How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website in 2026?

Ask ten agencies what a website costs and you'll get ten different answers, ranging from a few hundred euros to well over ten thousand. That's not because anyone is lying to you, it's because "a website" isn't one fixed thing. The honest answer is: it depends on what the site actually needs to do, and a lot of the cost people assume is necessary, isn't.

What actually drives the price

Three things move the number more than anything else: the number of pages, whether you need a blog or online payments, and how much ongoing support you want after launch. A simple five-page site for a local business is a very different job from a twelve-page site with a blog and Mollie payments built in. Custom design work, bespoke animations, and fully custom-coded themes push the price up further, and that's usually where the five-figure quotes come from.

Where the inflated quotes come from

Traditional agencies often price in hours: discovery workshops, strategy decks, multiple rounds of design revisions, project management overhead. None of that is dishonest, but for a small business that just needs a professional site online, it's often more process than the job requires. A fixed-scope package skips the workshops and gets straight to building.

What a fair, fixed price looks like in 2026

As a rough benchmark: a clean five-page WordPress site with a contact form typically lands around €199–€350 when priced as a fixed package rather than by the hour. A larger site with a blog and the ability to take payments online usually sits between €700 and €1,200. Anything beyond that is usually paying for either genuine custom design work, or overhead that doesn't change what visitors actually see.

How to avoid overpaying

Ask for a fixed price up front, not an hourly estimate. Ask exactly what's included, pages, forms, support period, so there's no scope creep once the project starts. And be wary of quotes that include months of "strategy" before a single page gets built, that's often overhead being billed as value.