document, bank account, and VAT if you are close to the threshold. This runs in parallel with the build.
03
Build and fill
Design, Arabic content, payments, shipping and tracking, with every payment method tested with a real transaction.
04
Then buy traffic
Advertising to a half-finished store wastes the budget. Launch first, then spend.
Related reading
If you are deciding between platforms or pricing a project across markets:
- Salla store design — plans, what the platform includes, and what an agency adds
- Zid store design — Zid Pay, Zid Ship, Mazeed and the Vitrin theme system
- Dubai website costs — the UAE equivalent of this guide
- E-commerce development — how we build stores, on any platform
- Our published prices — fixed packages in SAR and the other Gulf currencies
- Get a fixed written quote — send a product list and a deadline
One technical note worth adding to any budget: speed. Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance treats 2.5 seconds as the threshold for a good Largest Contentful Paint, and Saudi shoppers are overwhelmingly on phones. A store that loads slowly on mobile data loses sales before the design is ever judged.
Common questions
How much does website design cost in Saudi Arabia?
An agency-built company website is commonly SAR 5,000–22,000, while entry-level template packages start around SAR 1,500. A Salla or Zid store is usually SAR 4,000–12,000 of design and setup work plus the platform subscription.
How much does it cost to open a Salla store?
Salla’s Plus plan is SAR 99 a month, or SAR 990 a year. Design and setup are separate: marketplace freelancers charge a few hundred riyals for basic work, and agencies typically SAR 4,000–12,000 for a branded store with real product content. Ours starts at SAR 5,500.
Salla or Zid — which is cheaper?
Their entry plans are the same price, SAR 99 a month, and both have a free tier. The real difference is what you get around the store: Zid runs its own payment gateway, shipping service and marketplace, while Salla has the larger app ecosystem and merchant base.
Do I need a commercial registration?
To activate electronic payments, yes — a CR or a freelance document, plus ID and a matching Saudi bank account. You can build the store before they are ready.
Is VAT added to the price?
Saudi VAT is charged at 15% where it applies. Registration is mandatory once taxable sales pass SAR 375,000 in twelve months, and voluntary from SAR 187,500. Ask any supplier whether their quote includes VAT.
What does a website cost per month in Saudi Arabia?
Running costs are the platform subscription (from SAR 99), hosting if you are not on Salla or Zid (roughly SAR 250–2,000 a year), and maintenance if you want it. Advertising is usually the largest monthly line.
Can a foreign agency build my Saudi store?
Yes, and many do. The store stays in your name on your own Salla, Zid or hosting account. What matters is that the Arabic is genuine, the team works Gulf hours, and someone is reachable after launch.
How long does a Saudi store take to launch?
Two to five weeks for a branded Salla or Zid store, longer for large catalogues or a custom build. Documents and product information are the usual delay.
Is a cheap store on a marketplace gig a bad idea?
Not always. For a first test with a handful of products it can be enough. It becomes expensive when the store starts to matter and everything — content, tracking, speed, trust — has to be redone.
Do I need a .sa domain?
Most Saudi businesses use a .com and many also register a .sa. Local domains have their own registration requirements, so check what documents are needed before you plan a launch around one.
Do Saudi website prices include VAT?
Usually not. Quotes are typically shown before VAT, and 15% is added where it applies. Ask for it in writing on the proposal.
Can I start on the free Salla or Zid plan?
Yes, and it is a sensible way to build and fill the store while your documents are processed. You will need a paid plan before you can take electronic payments and use your own domain.
Who writes the Arabic product descriptions?
Either you or us — it is the biggest single line in a store quote. A clean spreadsheet of accurate product data from you cuts the cost sharply.
What if I sell to the UAE and Saudi Arabia?
One store can serve both, with currencies and shipping configured per market. The tax treatment differs, so confirm the details with your accountant before launch.
Is a .sa domain required?
No. Most Saudi businesses use a .com; some also register a .sa. Local domains have their own documentation requirements, so do not plan a launch date around one.
Want a fixed price in SAR?
Tell us what you sell and how many products you have. You will get a written quote with a launch date, and an honest recommendation on Salla, Zid or something else.