A web designer costs their hourly rate multiplied by the hours your website needs. My rate is $55-$65 per hour, or a fixed quote per scope. On 12 October 2026, Freelancer.com showed web designers at $4 to $35 per hour, most PeoplePerHour web designers listed $35 or less, and Codeable, a WordPress-only marketplace, stated $80 to $120 plus a 17.5% fee.
What do I charge as a freelance web designer and developer?
I charge $55 to $65 per hour, or a fixed price for a written scope. I design the site and build it myself, so one rate covers the layout, the code and the launch, instead of a designer's fee followed by a developer's. A free scoping call of about 30 minutes comes first, and the written quote reaches you within one business day.
I build on a staging copy, send a short progress note each working day, and hand over every login, written notes and two weeks of support. The kinds of sites I build and the platforms I use are on my web design and development page. Payment stages are on how I work.
How much do web designers charge per hour on public listings?
On the three pages I could read on 12 October 2026, listed rates ran from $4 to $120 per hour. The table shows what each page said, with its address, so you can check it.
| Where | What the page showed | Source | Date read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer.com, website designers | Nine profile cards at $4 to $35 USD per hour: one at $4, one at $10, two at $15, one at $20, three at $25 and one at $35. All nine were based in India or Pakistan. | freelancer.com/hire/website-design | 12 October 2026 |
| PeoplePerHour, web design freelancers | The hourly-rate filter counted 1,243 freelancers under $15, 2,785 at $15 to $35, 1,011 at $35 to $60 and 501 over $60. Fixed-price offers for a whole WordPress website ran from $105 to $675, and a Shopify design or redesign offer was $685. | peopleperhour.com/hire-freelancers/web-design | 12 October 2026 |
| Codeable pricing page (WordPress work only) | "A single estimate based on our $80-$120 USD hourly rate", plus a 17.5% fixed service fee. Its pricing guide showed "Website Design and Development from $2,500" and "E-commerce Site Design/Development from $3,200". | codeable.io/pricing | 12 October 2026 |
| Me | $55-$65 per hour, or a fixed quote per scope. | This page | 12 October 2026 |
Four cautions before you use those numbers.
- Marketplace pages reshuffle. Your visit will show different profiles.
- A rate is not a quote. It says nothing about how many hours a person will bill, or whether they have built a site like yours.
- A package is not your site. Before you compare a fixed-price offer with a quote, open it and read the page count, the revision limit and what you must supply. One offer I saw bundled hosting. Ask whose account that hosting sits in.
- Some pages are missing. Thumbtack, Upwork, Fiverr and Clutch showed a bot check or an empty page to my reader that day, so they are not in the table. My own rate sits in PeoplePerHour's two highest bands and below Codeable's.
What drives the cost of a small business website?
Hours drive it, and six things set the hours. Two sites with the same page count can land far apart.
- Templates, not pages. A template is a layout used again and again: home, service, article, product. Twenty service pages that share one layout take less work than five pages that each need their own design. Ask every quote to list the templates.
- Content. Text, photos, prices and policies. Moving hundreds of products or old posts from a previous site can take more hours than the design.
- Selling or booking. A store adds a catalog, stock, shipping, tax, a payment gateway and order emails. A booking request form is small. Instant booking with live availability is custom work.
- Integrations. A CRM, a newsletter tool, accounting software or an outside API. The hours depend on that system's documentation and whether a test account exists.
- Who writes the copy. If you supply final text, the designer arranges it. If the designer or a copywriter writes it, that is separate work. Ask which one the quote assumes.
- Theme or custom design. A theme reuses a design someone else made. A custom design means each template is drawn and coded for your content.
How much work does each part of a website add?
