Collect three quotes for the same app design and the gap between them can reach four or five times. Before you put that down to one party's greed or another's bargain rates, one figure brings the picture into focus: the GoodFirms app development cost survey, built on data from 267 development companies and last updated 11 August 2026, puts the interface and experience design phase at 10% to 20% of a project budget. Multiply your budget by that share and you have a range to measure any quote against in under a minute.

This guide treats UI/UX design cost as its own line on the invoice rather than something dissolved into the development price: what exactly you are paying for, what it comes to in Egyptian pounds, Saudi riyals and dollars, and which detail actually moves the number. The cost of the finished product follows a different logic and belongs elsewhere: our guides to mobile app development cost in Egypt, app development cost in Saudi Arabia in riyals and website development cost.

Every figure here comes from a published page with the date it was checked. Where a figure is the result of a calculation rather than a direct quotation, the inputs are stated so you can redo the arithmetic for your own project.

What you are actually buying when you buy "design"

In a quote, the word "design" covers two jobs that differ completely in effort and output. User experience (UX) settles the order of operations: how someone gets from opening the app to completing an order, what happens when the connection drops halfway, which data you ask for on which screen. User interface (UI) settles the finished look: colours, type, spacing and button states.

That distinction matters on the invoice because a cheap quote usually prices only the second. You receive attractive screens that nobody preceded with a single question about how your business runs, and the gaps surface during development when a programmer asks about a screen no one ever drew.

In practice, a serious design line covers a discovery session to fix the scope, a wireframe for every screen, the high-fidelity final design, a clickable prototype you can test before a line of code exists, and an organised handoff file for developers. Any quote that drops three of those five will look cheaper, and the difference comes back to you later as extra development hours.

Design cost by project type

These figures are not a price list and not lifted from any single source. They are a range of design hours multiplied by a range of hourly rates, then converted at the official exchange rate. All three inputs are stated so you can judge them:

Hourly rates used run from $15 to $58, the published range for freelance UX designers in Saudi Arabia from junior to senior on the UIUXjobsboard salary guide, which overlaps with the Clutch pricing guide placing most agencies between $25 and $49 an hour. The hour ranges are a derived editorial estimate anchored on the worked example in the GoodFirms survey (150 design hours for a basic app) and widened using the durations published in the Fiverr cost guide. Conversion uses the Central Bank of Egypt rates published for 21 September 2026: the dollar at 51.9985 EGP and the Saudi riyal at 13.8434 EGP, which works out to roughly 3.76 riyals to the dollar.

Project typeScopeDesign hoursUSDEGPSAR
Landing pageOne page, 3 to 6 sections, desktop and mobile20 to 40300 to 2,30016,000 to 120,0001,100 to 8,700
Simple app10 to 15 screens, one main path100 to 1801,500 to 10,00078,000 to 540,0005,600 to 39,000
Mid-sized app25 to 40 screens, an admin panel, two or three roles250 to 4503,800 to 26,000190,000 to 1,360,00014,000 to 98,000
SaaS platform60+ screens, multiple permission levels, full design system500 to 9007,500 to 52,000390,000 to 2,710,00028,000 to 200,000
Redesign of a live productAudit the existing product, rebuild the critical screens80 to 2501,200 to 14,00062,000 to 750,0004,500 to 54,000

Each row is deliberately wide rather than evasive: the bottom end is a junior designer at the lowest hour count, the top end a large team on an expanded scope. Where you land inside a row is decided by the line items in the next two sections, not by the size of your project alone.

The SaaS row's ceiling deserves an independent check. Calculated the other way, taking the design share of a $250,000 project budget per the GoodFirms survey, you land on $25,000 to $50,000. Two methods with different inputs meeting at roughly the same ceiling is what makes the ranges above usable as an opening position.

The quick ruler: design as a share of budget

When a quote arrives and you have no time to take it apart, use the percentage. The GoodFirms survey distributes a project budget across its phases as follows: discovery and planning 5% to 10%, UI/UX design 10% to 20%, frontend development 25% to 35%, backend the same again, QA and testing 10% to 15%, deployment and launch 5% to 10%, then annual post-launch maintenance running 15% to 25% of the original budget.

The report notes alongside its table that design typically consumes less than backend development, contrary to the assumption of many who expect design to be the expensive line. Its own worked example puts a number on the share: a designer at $15 an hour, 150 hours, or $2,250 inside a project totalling $13,290, which is 17%.

So if your total budget is half a million Egyptian pounds and a design quote arrives at 300,000, the problem is not the number to be negotiated but the fact that one of you is reading the scope very differently. And if a quote arrives at 20,000, ask which line items were dropped before you celebrate the saving.

A hypothetical example: reading two quotes

Picture an online store in Mansoura asking for an app with 22 screens. Two quotes come back: one at 90,000 pounds, the other at 410,000. That gap is more than fourfold and the description in both is a single line: "app interface design".

Taking them apart shows they are not competing at all. The first: 22 screens in their default state only, two revision rounds, exported images on delivery. The second: 22 screens in four states each, so 88 designs, plus a discovery session, a clickable prototype, a design system and a source file you can edit. That second number is the price of a different product wearing the same name. Which of the line items missing from the cheaper quote you genuinely need is the question worth your time, and you answer it after the next section rather than before it.

