How much does a website cost in the UK in 2026?

There is no single price for a website, but there are fairly stable ranges depending on who builds it. The figures below are typical ranges we see across UK projects, not survey data, and they exclude VAT.

• DIY website builder: usually £10 to £50 a month for the platform, plus your own time. Good for a simple brochure site where you are happy to write the copy and live within a template.
• Freelancer: typically £1,500 to £8,000 for a small business site built on a theme or a light custom design. Quality varies widely, and so does what happens after launch.
• Small or mid-sized agency: commonly £5,000 to £30,000 for a custom-designed marketing site, with more for complex content models, integrations or multiple languages.
• eCommerce store: usually from a few thousand pounds for a theme-based store to well into five figures for custom design, large catalogues and integrations with stock or accounting systems.
• Web application or platform: anything with user accounts, dashboards or custom business logic is software, and is usually priced in the tens of thousands.

If a quote sits far outside these ranges, it is not automatically wrong, but it is worth asking what is included or left out.

Two sites with the same number of pages can differ in price by a factor of five. The page count matters less than these factors:

• Number of unique templates. A homepage, a service page, a blog post and a contact page are four templates. Twenty service pages built from one template cost far less than twenty bespoke layouts.
• Custom design versus theme. Original design takes research, wireframes and revisions. A well-chosen theme skips most of that.
• Content. Who writes the copy, sources the photography and loads it in? Content is the most common cause of delays and a frequent hidden cost.
• Integrations. CRM, booking systems, payment providers, stock feeds and accounting software each add build and testing time.
• Migration. Moving an existing site means redirects, content transfer and protecting search rankings. It is real work and should be scoped as such.
• Performance, accessibility and SEO foundations. Doing these properly from the start costs a little more upfront and much less than retrofitting them.
• Multilingual or multi-region. Each extra language or market adds content, templates and testing.

It is easier to judge a quote when you can see how a supplier prices things. Here is our own rate card, as an example of what a published entry price means in practice:

• Web development (marketing sites and web apps): from £2,400
• eCommerce store (catalogue, checkout, integrations): from £3,800
• Mobile app (iOS and Android): from £6,500
• AI SaaS and MVP: from £9,500

"From" means the smallest honest version of the job. A lean marketing site with a handful of templates sits near the entry price. Add custom design, a large content migration or several integrations, and the fixed quote rises accordingly. The point of an entry price is to tell you whether you are in the right conversation, not to promise that your project will cost exactly that.

A few terms are worth knowing because they affect cash flow rather than the headline price. Our projects start with a 40% deposit, with the balance split across agreed milestones. Fixed-scope builds include three months of hosting and care. Many builds can also be spread over 3 to 12 months when bundled with a care plan. Prices exclude VAT.

The build is a one-off. The website is not. Budget for these from day one:

• Domain name: a small annual cost, but let it lapse and the site disappears.
• Hosting: from a few pounds a month for basic shared hosting to more for managed hosting with backups, monitoring and a CDN. Our managed hosting starts from £49 a month.
• Maintenance: software updates, security patches, uptime monitoring and fixing things that break. On WordPress in particular, skipping updates is how sites get compromised.
• Licences: premium themes, plugins, fonts and third-party tools often renew annually.
• Transactional email: contact forms and order confirmations need reliable sending, which is often a separate service.
• Content and marketing: a site that never changes rarely grows. New pages, posts and campaigns are an ongoing cost.

A useful habit is to compare suppliers on a three-year total cost, not just the build fee. A cheap build on fragile foundations can easily cost more over three years than a better build with sensible running costs. If you would rather hand all of this to one team, our care plans start from £85 a month and cover hosting, updates and monitoring.

When you have two or three quotes in front of you, put them through the same checklist:

1. Is the price fixed or an estimate? An estimate is a guess. Ask what happens if the work takes longer.
2. What exactly is in scope? Look for a list of templates, features and integrations, not a paragraph of adjectives.
3. Who supplies content? If it is you, when is it due and what happens if it is late?
4. How many rounds of design revisions? Unlimited revisions usually means undefined revisions.
5. Who owns the code, design files and accounts? You should, outright, with admin access to the domain, hosting and analytics.
6. What happens after launch? Is there a warranty period for bugs? What does support cost?
7. How are changes handled? A good supplier re-quotes changes in writing before doing them.
8. Can you move hosting later? Be wary of builds that only run on one supplier's proprietary platform.

• A precise quote after a five-minute call, with no questions about your goals, content or integrations.
• No written scope, or a scope so vague that almost anything could be argued as extra.
• The domain registered in the supplier's name rather than yours.
• Payment of the full amount upfront for a multi-week build.
• No mention of backups, updates or security after launch.
• A portfolio of screenshots with no live sites you can visit and test on your own phone.

None of these is proof of a bad supplier on its own, but two or three together usually point to a painful project.

Ranges are useful for setting a budget, but the only number that matters is the one for your project. If you would like one, we offer a free audit: we look at your current site or brief, map what needs doing, and send a fixed quote in writing, usually within two working days. If the scope grows later, we re-quote rather than bill silently.

You can read more about how we build on our web development page, see the entry prices on pricing, or tell us what you are building.