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What a website or app actually costs in Malaysia (2026)

Real 2026 price ranges for websites, portals and apps in Malaysia, plus the costs most quotes leave out: maintenance, 8% service tax and payment fees.

AbdullahSoftware Engineer

3 October 202611 min read

The short answer

An agency-built website for a small Malaysian organisation usually costs RM3,000 to RM18,000. A member, booking or donation portal starts at around RM15,000. A lean mobile app starts at around RM30,000.

Those figures cover the build only. Most quotes don't mention what you pay after launch: maintenance, 8% service tax, domain renewals and payment fees. If your charity takes donations online, the payment fees can cost more each year than the website did.

The build ranges below come from price guides that Malaysian agencies publish themselves, so read them as a guide, not a quote. Tax, domain, payment and grant figures come from the provider or government source, and we checked them in September and October 2026.

Websites

Basic site, 1 to 5 pages: RM1,000 to RM4,000 with a freelancer, RM3,000 to RM8,000 with an agency.
Corporate site, 10 to 15 pages: RM4,000 to RM10,000 with a freelancer, RM8,500 to RM18,000 with an agency.
Fully custom corporate site: RM18,000 to RM60,000, and rarely a good fit for a freelancer.
E-commerce site: RM4,000 to RM15,000 with a freelancer, RM8,000 to RM50,000 with an agency.

Basic and corporate figures are from Walk Production. E-commerce figures are from Wowonini. Both are agencies, and both published these in 2026.

Building it yourself is cheaper up front. Wix starts at US$17 a month on annual billing, and you'll need the US$29 Core plan to sell online (Tooltester). Wix bills in US dollars, so expect your bank's foreign transaction fee on top.

More pages cost more, and so does having the agency write the copy. So does a site your staff can edit without calling the developer, one that runs in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Chinese, or one that takes FPX or DuitNow payments. If the site collects personal data, consent handling under the PDPA also has to be designed and built.

Web apps and portals

Member portals, booking systems, donation pages and case management systems are all web apps. In March 2026, Malaysian software house Gotchaa Lab published these bands:

Simple tool or first version, such as a dashboard or a basic booking system: RM15,000 to RM50,000, over 1 to 2 months.
Business system, such as a CRM, membership or inventory system: RM50,000 to RM150,000, over 2 to 4 months.
Complex system, such as a multi-tenant platform or marketplace: RM150,000 to RM300,000, over 4 to 8 months.

A donation page built on an existing platform, with a little customisation, sits near the bottom of the first band. A bespoke case management system with user roles, audit trails and reports starts somewhere in the middle band.

For membership, check what software already exists before you pay for a custom build. That's why we built JoinNests: one membership system that many Malaysian associations can use, each with its own space and data.

Mobile apps, and whether you need one

First version, one platform, 6 to 10 screens: RM30,000 to RM60,000 (Advisory Apps).
Typical SME app: RM60,000 to RM250,000 (Advisory Apps).
Cross-platform app (Flutter or React Native) for most business uses: RM80,000 to RM200,000 (Media Plus Digital).
Separate native iOS and Android apps: RM200,000 to RM350,000 and up (Media Plus Digital).

Published starting prices for a first version range from RM15,000 to RM60,000, depending on who you ask. Before comparing quotes, find out what each one leaves out.

For a small team, one app that runs on both iPhone and Android usually makes the most sense. Advisory Apps estimates a Flutter or React Native app at 1.15 to 1.35 times the cost of a single native app, against 1.7 to 1.9 times for two separate native apps.

Many portals don't need an app at all. If your users are staff, members or donors, a web app that runs in the browser usually does the job. You skip two app store listings, two review processes, the store fees and the store commission. A native app earns its cost when it has to work offline, depends on push notifications, or connects to a camera or Bluetooth device.

What you pay after launch

App maintenance: 15% to 25% of the build cost, every year (Advisory Apps).
Website maintenance: RM100 to RM1,000 a month (Wowonini).
Service tax on IT services: 8% since 1 March 2024 (PwC Malaysia).
Foreign software and cloud subscriptions: 8% service tax, charged by the provider (Royal Malaysian Customs).
.com.my domain: RM59.90 to RM108 a year at registrars (Exabytes, Newpages).
Apple Developer Program: US$99 a year. Registered non-profits can apply to have it waived if their apps are free and sell nothing in-app (Apple).
Google Play registration: US$25, paid once (Google).

Check what a domain costs to renew, not just to register. Zenweb found .my renewals of RM80 to RM110, against first-year promotional prices as low as RM14.

