How much is a .uk domain?

Nominet’s published wholesale price is GBP 3.90 per year, effective 13 January 2020, and no later change has been published. That is the floor paid by registrars, not the retail price — your registrar adds its own margin on top.

Does my website have to be accessible by law in the UK?

If you are a public sector body, yes: the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 apply, with the core duty in force since 23 September 2018. Most private companies are not caught by those regulations. That is a narrower rule than the "accessibility is now the law" line suggests, and worth checking against your own situation rather than against a marketing page.

What are the ongoing costs of a website?

Domain from GBP 3.90 wholesale a year, hosting from around GBP 7 a month on published UK price lists, and then the part nobody quotes: somebody keeping it current. Most of what breaks in the first year is not the code but the things around it.

Build cost

How much does a website cost in the UK?

Q: How much does a website cost in the UK?

There is no published dataset of what UK agencies charge, which is the first honest thing to say. The nearest primary figures are advertised contract rates — a UK web developer median of GBP 488 a day in the six months to 11 October 2026, though on a sample of only 15 quoted rates — and government framework rate cards, where one supplier published a maximum of GBP 1,050 a day for a developer in January 2026. The build itself is the overwhelming majority of the cost; domain and hosting are rounding errors.

Last updated 12 October 2026

Start with what cannot be sourced, because every other page on this question skips it. No UK dataset publishes what web agencies charge. Not the ONS, not gov.uk, not the Crown Commercial Service. The “£50 to £100 an hour” band repeated across the British web is traceable to no primary source at all — every page offering it is an agency’s own marketing or a pricing blog quoting another pricing blog.

So here are the figures that do exist, each with its sample and its date, and a clear note on what each one actually measures.

What the labour costs, from two real sources

The first is the advertised contract market. In the six months to 11 October 2026 the median quoted day rate for a UK web developer was £488 — but from only 15 quoted rates across 40 vacancies, which is a sample too small to lean on, and it moved nearly 17 per cent in a year. The broader “Developer” series over a comparable period sat at £510 from 3,486 quoted rates, which is the number worth using.

The second is better documented and almost never cited: every supplier on the government’s G-Cloud framework has to publish a pricing document. One supplier’s, dated January 2026, lists maximum day rates per consultant on a 7.5-hour day, excluding VAT: £1,050 for a developer, £1,450 for a senior developer, £700 for a tester, £1,050 for an accessibility specialist. Another publishes software development as a band of £250 to £1,100 a day.

Those are framework maximums for selling to government rather than market prices, and they are roughly double the contract medians. Both are true. They price different transactions, and a page that blends them into one average is inventing a number.

The parts that are genuinely cheap

.uk domain, published wholesale price

£3.90

Per year. Nominet’s announced change, effective 13 January 2020; no later wholesale price change is published. This is what registrars pay, not what you pay — retail price is set by your registrar. VAT treatment is not stated on Nominet’s page.

Hosting is the other number people over-think. Published UK list prices, read 12 October 2026: Krystal runs from £7 a month for one site to £97 for nine CPUs; 20i from £10 to £300. Neither page states its VAT treatment plainly, and neither carries a publication date, so treat both as “checked on” rather than “effective from”. AWS Lightsail publishes in dollars, from $3.50 a month for an IPv6-only instance to $164 for 32GB.

Add it up and the infrastructure under a small business website is comfortably under £200 a year. Anyone quoting you a website where hosting is a material line item is describing a retainer, not a server.

Accessibility: narrower than you have been told

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 require public sector bodies to make a website “perceivable, operable, understandable and robust”. The core duty has been in force since 23 September 2018.

Two things are regularly misreported about it. First, the statutory instrument does not itself name WCAG in the duty — the standard arrives through the presumption-of-conformity provisions and government guidance, not through the words of the regulation. Second, and more important commercially: the duty falls on public sector bodies. The regulations define that as the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law and associations formed by them, and they expressly carve out public service broadcasters, most non-governmental organisations, and schools and nurseries apart from essential online administrative functions.

If you are an ordinary private company, these regulations are not what obliges you. That is not a reason to build an inaccessible site — it is a reason to be sceptical of a quote that prices “legal compliance” against a law that does not apply to you. Ask which statute, and ask which section.

So what does it come to

At our own rates a small marketing site starts around £1,000 and a normal first version of a product with accounts and payments usually lands between £6,000 and £8,000, all excluding VAT. Those are our prices, not a market survey, and we publish them because the alternative on this question is a range with no provenance at all. The calculator prices your own answers against the same model we quote from.

Sources: ITJobsWatch contract series for Web Developer and Developer, read 12 October 2026, periods and samples as stated · Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud 15 supplier pricing documents, January 2026 · Nominet, “Change to .UK domain wholesale prices”, announced 1 October 2019, effective 13 January 2020 · Krystal, 20i and AWS Lightsail published price pages, read 12 October 2026 · The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, SI 2018/952, regulations 3, 4 and 6. No primary source for UK agency hourly charge-out rates was found; that absence is reported above rather than filled.

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