How to hire a web developer — and what it actually costsGuide —
Two quotes for the same website routinely differ by a factor of five, and the reason is almost never greed. It is that they are quotes for different work. Here is what actually drives the number, and how to tell which quote is describing the project you asked for.
First, decide which of three things you are buying
The word "website" covers three products with different cost bases, and naming yours before you ask for quotes removes most of the confusion.
- A brochure site — pages, content, contact form. Its job is to be found and to be read.
- A content-driven site — the above plus a CMS someone non-technical updates, and often a blog, search or multi-language.
- A web application — accounts, permissions, data that changes, payments, integrations. Its job is to do something, and the visible pages are the smallest part of it.
What actually drives the number
Cost tracks these far more closely than it tracks page count, which is the metric most briefs lead with and the least useful one.
- How many distinct kinds of user there are, and whether they see different things
- Whether anything has to be paid for, and what happens when a payment fails
- How many external systems have to be talked to, and how well documented they are
- Whether the design exists, and whether it exists as a complete design system or three screens
- Whether content exists, and who is writing it
- Whether this replaces something live, which adds migration and a cutover plan
- How well understood the core workflow is — the single largest variable, and the hardest to see in a brief
Why two quotes differ by five times
The way to find out is not to negotiate on price. It is to ask both parties for a written scope, then read what each one excludes.
The gap is usually one of four things:
- The cheaper quote is assembling a template where the other is building custom
- It excludes things the other includes — content, migration, testing, deployment, staging, handover
- It is from someone who will disappear halfway, once the money is spent
- Or the expensive one is an agency funding an account manager, a project manager and a designer — a real cost of a real service you may or may not need
Fixed price, hourly, or monthly
Fixed price transfers risk to the developer, so it is priced with that risk included and needs a scope precise enough to argue about. Best when you know exactly what you want.
Hourly transfers risk to you, and works when the shape of the work genuinely cannot be known in advance — taking over an inherited codebase, for instance. A monthly engagement buys a defined share of someone's time with priorities set as you go, which suits a live product.
None is more honest than the others. The dishonest version is a fixed price quoted against a scope too vague to enforce.
The costs that show up after launch
These are real, they are ongoing, and leaving them out of the comparison is how a cheap build becomes an expensive year.
- Hosting, domain and any third-party services the build depends on
- Dependency and security updates — unglamorous, and the thing that quietly rots a site
- Content changes, unless a CMS was included and someone was trained on it
- Small features, which never stop being requested once real users arrive
- Someone to call when it breaks at an inconvenient time
Before you hire: the questions worth asking
Short list, and every answer is a signal.
- Will you write a scope before quoting, and does it name what is excluded?
- Whose name are the repository, hosting and domain in?
- What is in the handover, and who can pick this up if you are unavailable?
- What do you recommend cutting from my brief?
- Can I see something live that you built, and can I use it?
Where to find one, and what each source costs you
Marketplaces are fast and put the risk of picking wrong on you — profiles are optimised for the platform's ranking, not for your project. Agencies are the slowest and most expensive, and the one route that comes with process, capacity and someone to escalate to.
An independent developer found through a referral or their own site sits between the two: continuity and direct access to the person doing the work, against the concentration risk of one person. That risk is manageable if — and only if — ownership and documentation are structural from day one rather than promised at the end.
Common questions
How much does it cost to hire a web developer?
- There is no useful single figure, because the same word covers a five-page brochure site and a multi-tenant application with payments. The number is driven by how many kinds of user the product has, whether money moves through it, how many external systems it integrates with, and how well understood the core workflow is. Get a written scope first; the price is a function of that document, and any figure quoted before it exists is a guess.
Is it cheaper to hire a freelancer than an agency?
- Usually, because you are not funding an account manager, a project manager and a sales function. What you give up is capacity and redundancy: one person cannot run parallel workstreams and cannot cover their own absence. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether your project needs parallel work, not on the hourly figure.
What should be in the quote?
- A scope naming inclusions and exclusions, what happens when scope changes, what the handover contains, who owns the repository and accounts, and what is expected of you — content, feedback turnaround, access to systems. A quote that is only a number is not a quote, it is a starting position.