"How much does a website cost?" is one of the most-asked and least-answerable questions in software. The honest answer is always "it depends," but that's not useful to someone trying to set a budget. Here's a framework instead of a shrug.

Why "it depends" is actually the honest answer

Two projects that sound identical in a one-line description, "an e-commerce site," "a booking platform," can differ in cost by 5-10x depending on integrations, custom logic, design complexity and how much of the backend is genuinely custom versus off-the-shelf. Cost tracks complexity, not category.

Ballpark ranges by project type

These are rough, real-world ranges for fixed-scope custom development, not off-the-shelf templates or drag-and-drop builders:

  • Marketing site or landing page with custom design and a CMS: roughly $3,000–$8,000.
  • Small web application with auth, a database and a handful of core features: roughly $8,000–$25,000.
  • SaaS MVP with payments, user roles and a real data model: roughly $20,000–$60,000.
  • Enterprise platform or multi-module system with integrations and compliance needs: $60,000 and up, often scoped in phases.

These ranges assume a competent team billing at market rates for the work involved, not the cheapest bid you can find.

What inflates the budget

A handful of specific things reliably push costs higher: custom authentication and permissions systems, payment processing with edge cases (subscriptions, refunds, multi-currency), integrating with a poorly documented third-party API, and migrating off a legacy system nobody fully understands anymore. None of these are unreasonable to want, they just need to be scoped honestly up front.

Fixed-scope vs. time-and-materials

A fixed-scope quote protects your budget if the requirements are genuinely settled. If you're still discovering what the product needs to do, time-and-materials billing (or a short paid discovery sprint before a fixed quote) is usually the more honest arrangement, it avoids either side padding estimates to cover uncertainty.

Questions to ask before you sign

Before committing to any quote, ask: what happens if requirements change mid-project, is post-launch support included or billed separately, who owns the code and repository, and can you see examples of similar work the team has actually shipped. A vendor who answers these clearly, without vague deflection, is usually the safer bet regardless of price.

If you'd like a straight answer on what your specific project would cost, a discovery call with our engineering team gets you a real number, not a placeholder.