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The line items that actually move the number

Treating design as separate line items lets you negotiate the scope instead of haggling over the final figure. Each of these is priced individually in the published sources:

  • Screen count and screen states. One screen is not one design: every screen has an empty state, a loading state, an error state and an offline state. A quote that prices 15 screens while meaning 15 designs will come back asking for more mid-project.
  • User research. Running it adds $300 to $1,500 depending on method per the Fiverr guide, and extends the schedule by one to three weeks.
  • Usability testing. Adds $400 to $2,000 and one to two weeks per the same source. Projects that drop it come in 30% to 40% cheaper, against a higher chance of expensive changes after launch.
  • The design system. A basic style guide adds $200 to $800; a documented system with components, variables and accessibility standards adds $1,000 to $3,000 and roughly a month, according to Fiverr. This line earns its cost if you will keep adding screens after launch and wastes it if the product is a single page. More in our guide to design systems.
  • Revision rounds. Two or three is the market standard, and going beyond raises the price 20% to 40% or shifts the contract to hourly billing, as Fiverr records. Put the number in the contract instead of the phrase "revisions until satisfied".
  • Developer handoff. Tenet's breakdown treats it as a line of its own at $2,000 to $10,000: an organised file with components, measurements, fonts and export-ready icons. This is the line that looks most droppable and whose price then reappears in programmer hours.

Why quotes vary fivefold

Because the difference multiplies rather than adds. Two variables move at once.

Start with the hourly rate. The Clutch guide, built on reviews from verified clients, puts the agency average at $25 to $49 an hour but shows a sharp split by location: $100 to $149 in the United States, Canada and Australia, $50 to $99 in the UK, Poland and Spain, and $25 to $49 in India, the Philippines, Ukraine and Mexico. There is no Middle East row in that table, so it comes from elsewhere: UX designer rates in Saudi Arabia run $15 to $23 an hour for junior, $23 to $36 for mid-level and $36 to $58 for senior. In the UAE the same three bands are $19 to $26, $26 to $41 and $41 to $63.

Scope comes second, and Clutch calls it the single largest influence on design cost. The spread shows at its clearest when two sources describe the same task: the Fiverr guide prices a 10 to 15 screen app design at $500 to $1,500 over two to four weeks, while agency UX 4Sight prices mobile app design at $25,000 to $95,000. Both numbers are correct, because they describe two different products sharing a name: drawn screens in the first case, and in the second a full path of research, testing, a design system and documentation.

Local salary data helps explain the bottom end of the market here. The WorthMap report on designer salaries in Egypt, drawing on roughly 2,978 salary reports, records a 2026 monthly median for a UI/UX designer of 12,000 EGP at junior level, 20,000 at mid-level and 49,662 at senior. The report states two caveats worth carrying: the 2026 data covers January to May only and skews toward the lower levels, and its database figures are model-computed estimates rather than directly reported salaries. With both caveats in hand, the ordering explains why a local team can price below the global tables without that necessarily meaning lower quality: their cost per hour is different to begin with. The same report finds an Egyptian designer working for a foreign company earns a median 49% more than a peer in a local role, which explains why some local teams price close to Gulf rates.

In practice this means one thing: before comparing two numbers, make sure they price the same scope. That is exactly what our guide to choosing a UX/UI agency examines.

Hourly, fixed price or monthly retainer

Three pricing models prevail: a fixed project price, hourly billing and a monthly retainer for a dedicated team, as the DesignStudio guide describes them. Choosing between them depends not on your preference but on how settled the scope is.

Fixed price suits a project with defined outputs: a known screen count, a written feature list and revision rounds capped at a number. You know your commitment from day one and the supplier carries the risk of misjudging it. The drawback is that any request outside the list opens a fresh negotiation, which is why the person quoting tends to build a safety margin into the figure.

Hourly billing suits a project whose scope has not settled, and the Aalpha guide describes it as the logical choice when scope is unclear or shifting. You pay for what is actually produced, but you carry the overrun risk. If you choose it, ask for a monthly hour cap and a weekly report of what was completed.

A monthly retainer suits a live product that keeps adding screens after launch, not a project delivered once. Maintaining a design system alone is priced at $500 to $2,000 a month on Fiverr. As for full retainer figures at global agencies, $8,000 to $25,000 a month per the DesignStudio guide, those are American and European market numbers and do not transfer intact to Cairo or Riyadh.

One rule prevents most disputes: never sign a fixed price against a scope that has not been written down. If the scope is not ready, start with a paid, bounded discovery phase that ends in a written screen list, then price what follows as fixed. And if your aim is to cut the scope in the first place, the reasoning is in our guide to the minimum viable product.

What you should receive at the end of the phase

A price can only be judged after payment against what actually arrived. Require the contract to include:

  1. The Figma source file itself with edit rights in your name, not a view-only copy or exported images. A full Figma seat is $16 a month and a dev seat $12, a small operating line that does not justify leaving ownership of your designs with someone else.
  2. Every screen in its four states: default, empty, loading and error.
  3. A clickable prototype you can try on a phone before development starts.
  4. An organised file of reusable components and variables for colours and spacing, not screens drawn by hand one at a time.
  5. Icons and fonts with their usage licences, and responsibility for buying any commercial typeface stated explicitly.
  6. Handoff notes for developers: measurements, behaviour as the screen size changes, and right-to-left direction for the Arabic interface.

That last item is most often forgotten on Arabic projects, and its price surfaces when a developer starts flipping an interface that was designed left-to-right in the first place.

Before you sign

Three lines make any two quotes comparable: the screen count and their states written as a number, the revision rounds written as a number too, and the list of outputs you receive at the end. Tie every payment to something you can see and test yourself on your own device, and compare quotes by their line items rather than their final figure.

If you want to see these line items applied to your own idea, send it to the Snaabble team from our UI/UX design page. Within 24 hours you will have an initial plan and an estimate of time and cost, free and with no commitment.

Sources

All links below were accessed on 22 September 2026.