How Much to Charge for a Website

"How much for a website?" is like asking "how much for a house?" A landing page and a 200-page e-commerce platform are both websites. The price difference between them is 100×. To quote a website properly, you need to scope it — and scope means specific answers to specific questions.

Here's how to break down a website project and price it accurately.

The four scope variables

Every website project's price is a function of:

1. Number of pages — a 5-page brochure site is 10× less work than a 50-page content site
2. Design complexity — template-based vs custom-designed vs bespoke interactions
3. Functionality — static content vs CMS vs e-commerce vs custom web app
4. Integrations — payment, auth, CRM, API connections, multilingual

Get answers to these before you quote anything. A client who can't answer them isn't ready for a quote — they're ready for a scoping conversation.

Pricing by website type

Brochure / marketing site (5–10 pages)

A simple business site: home, about, services, contact, maybe a blog. No login, no payment, no database beyond the CMS.

Timeline: 2–5 weeks depending on design rounds and content readiness.

Content / publishing site (20–100+ pages)

A blog, magazine, knowledge base, or documentation site. The volume of pages means a CMS is non-negotiable, and the information architecture becomes real work.

• Scope: CMS setup, content models, category/tag system, search, author pages, SEO structure
• Price range: €5,000–20,000 depending on design customisation and integration depth
• Timeline: 4–8 weeks

E-commerce (10–500 products)

Online store with product catalogue, cart, checkout, payment processing, order management.

• Scope: product pages, variants, inventory, payment integration (Stripe, PayPal), shipping rules, tax handling, email receipts
• Price range: €6,000–25,000 for Shopify/WooCommerce builds; €20,000–60,000+ for custom platforms
• Timeline: 6–12 weeks

Custom web app

Anything with user accounts, complex logic, or a database that isn't a standard CMS pattern. This is software development, not website building, and it's priced as such.

• Scope: auth, user dashboards, API, database design, admin panel
• Price range: €15,000–80,000+ depending on features
• Timeline: 8–20 weeks

The hourly breakdown method

For custom scopes that don't fit a type, build the quote from hours. Here's a realistic breakdown for a 10-page custom marketing site with a CMS:

At €50/hour (mid-level, Western Europe), that's €4,300–6,600 — which aligns with the "custom design, CMS" row above.

What clients forget to budget for (and you should charge for)

• Content writing. "We'll provide the copy" almost always means "we'll provide the copy three weeks late and it'll be 4,000 words of CEO prose." Offer content writing as a line item, or at minimum charge for the extra rounds of content entry and formatting.
• Hosting and domain setup. Not free. 2–4 hours.
• Training. Teaching the client to use the CMS. 2–4 hours.
• Post-launch support. The first month always has bugs and tweaks. Bundle 4–8 hours of support, or charge a monthly retainer.
• SEO basics. Meta tags, sitemap, schema markup, page speed. If they want it, it's 4–8 hours.

Pricing models: fixed vs hourly

For websites, fixed-price with a tight scope document is usually best for both sides. The client knows the cost upfront; you're protected if you estimated well. The risk is scope creep — which you manage with a change-request process: anything outside the written scope is quoted separately.

For projects where the scope is genuinely fluid (early-stage startups, exploratory work), hourly is safer for you. See hourly vs project pricing for when to use each.

Key takeaways

For the broader question of what your hourly rate should be (which the project prices are built on), read how to set your freelance rate. For how to choose between fixed and hourly, see hourly vs daily vs project pricing. And to get an itemized quote for a specific website project — with hour estimates per phase — try the calculator.