11 September 2026 / 8 min read
How much a website costs in the UK, and why the brackets are so wide
Real brackets from about £1,000 to £100,000, what sits in each one, and the questions that move a quote up or down.
- websites
- pricing
- budget
Website pricing feels deliberately vague because most studios avoid the question until they have you on a call. Here are the brackets we actually work in, and what puts a project in each.
The short answer
A small, well-built site on a builder platform starts around £1,000. A custom-coded marketing site sits in the £5,000 to £10,000 range. A bespoke CMS or web app starts around £10,000 and a system that runs a whole business reaches £25,000 and beyond. Combinations — brand, site, system and launch together — are what take a project towards £100,000.
Nothing above is a rate card. It is the shape of the market, so you can tell a fair quote from a fantasy.
The brackets
| Bracket | What it buys | Typical fit |
|---|---|---|
| ~£1,000 | Builder platform site, your content, proper structure and search basics | New business that needs to look credible now |
| £5,000–£10,000 | Custom-coded site, bespoke design, fast, built to grow | Established business whose site is costing it work |
| £7,500+ | Ecommerce with real product, payment and fulfilment thinking | Anyone selling more than a handful of lines |
| £10,000+ | Bespoke CMS or database — your records, your rules | Teams running the truth in spreadsheets |
| £18,000+ | Web app with accounts, permissions and workflow | A product, or an internal system many people use |
| £25,000+ | A system that runs the operation end to end | Bookings, contracts, invoices, reporting in one place |
What actually moves the number
- Number of screens. Two systems with the same database can differ hugely in cost because one has four screens and one has forty.
- Documents. Generating contracts, invoices or itineraries from live data is where cost — and value — jumps.
- Permissions. "Everyone sees everything" is cheap. Roles, ownership and audit trails are not.
- Integrations. Accounting, calendars, payments and email each carry their own edge cases.
- Migration. Old data is never as tidy as anyone believes.
- Timeline. Compressing a schedule costs money; it never saves it.
Where people waste money
Paying for design that never gets built. Paying per seat, forever, for software that fits 60% of how you work. Rebuilding in year two because nobody planned for the second phase. And buying a cheap site twice instead of the right site once.
What to ask before you sign
- What exactly is in scope, screen by screen?
- Who owns the code and the data?
- What happens after launch, and what does that cost?
- Which parts are estimates and which are fixed?
How we price it
We scope before we quote: a conversation, a written project scope, then a figure and a timeline you can hold us to. If you want the number for your own project in a few minutes, use the guided brief — it gives you a bracket and a timeline on the spot. Or read what a custom CMS actually costs for the systems side.