How much does a professional website cost in 2026? The price to build, run and maintain it – with a calculator

How much does a website cost? This guide gives you concrete price ranges – but above all, a way of thinking about the question. The big shift for websites in 2026, with the rise of AI-assisted development and vibe coding, is that the cost has moved. Building a good-looking website has never been cheaper. Building a website that drives the right traffic, converts and ranks in the long term still takes craft.

If you just want a quick price estimate, scroll down to our website price calculator.

Why you don't get a straight answer to what a website costs

Ask ten web agencies what a website costs and you get ten different answers – and they can all be right. The price is driven by a dozen variables: platform, number of pages, design ambition, features, integrations, number of languages, and how much time is spent on strategy before a single page is drawn.

"A company website" covers everything from a simple five-page website to a platform with hundreds of CMS entries, several languages and integrations with business systems. Asking for a price without defining the scope is like asking what a house costs without taking size and location into account.

There is another reason prices are hard to compare: almost everyone talks only about the one-off cost of building the website. Few bring up what it costs to own it over time – and it is the cost of ownership, not the build cost, that decides whether the investment pays off.

What is a professional website?

Before we talk price, it is worth defining what we mean by a professional website – because that is the kind of website the price ranges in this guide refer to.

A professional website combines five things:

• A clear strategy – every page has a purpose: generating enquiries, explaining an offering, building trust or ranking for a search term. The strategy is based on a thorough analysis of the company's product, market and customers, ideally carried out together with the client.
• A technical foundation – fast loading, passing Core Web Vitals, mobile optimisation and a structure that search engines and AI models can read.
• Credible design – a consistent visual language that reflects the brand and builds trust with the visitor.
• SEO and AEO readiness – the right structure, metadata and schema markup in place from day one.
• Independence – you can update the content yourself without calling the agency. A good, well-structured CMS is a requirement, not an option.

A website that lacks any of these parts is not professional in the sense we mean – however nice it looks in a screenshot.

Why development cost is no longer the deciding factor

Here is the shift that changes the whole cost question: building a good-looking, working website has never been faster or cheaper than in 2026.

AI-assisted tools, mature design systems and platforms with MCP servers such as Webflow have sharply reduced the time it takes to go from idea to published website. A competent designer or developer now produces as much in a week as they did in a month a few years ago. That is good news – but it also means that the build itself is no longer what separates a good investment from a bad one.

What has not become cheaper is the thinking. A website that actually converts and ranks is built on decisions no AI makes for you: what the customer's real problems are, what the customer journey should look like, which pages are needed and why, which keywords and questions the website should own. That work is still hands-on craft – and it is what you pay for in a serious web project.

In other words: you can get a good-looking website quickly and cheaply today, and you can scale content production enormously. But you cannot get a strategic, long-term website quickly and cheaply. The difference does not lie in the code – it lies in the work around it.

What actually costs money?

The total cost of a website is spread across four items. Understanding each of them is the key to reading a quote correctly – and to interpreting the calculator later in the guide.

Strategy and analysis

This is the most underestimated item, and the one most often missing entirely from cheap quotes. Strategy work is what happens before design and development: a workshop where we map your USPs, your target audience, your customers' real problems and how you solve them. Ideally, a strategy and SEO analysis is carried out together with you before the information architecture, URL structure, design and UX are decided.

Strategy work can cost as much as building a simple website, or more. That is neither an exaggeration nor a miscalculation – it reflects the fact that the thinking is harder, and more valuable, than the implementation. A website built without this step often looks good but lacks direction and the intended outcome: it looks great, but performs poorly.

Website platform & development

This covers the design and development of the website itself. The cost is driven by scope – number of pages, number of templates, level of animation and features – and to some extent by which platform you choose.

Webflow, WordPress and a coded headless solution often come out at roughly the same price for the same level of ambition. WordPress is sometimes presented as the cheap option – but reaching the same design quality and structure as a modern Webflow website often takes more work, not less. Headless, on the other hand, can be surprisingly cheap for a landing page or a small website that will stay fairly static; it only gets expensive when an advanced content structure has to be built so that a non-technical editor can update and extend the website entirely on their own.

This is how the platforms compare, leaving price aside:

For a deeper comparison of the two most common options, see Webflow vs WordPress 2026. And for when headless is the right choice, see AI-assisted web development with Claude Code, Next.js and a headless CMS.

Running costs

From day one there are ongoing costs that most quotes do not mention: platform licence or hosting, domain, and technical maintenance. This is where the platforms really differ.

Webflow and Shopify take care of platform maintenance for you – updates, security and infrastructure are included. WordPress requires ongoing work: core and plugin updates, security checks and backups. A typical WordPress website also comes with licence fees for plugins – SEO, security, caching, forms, GDPR – that Webflow and Shopify have built in. So WordPress genuinely costs more to run, and every plugin is also a potential security risk.

Growth – SEO and content

A website nobody sees generates no business. SEO, AEO and ongoing content are not an add-on package – they are the investment that decides whether the website pays for itself. And it is an ongoing cost, not a one-off job.

This is also where the return is created. A website costs money on the day it is built; it only earns money once the right people find it. Skipping the growth investment is a bit like paying for a shop and then not putting up a sign outside.

More on how AI is changing the search landscape: How is SEO affected by AI? – Data and insights.

Work out what your website costs to build and own

The calculator below estimates what a website costs to build and own – not just the one-off price. You choose the type of project, platform, scope and how much strategy and ongoing SEO you want, and it returns an initial investment, a monthly cost and a total cost of ownership over the time horizon you choose.