This is how I weigh scope before I put hours on it. Effort is shown relative to a small brochure site built on a good theme with your text supplied, not in dollars, because one label can hide very different jobs.
| Scope item | Relative effort | What pushes it up |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site of a few pages on a theme, text supplied | Baseline | Extra templates, text arriving late |
| Custom layout instead of a theme | Medium, per template | Number of distinct templates and review rounds |
| Contact or quote form | Small | Conditional fields, file uploads, sending entries to a CRM |
| Online store with a standard catalog and checkout | Large | Product variants, shipping and tax rules, the number of products to import |
| Instant booking with availability and deposits | Large | Calendar sync, cancellation rules, customer accounts |
| A second language | Medium | Who translates, separate addresses per language, right-to-left scripts |
| Connection to a CRM, newsletter or accounting tool | Small to large | API quality, a sandbox, sync in both directions |
| Moving content from an old site | Small to large | Pages and products to move, redirects from old addresses |
| Copywriting | Separate trade | Pages to write and research needed |
If you are replacing a site that already brings visitors, my website redesign guide covers what to keep and how to redirect old addresses.
Is custom website development worth the extra cost?
It is worth it when the site has rules that a theme cannot express, and a waste when a good theme already fits. A theme is fine for a company site whose pages follow common patterns. Custom code earns its hours when visitors search by dates and guests, log in to accounts or see prices that follow your own rules. My quotes name the platform and say so when a theme is enough. If you are not sure whether your job needs a designer, a developer or both, read web designer vs web developer.
What does a website cost to run after launch?
Running costs are the bills that keep arriving after the build, and most should go from the provider straight to you. Prices depend on the provider and plan, so I quote none.
| Cost | Billed by | How often | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain name | The registrar | Yearly | Registered to your business, with your email. The renewal price can differ from the first year. |
| Hosting | The host | Monthly or yearly | Sized to the software and traffic. A store needs more than a brochure site. |
| Business email | The email provider | Per mailbox | Whether it comes with hosting or is billed separately. |
| Paid theme, plugin or page builder licenses | Each vendor | Usually yearly | Whose account holds the license and who pays the renewal. |
| Payment gateway | The gateway | Per transaction | That the account is opened in your company's name. |
| Maintenance | A developer, or your own staff | Monthly or as needed | Updates, backups and someone to call when a form stops sending. |
I do not sell hosting through this site. I set up the plan you choose, in your name.
How do you compare two website quotes?
Send every designer the same written brief, then compare what each quote includes line by line, not the totals.
- Are the templates and pages listed by name?
- Are the features listed: forms, store, booking, languages, integrations?
- Is the platform named, with a reason?
- Who supplies text and photos, and what happens to the date if they arrive late?
- Which paid themes or plugins are used, and in whose account?
- Will the domain, hosting, analytics and gateway accounts be in your name?
- How many review rounds are included, and what does an extra one cost?
- What does launch include: redirects, a test inquiry or order, a sitemap?
- How long is support after launch, and what counts as a bug?
- Are payments staged against approvals you can see?
What are the red flags in a web design quote?
The worst ones are a low price that hides a cost you meet later, and a setup that makes it hard to leave.
- A builder or theme licensed to the designer. If the paid page builder sits in the designer's account, your updates depend on that person renewing it. Ask whose name the license is in and who renews it.
- A domain registered to the designer. Whoever is the registrant controls the domain. It should be your business.
- A rented site. Some providers build on their own platform for a monthly fee. Ask what you can take with you if you stop paying.
- No admin access, ever. Holding the launch until final payment is normal. Never giving you an admin login is not.
- "Unlimited revisions" with no written scope. It usually means nobody has defined the finish line.
- Ranking promises. Nobody controls where Google places a page.
What should you do before asking for a website quote?
Write one page: what the business sells, who buys it, the single action the site must make easy, the templates and features you think you need, and who will write the text. Send it to two or three designers and compare the replies with the list above. My portfolio shows sites I have designed and built, and what every build includes is on my freelance web designer and developer page. If you want my quote, send me the brief.
If you are still deciding who should build the site, my web design agency versus freelancer comparison sets out when each one fits.
Last reviewed 12 October 2026. Disclosure: I sell web design and development, so I am not neutral. I am also CTO at ElySpace, a freelance developer for Marmaids LLC, and founder of WHMCSPilot and MagizAI. The third-party figures above are what three public pages showed when I opened them on that date, not a survey.
