How Much Do Web Designers Charge per Hour in the UK? (2026)

Short answer for 2026: £23.82 an hour is the median gross pay of an employed UK web design professional, according to the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2025 provisional, checked October 2026). What a client pays is higher, because a freelancer or agency also covers its own overheads: web design companies listed on Clutch typically bill $100 to $149 an hour (checked October 2026). We do not charge by the hour at all. Below are the sourced rates, what our fixed prices equal in hours, and how per-page pricing really works.

Last updated October 2026. Every outside figure links to its source and was checked October 2026. Our own prices are the fixed prices on our packages page.

How much do web designers charge per hour in the UK?

There is no official register of what UK web designers charge clients, so the honest answer comes from three different kinds of source, each measuring something slightly different. Read the table by the “what it measures” column, not just the number.

All checked October 2026. The Upwork and Clutch figures are in US dollars and are not limited to UK suppliers; the ONS figures are UK only but describe what employees are paid, not what their employers bill.

What is the average hourly rate for a web designer?

For an employed UK web designer, £23.82 an hour is the median and £24.55 is the mean, per ONS ASHE 2025 (checked October 2026). The same survey puts the median annual pay of a web design professional at £46,639. These are wages, so treat them as the floor under any freelance or agency rate rather than the rate itself. Someone working for themselves has no employer paying for their software, equipment, pension, holidays or the unbilled hours spent finding the next job, and their rate has to cover all of it.

How much does a web developer cost per hour?

Developers sit higher than designers in every source we checked. The ONS median for programmers and software development professionals is £29.29 an hour against £23.82 for web design professionals (ASHE 2025, checked October 2026), and Upwork’s typical range for web developers runs to $50 an hour against $30 for web designers (checked October 2026). The gap is the difference between making a page look right and making something work: payments, logins, bookings and integrations are developer hours, and they are usually the biggest part of any quote.

What do our fixed prices equal in hours?

This is the useful comparison, because it tells you how much time a fixed price actually buys at market rates. Here is the arithmetic.

At UK employee pay (£23.82 an hour, ONS):

• Starter: £495 ÷ £23.82 = 20.8 hours
• Business: £1,495 ÷ £23.82 = 62.8 hours
• Premium: £3,995 ÷ £23.82 = 167.7 hours

At agency rates ($100 to $149 an hour, Clutch), using our US prices so the currencies match:

• Starter: $625 ÷ $149 = 4.2 hours, up to $625 ÷ $100 = 6.3 hours
• Business: $1,895 ÷ $149 = 12.7 hours, up to $1,895 ÷ $100 = 19.0 hours
• Premium: $4,995 ÷ $149 = 33.5 hours, up to $4,995 ÷ $100 = 50.0 hours

At Upwork’s web designer range ($15 to $30 an hour): $1,895 ÷ $30 = 63.2 hours, up to $1,895 ÷ $15 = 126.3 hours.

The point is not that we work cheaply. It is that a fixed price moves the risk. If a Business site takes longer than planned, that is our problem, not a line on your invoice. With an hourly supplier, every round of changes, every “quick tweak” and every slow week is billed to you, and you only learn the total at the end.

How much do web designers charge per page?

Per-page pricing is common in quotes, but it is a blunt tool. Ten pages built from the same layout cost little more than five; ten genuinely different pages cost a great deal more. Our own packages work out like this, if you divide them out:

• Starter, £495 for one to five pages: £495 ÷ 5 = £99 a page at five pages.
• Business, £1,495 for up to 15 pages: £1,495 ÷ 15 = £99.67 a page at fifteen pages, or £149.50 a page at ten.

But we do not sell pages, and you should be wary of anyone whose quote is just pages multiplied by a number. The cost of a site sits in what it has to do, not how many pages it has. A five-page site that takes bookings is a bigger job than a fifteen-page site that does not. Our UK website cost guide breaks down what really drives the price.

How much does website maintenance cost per hour?

Most small sites do better on a monthly plan than on an hourly one. Our maintenance cost guide puts basic updates and backups at £30 to £50 a month and plans with security and uptime monitoring at £50 to £100 a month. Business sites with us include 90 days of support and Premium includes 12 months before any ongoing plan is needed. If a supplier wants to bill maintenance by the hour, ask what a typical month has cost their other clients, in pounds, before you agree.

How much should a freelance web designer charge?

If you are on the other side of the table, start from what the job pays on a payroll and work up, not down. The ONS median of £23.82 an hour for employed web design professionals (checked October 2026) is a salary with an employer covering the overheads. A freelancer pays those costs personally and cannot bill every hour they work, so a rate set at the employee median is a pay cut, not a bargain. Whatever you charge, quoting a fixed price for a defined scope is usually easier to sell than an hourly rate, because the client knows the total before they say yes. For how buyers weigh that choice, see freelancer or agency for my website.

Want a fixed price for your site rather than an hourly estimate? See our packages, try the website cost calculator, or tell us what you need and we will send a fixed price within 24 hours. Building on WordPress specifically? Read how much a WordPress website costs in the UK.