One thing becomes clear as soon as you move the sliders: the platform affects the total less than most people think. Webflow, WordPress and a coded headless solution often land in the same ballpark for the same level of ambition. What drives the price is the website's scope and how much strategic work goes in before the design.

Headless is a good example of how gut instinct about price is often wrong. A coded landing page or small website connected to a headless CMS can be the cheapest option of all – with today's tools, a competent developer who uses AI the right way can code a professional website very quickly. Headless only gets expensive when an advanced content structure has to be connected so that a non-technical person can update the website on their own. It is that connection you pay extra for, not the code – which today is cheaper to write "freely", in a coded website, than to build through an interface (a traditional CMS or website platform).

Strategy is the most underestimated item. In the calculator, the strategy and analysis work can cost as much as building a simple website – and that is not a miscalculation. A good-looking website is quick to produce today. A website built to convert and rank in the long term starts in a workshop where the customer journey, the target audience's problems and your USPs are mapped before a single page is drawn.

Notice the breakdown bar in the result. Over three years the build itself is rarely the biggest item – running costs and ongoing SEO overtake it. That is why the one-off price is the wrong figure to compare agencies on.

What does a website cost?

Work out the full cost picture – strategy, build, running costs, maintenance and growth – for the platform and scope you choose.

Type of siteMarketing siteE-commercePlatformWebflowWordPressHeadless (coded)ScopeLanding pageSmall websiteStandardExtensiveTime horizon1 year3 years5 yearsMaintenanceSelf-serviceOngoing supportStrategyIn-house strategyBasicIn-depthComprehensiveShort discovery: core message, target audience and page structure.SEO and growth: SEK 5,000/month · Basic

• One-off costSEK 30,000–60,000
• OngoingSEK 5,315–5,510/monthPlatform & running costs SEK 315–510 · Maintenance SEK 0 · SEO SEK 5,000
• Total cost of ownershipSEK 221,340–258,360over a 3-year horizon

• Strategy 3%
• Build 16%
• Running costs 6%
• Maintenance 0%
• Growth 75%

In-house strategySEK 0

You handle the strategy work in-house.

BasicSEK 5,000–10,000

Short discovery: core message, target audience and page structure.

In-depthSEK 15,000–35,000

Strategy workshop and a mapped customer journey.

ComprehensiveSEK 35,000–80,000

Full strategy and SEO analysis before design.

The calculator covers Webflow, WordPress, Headless (coded), Shopify, WooCommerce. The figures are estimates based on market ranges for Swedish web projects in 2026 – not a quote.

More free tools

What does a website cost in practice? Three examples

The figures below are estimates for Swedish projects – your project may differ depending on scope and level of ambition. They are there to show how the four cost items are split in real scenarios.

Small service company on Webflow

• Strategy and build (simple website, 8 pages): SEK 40,000
• Webflow CMS plan: SEK 3,600/year
• Domain: SEK 200/year
• Basic SEO retainer: SEK 60,000/year
• Year 1 total: ~SEK 104,000
• Years 2–3 without a rebuild: ~SEK 64,000/year

Mid-sized B2B company on Webflow

• Strategy and build (custom design, 20 pages, blog): SEK 120,000
• Webflow Business plan: SEK 5,900/year
• Domain: SEK 200/year
• SEO retainer including ongoing content: SEK 180,000/year
• Year 1 total: ~SEK 306,000
• Years 2–3: ~SEK 186,000/year

Online retailer on Shopify

• Strategy and build (theme, integrations, product structure): SEK 80,000
• Shopify plan: SEK 12,000/year
• Apps and add-ons: SEK 6,000–12,000/year
• SEO and conversion rate optimisation: SEK 120,000/year
• Year 1 total: ~SEK 218,000–224,000
• Years 2–3: ~SEK 138,000–144,000/year

Notice the pattern again: in every case the build is the smallest item over three years. It is running costs and growth that dominate – and that is why the one-off price is the wrong figure to base a decision on.

What should your website generate?

A website is an investment, and an investment is judged on its return. So the interesting question is not just what the website costs – but what it generates.

A worked example: if the website brings in five new customers a year and each customer is worth SEK 50,000, that is SEK 250,000 in revenue. Set against that is an SEO retainer of around SEK 120,000 a year. The margin is wide – and the point is that the cost should be weighed against what it produces, not measured in a vacuum. Even in this simple example, remember that the SEO investment keeps creating value after it has been paused or ended – and builds up more value over time if you keep working on it.

That is also why the one-off price is the wrong thing to compare agencies on. A website that is SEK 30,000 cheaper to build but lacks a strategy and an SEO foundation costs you far more than that in lost business.

Summary

What a website costs is the sum of four items: strategy, build, running costs and ongoing growth – added up over the whole time you own the website. The build, which is the only thing most quotes talk about, is often the smallest of them over three years.

The big shift in 2026 is that a good-looking website has become cheap, while a strategic, high-performing website still takes craft. Anyone who only compares build prices will make the wrong choice.

Our fixed prices for a new website are published openly on the service page.

Want a transparent breakdown of what your project would cost? Get in touch and we will go through it with you and give you free advice on platform choice, strategy and more.

If you are considering hiring a web agency, read: How to choose a web agency – 16 questions to ask.

Still facing the broader decision – build it yourself with AI or hire an agency, which tool and which process? Read: New website 2026 – build or buy? Price, platforms & process.