Guide

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

A small business website in the UK usually costs between £500 and £3,000 to build, plus £30 to £500 a year to run. Here is where the money goes, what pushes the price up, and our own fixed prices so you have a real number to compare.

Updated 24 October 2026 by the Primus Tech Services team

The short answer

For a typical UK small business in 2026, expect these build prices:

A DIY site on Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy: £0 to build, then £150 to £400 a year
A template site from a freelancer: £300 to £1,000
A small business site from a studio or small agency: £600 to £3,000
A larger business site with booking, payments or a lot of pages: £2,000 to £6,000
An online shop: £1,500 to £8,000
A bespoke site from a large agency: £5,000 to £20,000 and up

Those ranges come from the prices UK agencies and freelancers publish on their own websites this year. The spread is wide because “a website” covers everything from a single page with a phone number to a shop with a thousand products.

Our prices, for comparison

We publish fixed prices because a range does not help you budget. All prices are before VAT.

Small business website, up to 5 pages: £595
Business website with online booking, up to 10 pages: £1,295
Online shop on Shopify, with 20 products loaded and payments working: £1,495
Web app or client portal: from £3,500
Hosting and care: £39 a month, cancel with a month’s notice

Every site we build scores 90 or more on Google PageSpeed on a phone, has its titles and descriptions written for search, and is set up in Google Search Console before we hand it over. You own the site and the domain once it is paid for.

You can price your own project with the website cost calculator. It works out the same number we would quote.

What actually changes the price

Five things decide most of the cost.

Number of pages. Each page needs words, photos, layout and testing. A plumber might need five pages (home, services, areas covered, reviews, contact). A solicitor with eight practice areas might need fifteen. We charge £60 for each page beyond the package.

Who writes the words. This is the part most people underestimate. If you send us the text, it costs nothing extra. If we write it, it is £35 a page, and it is usually worth it, because pages written around what customers type into Google bring in far more enquiries than a page that says “welcome to our website”.

Features. Online booking adds about £250, taking deposits or card payments about £200, a second language about £350, and a client login area about £900. Booking and payments are where a website starts to pay for itself, so they are worth pricing early.

Design. A well-chosen layout adapted to your brand is fine for most local businesses. A fully custom design adds about £400 with us, and much more at larger agencies.

Speed of delivery. Our normal turnaround is about two weeks once we have your content. Rush jobs in about a week cost 20% more.

The running costs nobody mentions

The build is a one-off. These keep going every year:

Domain name: £10 to £20 a year for a .co.uk or .com
Hosting: £30 to £300 a year depending on the site
Business email: free with some hosts, or about £2 to £6 a month per mailbox
Updates and backups: free if you do them, or part of a care plan
Plugins and apps: WordPress premium plugins and Shopify apps often cost £5 to £50 a month each, and they add up quickly

The plugin bill catches out a lot of WordPress and Shopify owners, because each app looks cheap on its own. Before you sign anything, ask the designer for a list of every paid plugin or app the site will need.

Cheap, middle or expensive: which is right?

Cheap is fine if you just need to exist online and your customers find you by word of mouth. A DIY builder or a £300 template will do that.

The middle of the market (£600 to £3,000) is where most local businesses get the best value. You get a site that loads fast on a phone, is set up properly for Google, and is built around the searches your customers make. That is the difference between a site that sits there and a site that brings in calls.

Expensive makes sense when the site is a large part of how you sell: big catalogues, complicated integrations with your own systems, or a brand that needs custom work.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone

Is this price fixed, and does it include VAT?
Who writes the words, and is that included?
Will I own the site and the domain, in my name?
What will it cost each year after launch, including plugins?
What PageSpeed score will it get on mobile?
Will you set up Google Search Console and Google Business Profile?
What happens if I want to leave or move host?

A good designer answers all seven without hesitating. If the answers are vague, the bill usually is too.

Check what you have now

If you already have a website and are wondering whether to replace it, run it through our free website grader first. It scores speed, mobile and SEO basics in under a minute. Sometimes a site needs fixing, not replacing, and that costs a lot less.

Questions people ask

How much does a basic website cost in the UK?

A basic five-page website for a small business costs £500 to £1,500 from a freelancer or small studio. Our fixed price for up to five pages is £595 plus VAT. A DIY builder such as Wix or Squarespace costs £150 to £400 a year, but you do the building yourself.

How much should I pay a web designer?

For a small business site, £600 to £2,000 is a fair range in 2026. Below that you are usually getting a template with your logo on it. Above £3,000 you should be getting custom design, a lot of written content, or features such as booking, payments or client logins.

What are the yearly costs of running a website?

At the very least a domain name (about £10 to £20 a year) and hosting (£30 to £300 a year). Many businesses also pay for a care plan that covers updates, backups and small changes, which costs £20 to £100 a month. Ours is £39 a month.

Is it cheaper to build a website myself?

In cash, yes. A builder plan costs a few hundred pounds a year. The hidden cost is your time, often 20 to 40 hours for a first site, and DIY sites tend to be slower and harder for Google to read. If your time is worth more than about £30 an hour, a fixed-price build is usually cheaper overall.

Why do agencies charge £5,000 or more?

Larger agencies have account managers, designers, developers and project managers on each job, and their overheads go into the price. That makes sense for big catalogues, complex integrations or brand work. Most local businesses do not need that level of process.

Do website prices include VAT?

Not always, so check. Many quotes are shown before VAT, which adds 20%. All our prices are shown before VAT.

Free audit

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PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals on mobile and desktop
The apps and scripts costing you the most load time
Titles, meta, structured data and indexing problems
A short fix list in priority order, with prices