Free tool
What should a website cost?
Four questions, an honest range - in pounds or euros. We'll show you what templates, freelancers and studios actually charge, and why the numbers are so far apart. No sign-up, nothing stored.
Your estimate
Template (DIY)
Squarespace, Wix or a theme - you're the designer and the builder.
Up to £400
+ £15–£40 a month
+ 40–80 hours of your own time
Freelancer
A solo designer-developer, usually adapting a theme.
£2,000–£4,000
+ £5–£30 a month for hosting
Studio
Custom design and build, project-managed and accountable.
£4,000–£8,000
+ £10–£40 a month for hosting
This is where we sit. Whitespace builds start at €6,000, scoped and fixed before we begin - and we price in euros wherever you are.
Market ranges for the UK and Europe - not a Whitespace quote.
The honest bit
Why the range is so wide.
Ask ten people what a website costs and you'll get ten defensive answers. The truth is that "a website" spans everything from a rented template to a bespoke build - and the price tracks who does the work, and who carries the risk when it breaks.
- Templates are cheap because you're the labour
- Squarespace or Wix at £15 to £40 a month is genuinely good value if your time is free and your needs fit the template. The subscription never ends and neither do the template's limits - but for plenty of small sites that trade is fine, and we'll happily say so.
- Freelancers charge for time
- A good freelancer usually adapts a theme or designs something light and custom. The price tracks their hours, which means scope creep is your risk, and ongoing support depends on one person staying available - and in business.
- Studios charge for the outcome
- Design from scratch, build, testing, project management, and someone accountable when something breaks. That overhead is real, and so is what it buys. It's why custom starts in the thousands rather than the hundreds: you're paying for a result, not a block of hours.
- The words are the hidden line item
- Professional copy costs a few hundred pounds a page, and almost nobody budgets for it. Most projects that run late are waiting on words, not code. Decide who's writing before you decide who's building.
- The monthly bill nobody prices in
- Platforms charge forever. Custom sites need hosting and someone watching them. The honest comparison is the three-year cost, not the checkout price - a cheap build with an expensive subscription often overtakes a dearer build you own outright.
A word on what this calculator is not. It is not a quote - no honest number exists until someone has understood your business, your content and what the site has to do. It is a map of the market, so that when quotes do arrive, you know which ones are reasonable.
FAQ
Questions about the numbers.
Rather have a number than a range?
Tell us what you're planning and we'll come back with a fixed quote - one number, agreed before we begin, that doesn't move.