Website cost calculator
- Cost to launch
- $5,120
- Build cost, design and features
- $3,920
- Content cost across every page
- $1,200
- Cost per page at launch
- $640
Every figure here comes from the figures you enter and the method stated beside it: your page count, your hours per page, your builder's or agency's rate, your content cost and your monthly platform cost. Where a guide names a published figure it names the source and the date it was read. This site publishes no legal opinion on what your site must carry, no ranking promise and no accessibility audit; those are your lawyer's, your marketer's and an accessibility specialist's.
The figures above start from a worked example ($5,120). Change any input and the answer updates as you type.
Download the Website cost calculator worked example (CSV)
The website cost calculator works out what your website will cost to launch and to run for a year from your own figures rather than a published average: how many pages the site needs, how many hours each page takes to design and build, the hourly rate of whoever builds it (zero if that is you on a builder), what the content costs per page, what the features beyond plain pages add, and what the platform costs a month. It is also a website price calculator in the other direction: enter a quote's page count and rate and see what it implies per page.
Why the worksheet prices pages and not the site
Almost every website quote that looks wrong is quoting a different number of pages, or a different kind of page, from the one in the buyer's head. A templated page on a builder is an hour or two of somebody's time; a bespoke page with its own layout, its own photography and its own copy is most of a day. Putting hours per page and a rate against a page count makes the scope explicit, which is the thing two quotes have to share before they can be compared. It also shows where the money goes when a site grows from eight pages to thirty, which is the case nobody costs until it happens.
Content is usually the largest line nobody has priced
A site with no words on it costs less than a site with the right words, and the difference is a line most quotes leave out because the agency assumes the client will write the copy and the client assumes it is included. The content cost per page on this worksheet is there so that assumption is written down: zero if you will write and photograph every page yourself, and a real figure per page if a writer and a photographer are doing it. On a small site it is common for the content to cost as much as the build.
The monthly line decides the first-year total
A builder that costs nothing to set up and sixty dollars a month costs seven hundred and twenty dollars in the first year before a single page is designed, and a hosted site with a maintenance retainer can run to several times that. The first-year total on this worksheet adds twelve months of the platform, hosting and maintenance line to the launch cost, because that is the figure a business actually spends and the one that makes a cheap build and an expensive build look different from each other over a year.
Where the constants in this tool come from
California Business and Professions Code section 22575 (the California Online Privacy Protection Act), which requires an operator of a commercial website that collects personal information from California residents to post a privacy policy. Why the page count on this worksheet includes the privacy and terms pages: a commercial site that collects any personal information, including through a contact form, owes a privacy policy in the largest US state, so those pages are part of every scope rather than an extra.
Website cost calculator: common questions
What figures do I need before using the website cost calculator? A page count, an honest hours-per-page for the kind of pages you want, the rate of whoever builds them, what the content will cost per page if you are not writing it, the quoted cost of any features such as booking or a shop, and the monthly platform or hosting cost. Approximate figures you can stand behind beat precise ones you cannot.
Why not use a published average website cost? Because the range across published figures runs from a few hundred dollars to six figures and none of them describe your page count, your content or who is doing the work. A number derived from your own inputs is one you can put beside a quote and defend.
What does the calculator not tell you? Whether a quote is fair for the work. It costs the site you describe; if an agency's quote is far higher, the difference is either scope they have added, hours per page they think are realistic, or margin, and the way to find out is to ask which.