Here's a worked example. A portal quoted at RM40,000, with maintenance at 20% a year, costs RM56,000 over three years. With 8% service tax that rises to RM60,480. Hosting, domains and payment fees come on top. Budget for that three-year figure, and ask any vendor to confirm it in writing.

Payment fees

These are consumer payment fees as published in mid 2026:

Stripe Malaysia: FPX and local cards both 3% + RM1.00; DuitNow QR not listed (MalaysiaPG).
Billplz Basic: FPX RM1.25 flat, local cards 1.8%, DuitNow QR 1.5% (Cravings in Malaysia).
toyyibPay: FPX RM1.00 flat, local cards 1.5% to 2%, DuitNow QR 1% or RM1.00 (MalaysiaPG).
Airwallex: FPX and DuitNow QR from 1.4% + RM0.50, local cards 1.9% + RM0.50 (Airwallex).

iPay88 doesn't publish its rates, so ask for them in writing.

Say your charity receives 1,000 FPX donations of RM100 a month. Stripe would take about RM4,000 of that each month, Billplz Basic RM1,250 and toyyibPay RM1,000. Over a year, Stripe costs RM36,000 more than toyyibPay. That's more than most of the websites listed above.

Stripe can still make sense if many of your donors pay with international cards. For local donations by bank transfer, a gateway with a flat FPX fee is usually far cheaper. We maintain an open source DuitNow QR library on npm and GitHub, and we set up payment collection and reconciliation around whichever gateway suits your donors.

The MSME Digital Grant MADANI

The MSME Digital Grant MADANI pays half the invoice, up to RM5,000, straight to an MDEC-listed digitalisation partner. You pay the other half to the same partner.

BSN's criteria:

average annual turnover of at least RM50,000
at least 60% Malaysian ownership
at least six months of operation
registration with SSM, a local authority business licence, or registration with the Malaysia Co-operative Societies Commission (SKM)

A society registered only with the Registry of Societies doesn't appear on that list. If that's you, ask BSN before you build plans around the grant.

RM5,000 pays for half of a RM10,000 starter website from a listed partner, but it won't go far on a portal or an app. Digitalisation partners still list the grant as open in 2026, but BSN hasn't published a 2026 intake notice, so confirm with BSN before you sign anything.

What to check before you sign

Accounts: whose name is on the domain, hosting, app store and payment gateway accounts? They should all be in your name, with the vendor added as a user.
Code ownership: section 26(2) of the Copyright Act 1987 gives ownership of commissioned work to whoever commissioned it, unless the contract says otherwise. Check the contract for a clause that does.
Maintenance: what does it cover? Ask about security updates, backups and restore tests, monitoring, how many hours of changes are included, and how fast they respond.
Three-year total: ask for build, hosting, licences, maintenance and fees as one number.
Service tax: is the 8% included in the quote, and is the vendor registered for it?
Personal data: how does the vendor handle it? Since 1 April 2025, data processors have been directly liable under the PDPA's Security Principle. Since 1 June 2025, a data breach has had to be reported to the Commissioner within 72 hours.

Questions to ask an IT vendor in Malaysia covers each of these in more detail.

How we quote

Our team in Subang Jaya builds websites, web and mobile apps, member portals and case systems for Malaysian associations, charities and SMEs. We give a fixed quote in ringgit for the scope we agree. The code belongs to you, and we open the hosting, domain and gateway accounts in your name.

Not sure what you need? We can start with a fixed-price IT audit. Sometimes it shows you don't need what you came in asking about, and we'll tell you so.

After launch you can keep a named engineer from our team for an agreed share of their week through FlexiTech, for one fee in ringgit. That engineer already knows your systems, so when something breaks, the fix isn't a fresh quote.

Recent work from our team:

JoinNests, our membership software for associations.
A renewal system for a membership council that replaced the spreadsheet they used to track renewals, with an app their members use directly.
A church website moved from WordPress to Sanity, so their team can update it themselves.
Certainty HelpDesk, our own helpdesk product. Tickets, tasks, chat and a client portal sit in one place, so a request never gets re-typed into a separate project tool, and every request keeps a full history for clients and funders who ask where things stand.
An online farm shop for Life2Life Oasis Farm in Klang, built around the farm's weekly cycle of orders, harvest and deliveries, plus Starlink internet and CCTV on site.
An ongoing project with a dementia care centre in Singapore.

If you already have a quote and want a second opinion, send it to us through our contact page.

♥ DigiHwy Certainty

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