Search for AI video pricing in Dubai and you will find a lot of pages that talk about value, transformation and partnership, and almost none that contain a number. That is not an accident. Vague pricing lets a studio quote whatever the client looks like they can pay.
We would rather publish. Below is what AI video production actually costs at Ahlan Films in 2026, what pushes a quote up or down, and the situations where we tell people to spend their money on something else.
THE SHORT ANSWER
AI video content with us starts at AED 3,500. That figure buys a single directed shot: creative direction, generation, and a finished grade, not a raw render handed over as is.
Beyond a single shot, the honest answer is that it depends on scale, and the scale that matters most is shot count. A rough map of where projects tend to land:
A short social reel, around three shots and fifteen seconds, sits near AED 7,500. A five shot social campaign of about thirty seconds is closer to AED 12,000. The same shapes at commercial and advertising usage move to roughly AED 14,000 and AED 22,000, because usage tier changes the price of every shot inside the package. Broadcast and government work carries higher rates again, for reasons covered further down.
If you want the whole thing handled, concept through to final grade, full production packages start around AED 18,000 for a social campaign up to thirty seconds, about AED 35,000 for a sixty second commercial, and around AED 65,000 for a three minute brand film.
"Shot count is the number that moves a quote. Almost everything else is a modifier on top of it."
WHY THE SAME BRIEF GETS WILDLY DIFFERENT QUOTES
You can send an identical brief to five AI studios in Dubai and get quotes ranging from AED 800 to AED 40,000. That spread is not negotiation room. It is a sign that the word "AI video" is being used for two genuinely different products.
At the low end you are buying generation. Someone with a subscription types your brief into a model, runs it a few times, and sends you what comes out. The price reflects the render cost and an hour of someone's time. This is a real product and occasionally the right one, particularly for internal decks or throwaway tests.
At the higher end you are buying production. The generation is one line item inside a process that includes a director deciding what each shot has to do, an art director setting palette and wardrobe, frames approved as stills before anything moves, an editor cutting for rhythm, a colourist grading the result, and two revision rounds where the client can change their mind without being charged again.
That second list is the entire reason our work does not look like AI. It is also, straightforwardly, why it costs more. We wrote about how that pipeline runs in a real director, not random prompts.
WHAT PUSHES THE NUMBER UP
Shot count. The dominant factor. A thirty second film with five distinct scenes costs far more than a thirty second film built from two long shots, because each new environment has to be designed, generated and matched to the others.
Usage tier. A film running on a brand's Instagram and a film running as a paid TV commercial across the GCC are not the same product, even if the file is identical. Social and digital sits lowest, then commercial and advertising, then broadcast and OTT, then government and official work, which carries the highest rate because of the approval layers and accuracy requirements involved.
Character consistency. If the same recognisable person has to appear across eight scenes with the same face, the same wardrobe and the same lighting logic, that is significantly more work than eight unrelated shots. It is one of the areas where the gap between a careful studio and a careless one is most visible.
Dialogue and lip sync. Adding spoken performance adds voice casting, generation and sync work. It also adds risk, because dialogue is where AI output is most likely to break the illusion, so it takes more iterations to get right.
Variants. This one usually surprises people, but in a good way. The first version of a film carries all the direction cost. A second aspect ratio, a second language, or a second market edit costs a fraction of the first, because the creative work is already done. If you know at briefing stage that you need nine placements, say so then. It is much cheaper than coming back for them later.
Rush delivery. Standard projects run on agreed timelines. Compressing that carries a surcharge, currently thirty percent, because it means reordering other work.
WHERE AI IS NOT CHEAPER
This is the part most agency pricing pages leave out, so here it is plainly.
AI wins decisively on environments. Ten city backdrops without ten flights. A perfume commercial with a set that would cost more to build than the campaign budget. An off plan property film for a tower that does not exist yet, which cannot be shot at any price. Campaign variant sets, where the marginal cost of the tenth asset is close to nothing. In those cases the saving against a live production is not marginal, it is the difference between the project happening and not happening.
AI does not reliably win on a single simple setup. If your brief is one person talking to camera against a plain background for forty seconds, a small live crew will often deliver that faster, cheaper and more convincingly than generation will. We say so when it comes up.
AI also loses on anything where credibility depends on the footage being real. Testimonials from actual customers. Documentary. Event coverage. Founder led content where the audience knows the face. You can generate all of these, and the moment an audience suspects you did, the message is dead. The cost of that is not on any rate card.
WHAT ABOUT THE VERY CHEAP OPTIONS
There is a tier of AI video in this market that costs a few hundred dirhams, and it is worth being honest about what it is for. If you need a moving background for a trade show loop, a rough animatic to explain an idea internally, or a placeholder while a real film is being made, that tier is fine. Nobody is watching it closely.
The failure happens when that tier gets used for something the brand is judged on. Inconsistent faces, lighting that shifts mid shot, motion that drifts, hands that do not behave. Audiences in the GCC have seen enough luxury brand work to spot it immediately, and what they conclude is not that you used a cheap tool. It is that you did not care much about the product either.
HOW TO GET AN ACCURATE QUOTE FAST
Four things let us price a project properly in one pass rather than three. How many distinct scenes you need. Where it will run, which sets the usage tier. Whether there is dialogue. And the full list of formats and languages the media plan requires, including the ones you think you might not need.
Send that on WhatsApp and you will get a real number back the same day, not a discovery call. If the brief turns out to be one where a live shoot serves you better, we will tell you that too, and we run live crews, so it is not a referral to somewhere else.
Prices on this page are 2026 rates, exclusive of five percent VAT, and are honoured for thirty days from a written proposal. Fifty percent deposit, two revision rounds included.
