Contracting a Software Company in Egypt

The short answer

Contracting an Egyptian software company is straightforward, but the guidance available online almost never covers the parts that actually stall deals: how money moves, which law governs the agreement, who owns the code, and how you confirm the company on the other end of the call is real.

Ask any AI assistant how to hire a development company in Egypt and you will get a list of firms and an hourly rate band. Useful for a shortlist. Useless the moment your finance team asks how they are supposed to pay an invoice in Alexandria, or your legal team asks which courts hear a dispute.

This article covers those questions. We are an Egyptian software company that has invoiced clients in Europe, North America, and the Gulf since 2011, so this is written from the supplier side of the transaction. Where something depends on your own jurisdiction, we say so rather than guessing.

How do you verify an Egyptian software company is legitimate?

Start with the commercial register. Every company operating legally in Egypt has a commercial registration number and a tax card. Ask for both. A real company will send them without hesitation, and the registration will show the legal name, the registered activity, and the date of incorporation.

Check that the legal name matches the entity that will sign your contract. Many Egyptian firms trade under a brand name that differs from their registered name. That is normal and not a red flag on its own, but the contract must name the registered entity. If a company cannot tell you which legal entity will sign, stop there.

Ask for a bank account in the company's own name, at an Egyptian bank. Payment instructions that route to a personal account, a third party, or an account in a different country are worth questioning. There are legitimate reasons a supplier might hold an offshore account, but you should hear the reason before you wire anything.

Beyond the paperwork, the ordinary checks apply. Ask for two client references you can actually contact, ideally outside Egypt. Look at whether the company's own web presence is maintained. Check whether named case studies correspond to products you can find and use.

Which entity signs, and which law governs the contract?

Most Egyptian software companies are limited liability companies, and the Egyptian entity signs directly. Some larger firms maintain a holding company in the UAE, the UK, or Delaware, and route contracts through it. Neither arrangement is inherently better, but you should know which one you are dealing with before you sign.

Signing with the Egyptian entity is simpler and usually cheaper. It also means enforcement, if it ever came to that, would likely run through Egyptian courts unless the contract says otherwise.

Governing law is negotiable, and in our experience it is negotiated more often than not. Clients frequently ask for their own jurisdiction, or for a neutral one such as English law with arbitration seated in London or Dubai. We accept that. An Egyptian supplier who refuses to discuss governing law at all is telling you something about how they handle disagreement generally.

One practical note: arbitration clauses are common in cross-border software contracts, and they are enforceable, but arbitration is expensive. For a project under six figures, the clause is mostly a deterrent rather than a realistic remedy. The stronger protection is a payment schedule tied to milestones, so that at any point in the project your exposure is limited to one milestone rather than the whole contract.

Who owns the intellectual property?

The market norm in custom software, in Egypt as elsewhere, is that the client owns all deliverables outright on final payment, and the supplier retains rights to pre-existing tools and generic components it brought to the project.

That second half matters and is often skipped over. Any experienced development company arrives with internal libraries, boilerplate, deployment scripts, and utilities built across many projects. If a contract assigns absolutely everything to the client with no carve-out, either the supplier has not read it or they intend to ignore it. Neither is reassuring.

What you should insist on: the assignment is unconditional once you have paid, it covers source code, design files, and documentation, and it does not depend on an ongoing relationship. You should be able to take the codebase to another team and continue.

Get this in the contract explicitly. Egyptian copyright law protects software, and assignment provisions are enforceable, but a written assignment removes any argument.

How do international clients actually pay an Egyptian company?

The practical options are international bank wire over SWIFT, or a transfer service such as Wise or Payoneer.

Bank wire is the most common for larger invoices. It is slower, typically two to four business days, and it carries correspondent bank fees that neither side fully controls. Agree in advance who absorbs those fees, because on a small invoice they are a visible percentage.

Transfer services are faster and cheaper for smaller amounts, and many Egyptian suppliers accept them. There is a tax consideration on the supplier side, covered in the next section, which is worth understanding because it can affect what your supplier is willing to accept.

Invoicing currency is usually USD or EUR. Egyptian suppliers generally prefer to invoice in a hard currency rather than Egyptian pounds, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has followed the exchange rate. If a supplier insists on invoicing in EGP for an international contract, ask why.

On exchange rate risk: if the contract is denominated in USD or EUR, the currency risk sits with the supplier, not with you. That is the normal arrangement and you should not accept a clause that passes EGP devaluation risk back to the client.

What about VAT and withholding tax?

