How much does a website cost in the UK in 2026?
It's the first question every client asks, and the one most agencies answer with "it depends." That's true, but it's also a dodge. So here are the real ranges we see in the UK market, what actually moves the number, and the ways businesses end up paying twice.
The honest answer, up front
| What you're buying | Typical cost | Right for |
|---|---|---|
| DIY site builder (Squarespace, Wix, a Shopify theme) | £0 – £1,000 plus your evenings | Testing an idea |
| A freelancer customising a template | £1,000 – £2,500 | Getting online fast on a tight budget |
| Custom-designed small business site | £2,000 – £8,000 | Most local and growing businesses |
| Larger site or online store | £8,000 – £20,000 | Content-heavy sites and serious ecommerce |
| Custom platforms and ecommerce at scale | £20,000 – £75,000+ | Custom functionality, integrations, serious scale |
We work across that whole table. A £2,000 starter site built properly is a project we're glad to take on, and so is a £50,000 platform. No project too big or too small. The interesting part is what separates the rows.
What actually moves the price
Custom design versus a template. A template costs less because someone else already made the decisions. That's fine until you need it to do something the template didn't anticipate, or you notice a competitor using the same one. Custom design costs more because every screen is a decision made for your business. It's also the difference between a site that looks like your brand and a site that looks like a template.
How many kinds of page you need. Price tracks page templates, not pages. A site with a home page, a services template and a contact page is a small project even if the services template gets used forty times. Every genuinely different layout adds design and build time.
Ecommerce. The moment you're taking money, the stakes change: payments, shipping rules, tax, returns, product data, email flows. A well-built store costs more than a brochure site because there's simply more machine under the bodywork.
Integrations. "Can it talk to our CRM / booking system / stock system?" is where quotes quietly double. Clean integrations are absolutely worth doing, but they're real engineering, not a plugin install.
Content. Copy, photography and imagery are the most underestimated line on any website budget. A £20,000 build with rushed words in it performs like a £5,000 one.
Where budgets get wasted
The most expensive website is the cheap one you build twice. We regularly meet businesses on their second or third site in four years: each one bought quickly, each one replaced when it couldn't keep up. One properly-built site, extended over the same period, would have cost less and performed better throughout.
The second-biggest waste is paying for layers. At larger agencies a meaningful slice of your invoice funds account managers, handovers between departments, and the office everyone sits in. It's worth asking any agency: will the people in the pitch actually do the work? (At Catapult the answer is yes. We're a small remote team with low overheads, which is why our quotes tend to come in lower than agencies twice our size: there's nothing in them but the work.)
The third is over-speccing version one. You don't need every feature at launch; you need the site live, converting, and structured so features can bolt on later. A good studio will talk you out of scope, not into it.
The ongoing costs nobody budgets for
- Domain name: £10 to £30 a year for a normal one.
- Hosting: anywhere from £10 to a few hundred pounds a month depending on traffic and complexity. Modern static and edge hosting has made fast sites dramatically cheaper to run than they used to be.
- Maintenance: updates, security, backups, small fixes. Budget something, even if it's small; an unmaintained site ages fast. (This is why we host and look after most of the sites we build, for a simple monthly fee. Launch day isn't goodbye.)
- Improvements: the sites that win treat launch as the starting line. Many of our clients keep a light monthly retainer for experiments and refinements.
How we price projects
We don't do mystery numbers. Every project starts with a short discovery call, then you get a fixed proposal: the scope, the timeline, the price. No day-rate roulette, no surprise invoices. A focused marketing site typically takes 4 to 8 weeks; bigger builds run longer, and we work in weekly loops so you always see progress.
Quick answers
Why is the range so wide? Because "a website" describes everything from a digital business card to a revenue platform. The table above is the honest way to narrow it: decide what job the site has to do, and the range shrinks fast.
Can I start small and grow? Yes, and you should. No project too big or too small isn't a slogan we typed for fun; a tight, well-built small site beats a sprawling mediocre one, and it gives you a foundation worth extending.
Is the cheapest quote ever the right choice? Occasionally, if the scope is genuinely tiny and the builder is genuinely good. But if two quotes are far apart, they're not quoting the same project. Ask what's not included.
Thinking about a new site and want a real number instead of a range? Tell us about your project and we'll give you a straight answer within a working day.