How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost in the UK?
Quotes for the same job come back at £800 and £12,000, and nobody explains the gap. Here is what actually drives the number, and how to tell which end of the range you need.
You ask three people to redesign your website. One says £800. One says £4,000. One says £12,000. They have all seen the same site and heard the same brief, and none of them explains why the numbers are so far apart. So you are left guessing whether the cheap one is a bargain or a mistake, and whether the expensive one is worth it or just confident.
The gap is real, and it is not mostly about skill. It is about what is actually included, and about a difference most quotes never mention: whether you are buying a new look on the old foundations, or a new site underneath.
The honest range
In the UK, in 2026, redesign work tends to land in three bands.
£500 to £1,500. A new theme applied to your existing site, your logo and colours dropped in, your existing words moved across. Fast, and genuinely fine if your site is structurally sound and just looks tired. What you are buying is a fresh coat of paint, and it is worth knowing that is what you are buying.
£1,500 to £5,000. A custom design, and usually the point at which someone actually thinks about what the site says, not just how it looks. Pages get restructured around what your customers need to know. Copy gets rewritten. Speed and search get attention. This is where most small businesses get the best value, because it fixes the reason the site was not working rather than the symptom.
£5,000 to £15,000 and up. Ecommerce, booking systems, customer logins, integrations with software you already run, or a large site with a lot of pages to migrate carefully. The price is driven by moving parts, not by prettiness.
Our own sites start at £1,500, which puts the entry point at the bottom of that middle band, and we quote a fixed price before any work starts.
What actually moves the number
Five things, roughly in order of how much they matter.
Whether the copy is written or moved. Rewriting the words is often the single most valuable part of a redesign and the part most quotes quietly leave out. "We will migrate your existing content" means the sentences that were not working will keep not working, in a nicer font.
How many pages, and how different they are. Ten pages that share one layout is a much smaller job than ten pages that each need their own. Ask how many unique page designs are in the quote, not how many pages.
Whether the foundations are being replaced. This is the big one, and it is covered below.
Whether you are selling online. Payments, stock, delivery rules, and tax all add real work, and they add ongoing work too.
What happens after launch. Hosting, updates, backups, and someone to call. A quote that excludes all of that is not cheaper, it has just moved the cost somewhere you have not looked yet.
The question that decides the band
Before you compare quotes, work out whether you need a redesign or a rebuild, because they are priced differently and confusing them is how people end up paying twice.
A redesign keeps the machinery and changes the presentation. A rebuild replaces what the site is made of. If your current site is slow no matter what anyone does to it, if simple edits require a developer, if it is a stack of plugins nobody fully understands any more, then a redesign puts a new face on the same problem. You will be back in eighteen months.
If you are not sure which you have, that is worth resolving first. Website rebuild vs redesign walks through the test.
The costs that do not appear on the quote
Three things reliably cost more than people expect, and none of them are usually itemised.
Your time. Photos, product details, decisions about what to say. Content is what sets the pace on most projects, and it is nearly always the client side that holds things up. Not because anyone is slow, but because writing about your own business is hard.
Losing your search rankings. A redesign that changes URLs without redirecting the old ones will drop your traffic, sometimes badly, and it can take months to recover. Ask directly: what is your plan for redirects. If the answer is vague, that is your answer.
The second redesign. The most expensive website is the cheap one you replace in two years. Not always, and a £900 refresh on solid foundations can be exactly right. But if you are on your third site in six years, the cost you should be comparing is not per project.
How to compare quotes properly
Ask every quote the same four questions and the range usually explains itself.
- Is the copy being rewritten, or moved across as it is?
- How many unique page designs are included?
- Are we keeping the current platform, or replacing it?
- What is included after launch, and what does it cost per month?
You will often find the £800 quote and the £4,000 quote are not competing at all. They are doing different jobs.
The short version
Most UK small business redesigns land between £1,500 and £5,000, and that middle band is where the money usually works hardest, because it buys a rethink rather than a repaint. Below it, you are buying presentation. Above it, you are buying moving parts.
The number matters less than knowing which one you are paying for. Get a fixed quote, ask what happens to your URLs, and be honest with yourself about whether the problem is how the site looks or what it is built on.
If you want a straight read on which you need, get in touch or run your current site through our free site audit first.