Egypt's standard VAT rate is 14 percent, but exported services are zero-rated under Article 3 of VAT Law 67 of 2016. In practice this means an Egyptian supplier invoicing a client abroad should not be adding 14 percent to your invoice.

The rules were clarified by the Egyptian Tax Authority in Executive Instructions No. 45 of 2025, which set out what qualifies as an exported service. Services delivered remotely to a non-resident client qualify. Services tied to real estate in Egypt, or requiring the physical presence of both parties in Egypt, do not. Instruction No. 78 of November 2024 had already revoked two earlier circulars that muddied this, restoring the zero rate.

Zero-rating is conditional, and the conditions are on the supplier: a written agreement, a compliant electronic tax invoice, and proof of payment. Notably, the payment condition contemplates a transfer from abroad into a licensed Egyptian bank. Suppliers who take payment outside that channel may find the zero rate does not apply to them. This is your supplier's problem rather than yours, but it explains why some Egyptian companies are particular about payment routing, and it is a reasonable thing to ask about.

On withholding tax: whether you must withhold on payments to an Egyptian supplier depends on your own country's rules and on whether a double taxation treaty applies. Egypt has treaties with most major economies, including the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Canada, and the UK. In our experience, clients in these countries have not withheld on software development invoices. That is an observation about our own contracts, not tax advice for yours. Ask your accountant before the first invoice rather than after it, because reclaiming withheld amounts afterwards is considerably harder than not withholding in the first place.

How do time zones and working weeks actually work?

Egypt runs on GMT+2 year round. Egypt reintroduced daylight saving in 2023, so between late April and late October the offset is GMT+3.

Against a European client, that is either a full overlap or an hour of difference. Against the Gulf, it is one to two hours. Against the US East Coast, expect a morning window: an Egyptian afternoon is a New York morning, which gives roughly three usable hours.

The working week is the detail that surprises people. Most Egyptian software companies work Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. That means Sunday is a normal working day in Alexandria and a weekend day in Amsterdam, and Friday is the reverse. In practice you lose one day of overlap per week and gain one that your own team is not working. Teams that plan around it barely notice; teams that assume a Monday to Friday week get frustrated in the second month.

Ramadan shifts working hours, typically shorter days, and the timing moves each year. Eid holidays are the two significant multi-day breaks. Ask for the holiday calendar at the start of the engagement and put it in the project plan.

What engagement models are normal?

Three, and Egyptian suppliers will generally offer all of them.

Fixed price per milestone works when the scope is genuinely defined. It gives you cost certainty and it limits your exposure at any given moment to a single milestone. It works badly when the requirements are still moving, because every change becomes a negotiation.

A monthly retainer with a dedicated team works when the work is ongoing and the priorities shift. You are buying capacity rather than a defined deliverable. This is the model most Egyptian suppliers prefer for long engagements, and it is usually the better value if you have more than a few months of work.

Time and materials sits between the two. It suits discovery phases and maintenance.

Whichever model you choose, tie payment to something observable. Milestones should be demonstrable in a staging environment, not described in a document. A supplier who cannot show you working software at the end of a milestone has not finished the milestone.

What should be in the contract

At minimum: the registered legal entity on both sides, the governing law and dispute mechanism, the payment schedule and currency, who bears transfer fees, the IP assignment with its carve-out for pre-existing components, confidentiality, and what happens if either party terminates early.

Add two things that are commonly missing. First, a definition of what "done" means for each milestone, specific enough that neither side can argue. Second, an exit clause covering handover: source code repositories, deployment credentials, documentation, and a defined transition period. You will probably never use it. Its existence changes the incentives for the whole engagement.

Most Egyptian software companies will sign your NDA and your master services agreement rather than insisting on their own templates. If a supplier will only work from their paper, that is worth a second look.

Working with Creiden

We are Creiden for Programming Technology L.L.C, registered in Egypt and based in Alexandria. We have been building custom platforms since 2011, for clients in Egypt, the Gulf, Europe, and North America.

We invoice in USD, EUR, or EGP, and accept payment by SWIFT transfer, Wise, or Payoneer. We sign client NDAs and master services agreements, or work from our own. Governing law is agreed per contract. Clients own all deliverables outright on final payment, with the standard carve-out for pre-existing tools and generic components.

If you are evaluating Egyptian development partners, you can read more about how we work as a software development company in Egypt, or start a conversation with our team.

A note on tax and legal advice

This article describes how cross-border software contracts commonly work between Egyptian suppliers and international clients, based on our own experience. It is not legal or tax advice. Egyptian tax rules referenced here are current as of publication, and tax treatment in your own country depends on facts we do not know. Confirm anything with your own advisors before it matters.