How much does a website cost in the UK?
By the How Two Cut team · 9 October 2026 · 4 min read
The short answer. Published UK guides put a typical small-business website at £3,000 to £6,000. Simple brochure sites start around £1,500, custom sites of 15 or more pages run £5,000 to £15,000, and online shops £5,000 to £20,000 or more. Expect running costs of roughly £500 to £2,000 a year.
What does a website cost in the UK?
These ranges come from Whito's UK price guide (data checked in October 2026, prices without VAT):
- DIY builder such as Wix or Squarespace: £10 to £50 a month
- Freelancer brochure site (about 5 pages): £1,500 to £3,000
- Agency brochure site (about 5 pages): £3,000 to £5,000
- Custom business site (15+ pages): £5,000 to £15,000
- Online shop: £5,000 to £20,000+
What pushes the price up?
- Number of pages: each extra page adds roughly £150 to £400
- Custom design rather than a template
- Features: booking, payments, member areas, links to other systems
- Who writes the words and takes the photos
- Rounds of changes: two or three are usually included
Why does a website cost this much?
Because every page is several jobs: planning what it should say, writing it, designing it, building it, testing it on phones and setting it up for search. Whito's UK guide prices an extra page at £150 to £400, writing at £50 to £150 a page and photography at £200 to £800. Creativepool's 2026 benchmark puts a freelance UX designer at about £550 a day, a UI designer at £483 and a digital designer at £385.
That is the gap between a £1,500 five-page site from a freelancer and a custom site of 15 or more pages at £5,000 to £15,000: more pages, more design days, custom features and more people checking that everything works. A shop adds product pages, payments and testing, which is why it starts higher.
What costs are easy to miss?
Whito says extras can add 30 to 50% to the build:
- Copywriting: £50 to £150 a page
- Photography: £200 to £800
- Search set-up: £300 to £1,000
What does it cost to run each year?
Whito puts yearly running costs at £500 to £2,000 or more: hosting £50 to £300, domain £10 to £30, plug-ins and licences £50 to £300, and maintenance and updates £300 to £1,200. Another UK studio, Amplify, puts the total at £480 to £2,400.
How long does a build take?
Amplify's February 2026 guide links time to budget:
- Template site, under £2,000: 1 to 3 weeks
- Custom small-studio site, £3,000 to £6,000: 4 to 8 weeks
- Full-service site, £6,000 to £12,000: 6 to 10 weeks
- Brand-led site, £12,000+: 8 to 12 weeks
How do you get a fair quote?
- Say what the site must do: enquiries, bookings or sales
- List the pages and features you expect
- Ask who writes the words and supplies the pictures
- Ask who owns the site and domain, and what hosting and updates cost afterwards
- Ask how your team will edit it
Why not build it with AI or a DIY builder?
AI and DIY builders (from around £10 to £50 a month) can get a simple site online quickly, and AI is useful for drafts and routine work. The costs they leave out are the ones that matter later:
- Deciding what to say. A site only works if each page answers a real question for a real customer. That takes knowing your customers.
- Accuracy. In an EBU and BBC study of more than 3,000 AI answers to news questions, 45% had at least one significant issue. Google's own guidance says to fact-check and review everything AI writes, including titles, descriptions and image descriptions.
- Sounding like everyone else. In a 2024 study, stories written with AI ideas came out 10.7% more similar to each other. Sites built from the same tools and prompts risk sounding the same.
- Being found. Google allows AI-written content, but treats pages produced in bulk without adding value as spam. And when Google shows an AI summary, people click a regular result less often: Pew found clicks on 8% of visits, against 15% without a summary. Your pages need real, specific substance to be worth visiting or quoting.
Where AI helps: first drafts for your team to check, ideas, and routine edits.
Common questions
Is a DIY builder enough?
It can be, for a very simple site. You trade a low price for less control over design, speed and search set-up.
Why do agencies cost more than freelancers?
In the guide, agency brochure sites run £3,000 to £5,000 against £1,500 to £3,000 for freelancers. Agencies often bring a wider team, such as design, build and testing, and take on more of the project.
Do these prices include VAT?
No. Whito's figures are without VAT, so add it when you compare.
Do we own the website?
You should own your domain name and your content. Ask for it in writing before you sign.
Sources
The figures and claims above come from these pages, as we found them in October 2026. Prices are from third-party UK guides, not How Two Cut quotes, and they change.
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