"How much does a website audit cost" doesn't have one answer, because "website audit" covers everything from a free automated scan to a multi-week agency engagement with a dedicated consultant. The right answer depends on what you actually need, not what sounds most thorough.
The Rough Ranges
- Free - automated scanning tools (including AuditCrow) check your site against a fixed set of rules - SEO fundamentals, speed, accessibility, security basics - and hand back a report instantly. No human reviews your specific site.
- £100-£500 - a freelancer or small agency doing a manual pass on top of automated tooling, usually for a single site with a handful of pages, with some interpretation and prioritisation added on top of the raw findings.
- £500-£2,000 - a more thorough audit covering a larger site, competitor comparison, and a written strategy document, typically from a small-to-mid agency.
- £2,000-£5,000+ - enterprise-scale audits: large sites, multiple markets or languages, dedicated consultant time, ongoing reporting built in.
None of these numbers are fixed pricing, and any agency quoting a number without seeing your site first is guessing the same way you are.
What Actually Drives the Price
The number of pages on your site is the obvious factor, but it's rarely the main one. What actually moves the price:
- How much manual review is involved. An automated scan costs nothing to run again because a machine is doing the work. A human reading through pages, checking context, and writing a bespoke report costs money because it costs someone's time - and that time is the entire product you're paying for.
- Whether it's a one-off or ongoing. A single audit is cheaper per-engagement than a retainer, but a retainer amortises the cost of understanding your site over multiple checks instead of paying full price to relearn it every time.
- How specialised the findings need to be. A general technical SEO pass is cheaper than a specialist accessibility audit against WCAG compliance requirements, or a security audit that needs someone who actually understands the specific vulnerability class being tested.
- Whether strategy is included. A report that just lists problems costs less than one that also tells you what to prioritise and roughly what to expect from fixing each item.
What You're Actually Paying For
It's worth being honest with yourself about which of these you need, because the expensive option isn't automatically the right one:
- If you want to know what's broken, an automated scan answers that for free, instantly, and it won't miss the mechanical checks a human reviewer would also run first.
- If you want to know what to prioritise and why, specific to your business, that's where paying for human judgement starts to earn its cost.
- If you want an ongoing relationship with someone accountable for your site's performance over time, that's a retainer, and the price reflects the accountability as much as the audit work itself.
Most small businesses are paying for the first two and getting billed for a version of the third. Start with a free automated pass, see what it turns up, and only pay for human time on the parts that genuinely need judgement rather than a rule check.
Where a Free Scan Fits
AuditCrow's free scan covers the mechanical, checkable half of an audit - SEO, speed, accessibility, security basics, and AI readiness - in plain English, with no cost and no sales call. If what it finds is more than you can act on alone, that's the point at which paying for a freelancer or agency to help prioritise and implement makes sense - not before. See our website audit checklist for what's typically included if you want to check what a paid audit should actually be covering before you commission one.
