If you have asked three suppliers for a CCTV quotation in Pakistan, you have probably received three numbers that are impossible to compare. One quotes per camera. One quotes a package. One quotes a channel count with “storage as per requirement” and no figure at all.
This guide breaks the cost into the components that actually drive it, with real figures for 2026, so you can interrogate a quotation rather than simply pick the lowest one.
The short answer
For a straightforward commercial installation in Pakistan:
| Component | Typical 2026 range |
|---|---|
| Installation labour, per camera | PKR 2,500 – 5,000 |
| Entry-level analogue system, complete | From ~PKR 68,000 (first year) |
| Branded package (Hikvision / Dahua / EZVIZ) | From ~PKR 35,000 depending on channels |
| IP camera, per unit | PKR 4,000 (basic) to PKR 70,000+ (specialist) |
| Small business, 6–8 IP cameras, 30-day retention | PKR 180,000 – 400,000 all-in |
Those installation rates apply to major cities. Smaller cities typically run lower, though not always — a site four hours from the nearest supplier carries travel cost that a city site does not.
What actually moves the number
1. Identification objective, not camera count
This is the variable almost no quotation states, and it is the one that determines whether your system is worth anything.
Every camera position should have a defined objective: detect that someone is present, recognise a person you already know, or identify a stranger from the footage alone. Those three objectives require very different pixel densities on target, which means different lenses, different mounting distances, and often a different number of cameras than a supplier proposed.
A wide-angle camera covering an entire forecourt gives you a person-shaped blur at the gate. It is genuinely useful for knowing that something happened and completely useless for knowing who did it. The distinction only becomes visible at the moment you actually need the recording — which is the worst possible time to discover it.
In practice, designing for identification usually produces fewer cameras at a higher unit price than a per-camera quotation suggests. That is a better system and frequently a similar total.
2. Storage and retention
Here is where budgets quietly break.
Recording capacity is a function of resolution, frame rate, compression codec and how much of the day each camera sees motion. Doubling retention from fifteen to thirty days roughly doubles the drive capacity needed. On a twelve-camera system at high resolution, thirty-day retention can cost more than the cameras.
What retention do you actually need?
- Retail and cash handling — incidents usually surface within days. 15 to 30 days is generally adequate.
- Offices and commercial — 30 days is a sensible default.
- Hospitals, schools, banks — complaints, insurance matters and safeguarding concerns frequently surface weeks later. 60 to 90 days is more realistic.
Ask any supplier to show you the calculation. If the quotation says “30 days retention” without stating resolution, frame rate and codec, the number is a guess.
3. Cabling, containment and access
Cable runs are the least glamorous and most variable cost in the whole job. A camera fifteen metres from the recorder in a building with existing containment is cheap. The same camera at the far end of a finished building with no cable route means chasing walls, installing trunking, and often working at height with access equipment.
This is why remote quotations are unreliable. A supplier who quotes your CCTV without walking the site is guessing at the largest variable cost in the project.
4. Power continuity
A surveillance system that stops recording during an outage has a gap exactly when a site is most vulnerable. Across much of Pakistan — and particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — outages are routine rather than exceptional.
Protecting the recorder and core cameras is not expensive relative to the system cost, but it is frequently omitted to keep a headline figure competitive. We treat it as base specification. See our power and solar solutions for how this interacts with existing inverter installations.
5. Night performance
Cheap cameras fail after dark, and infra-red range claims on specification sheets are routinely optimistic. If you need identification-grade footage at night — and for entrances and perimeters you almost certainly do — that either means a better camera or supplementary lighting, and either way it is a real line item.
Insist that commissioning happens after dark as well as during the day, and that you review actual recorded footage before signing off.
What a quotation should itemise
A quotation you can actually evaluate will show:
- Camera model and lens per position, with the stated objective for that position
- Recorder model, channel count and spare channels
- Drive capacity with the retention calculation shown
- Cable type and estimated run length, plus containment where needed
- PoE budget and whether the switch has headroom for future cameras
- Protected power for the recorder, with runtime stated
- Installation labour, separately from equipment
- Warranty term per item and who administers the claim
If a quotation gives you a channel count and one number, you cannot compare it to anything.
Common ways a cheap quotation becomes expensive
- Retention silently shorter than promised. The recorder overwrites at eleven days, not thirty, and nobody notices until footage is requested.
- PoE budget exhausted. Adding two cameras in year two means replacing the switch.
- Recorder exposed to the internet. Remote viewing configured by port-forwarding directly to the NVR with default credentials — a genuine and common exposure.
- No labelling or documentation. Every future fault begins with tracing cables by hand.
- Cameras on the business network. Surveillance equipment sharing a flat network with your finance systems.
A note on Peshawar and KPK
Two things differ here. First, grey-market equipment is more prevalent because of the trade routes, so serial verification against manufacturer warranty records matters more than it does elsewhere. Second, building construction across much of the province is solid masonry and reinforced concrete, which affects both cable routing cost and — if you are considering wireless cameras — signal reliability. Wireless is rarely the cheaper option once you account for that.
We cover both in more detail on our Peshawar coverage page.
Getting a number you can rely on
The single most useful thing you can do before accepting any CCTV quotation is to write down, position by position, what you need each camera to achieve. Not “cover the entrance” — but “identify a stranger walking through the entrance from the footage alone.”
Take that list to any supplier. A good one will use it to design the system. A poor one will ignore it and quote a channel count.
We survey before quoting, set an objective per position, and show you the storage calculation. If you want a figure you can put in front of a board or a procurement committee, request a quote and tell us what you need to be able to see.
