The three options, honestly
| Freelancer | Offshore team | Local senior agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly equivalent | AED 100–250 | AED 60–150 | AED 150–450 |
| Who manages the work | You | You, daily | The agency |
| Typical time cost to you | 2–4 hrs/week | 6–12 hrs/week | 1–2 hrs/week |
| Fails when | They take a full-time job | The spec has a gap | You picked one selling juniors |
| Right for | Small, well-defined work | Large, fully specified scope | Anything business-critical |
The hourly rate is the number everyone compares and the least useful one. A team at AED 80 an hour that needs twelve hours a week of your attention is not cheap if your time is worth anything, and the failure is invisible on the invoice.
Where the quote spread comes from
Send the same brief to five Dubai agencies and the quotes will differ by a factor of five. That is not a market inefficiency you can arbitrage — it means the five quotes are for five different things.
- The cheap quote usually excludes error states, admin tooling, deployment and handover, all of which you will need and pay for later.
- The expensive quote often includes a project manager, a designer and an account manager you did not ask for.
- Neither is dishonest. They are answering different questions, and the brief did not force the question.
The question that actually decides it
Not "what does it cost" but "how much of my own week am I prepared to spend on this?" Offshore is genuinely cheaper if you have a technical person able to spec, review and reject work — and genuinely more expensive if you do not, because the gap gets filled with rework.
If nobody on your side can tell good code from bad, do not buy hours. Buy an outcome at a fixed price, so the risk of the estimate sits with the party that can actually control it.