What a website costs in 2026: where the money actually goes
- The price of a website is mostly people’s hours, not “the cost of the platform”.
- A landing page starts around $900, a company site from $2000, a store from $2500.
- Most of the budget goes into design and sign-off, not into code.
- A 3–5× gap between quotes almost always means a different scope, not different greed.
“How much does a website cost” sounds like a question about a product’s price. It is closer to “how much does a renovation cost”: until it is clear how many rooms and what exactly we are doing, any number is fiction.
Where the budget goes
| Stage | Share of budget | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Research and structure | 10–15% | Sitemap, block logic, placeholder copy |
| Design | 30–35% | Figma layouts for every screen size |
| Front-end and development | 35–40% | A working site with an admin panel |
| Integrations | 5–15% | CRM, payments, delivery, messengers |
| Testing and launch | 5–10% | Device checks, migration, analytics |
Notice that code is less than half. So “we will do it for half the price” almost always means something from the list above was removed — usually research and testing, because neither shows up in a screenshot.
What that is in money
That is the floor for work you would not be embarrassed to show. The ceiling is set by scope: a 40-page site in three languages with an ERP integration costs several times what the same site costs at 8 pages.
What actually pushes the price up
- The number of unique templates. Not pages — templates. Twenty product pages are one template. Home, catalogue, product, blog and contacts are five.
- Motion. Blocks fading in costs almost nothing. Scroll-driven animation is days of work on its own.
- Integrations. Wiring a form to e-mail takes an hour. Syncing a catalogue with an ERP takes weeks, depending on what its API allows.
- Languages. Each extra language is not just translation: separate meta tags, hreflang, and a second pass on the layout, because German runs a third longer than English.
- Content. If copy and photography are on you, that is zero. If they are on the contractor, add 15–30%.
The most expensive thing in a project is not a hard feature — it is uncertainty. Every “we will decide that later” at the design stage becomes rework that somebody pays for.
How to read contractor quotes
When you have three proposals with a 4× spread, compare four things rather than the totals:
- How many unique templates are included. If it is not written down, it is not included.
- Custom design or a bought theme. Both are legitimate, but they are different money and a different result.
- What happens with revisions. How many rounds are covered and what costs extra.
- What happens after launch. Is there a warranty, or are you alone with the bugs.
When cheaper is the right answer
Not every job needs a big site. If you are testing whether there is demand at all, a $900 landing page is more honest than a $3000 corporate site. If you have three services and no plans for a blog, a multi-page site only dilutes attention.
Bad economising starts where the cut is in quality rather than scope: a template instead of design, mobile treated as an afterthought, no analytics. Six months later the site needs rebuilding and the total comes out higher.
We will scope your project for free: look at the problem, give you a range, and tell you if it can be solved for less.