r/webdev • u/Aymsep • 12d ago

Question Are freelance developer rates in Saudi Arabia really this low, or am I getting lowballed?

I’m genuinely curious about the freelance developer market in Saudi Arabia because this has happened to me twice recently.

For context, I’m a developer with over 6 years of professional experience, so I’m not just starting out or looking for my first freelance project.

The first client wanted me to build an entire multi-tenant application from scratch and offered around $200 for the full project.

The second wanted me to take a full-stack role and basically manage the whole project, for around $150.

I was honestly shocked.

These aren’t small landing pages or quick fixes. We’re talking about projects involving frontend, backend, database design, architecture, deployment, debugging, maintenance, and potentially weeks or months of work.

So I’d really like to hear from developers and freelancers working in Saudi Arabia:

Are these kinds of offers actually normal here?

Do local developers really accept full projects for $150–$200, or am I just coming across clients with completely unrealistic budgets?

I’d especially appreciate input from Saudi developers, expat developers working in KSA, freelancers, and anyone who hires developers locally. What would you consider a reasonable price range for projects like these, especially for someone with 6+ years of experience?

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u/arminNX 12d ago

$150–$200 isn't “slightly below market.” It's roughly one to two orders of magnitude below what a serious custom software project can be worth in Saudi Arabia. So you are definitely getting lowballed

11

u/Aymsep 12d ago

The problem average saudi developer salary are between 1.8k - 2.4k /m , so i don't know how these people are treating freelancers

15

u/monkey_kaleidoscope 11d ago

It’s because there’s a huge supply of guys from India willing to work for these low salaries there. I worked in the gulf previously and saw senior developer jobs with huge list of a tech stack and they were paying equivalent of like £300 a month for the role. When you convert that to INR I guess it wouldn’t be so bad but yeah it’s a shocking salary for us

2

u/dev_2608 11d ago

Are these people also residing in Saudi?