How much does a website cost in Europe in 2026? Prices by country

A professionally built small-business website in Europe usually costs somewhere between €2,000 and €20,000 in 2026, and where you buy it changes the price more than almost anything else. The same five-to-eight-page custom site might be €2,000 to €6,000 from an agency in Greece, Poland or Portugal, and €5,000 to €15,000 from one in Germany, the Netherlands or Denmark. E-commerce and multilingual sites cost more everywhere. The reason is simple: a website is mostly labour, and labour costs across the EU vary by a factor of almost five.

Below are typical ranges by country group, what drives them, and the costs people forget to budget for.

Why prices differ so much between countries

Eurostat's 2025 figures put average hourly labour costs across the EU at €34.90. The spread around that average is wide:

These are whole-economy averages, not web developer wages, but agencies price from the same base: salaries, office rent and local price levels. Eurostat's comparative price levels for consumer services show the same pattern. In 2024, services cost about 79% of the EU average in Greece, 91% in Spain, 112% in Germany and 163% in Denmark.

For context on freelance rates at the top of the market, the 2026 freelancermap survey of freelancers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland reported an average hourly rate of €103.

Price ranges by country group

The ranges below are our estimates for agency work, built from typical project hours and the hourly rates we see in each market. They are not a survey, and individual quotes will fall outside them. They assume a custom design (not a bought template), a content management system you can edit, basic SEO set-up and a contact form. Prices are before VAT.

Typical agency hourly rates

Typical project totals

Below these ranges you are usually buying a template site, a site-builder subscription set up by someone else, or a freelancer working fast. Those options can be perfectly sensible for a new business. Above them you are usually paying for brand strategy, custom functionality or integrations with booking, stock or accounting systems.

What drives the price within a country

Scope

The number of unique page layouts matters more than the number of pages. Twenty service pages built on one template are cheaper than eight pages that each need their own design.

Content

Who writes the copy and provides the photos? If the agency writes the text, organises a photo shoot or produces video, that can add 20 to 50% to the project. If you supply finished content on time, you save money and weeks.

Functionality

Booking calendars, quote calculators, member areas, payment, stock sync and multi-location pages each add hours. Ask for each to be priced separately so you can drop what you don't need for launch.

Languages

The EU has 24 official languages, and many businesses need at least two. A second language adds work in three places:

• Translation. Professional translation of the copy, ideally by a native speaker who knows your sector. Machine translation needs a human edit before it goes live.
• Build. Language switcher, separate URLs per language, translated menus, forms, emails and error messages.
• SEO. Language tags (hreflang), translated page titles and descriptions, and keyword research per language, because people in each country search differently.

As a planning figure, budget 15 to 30% of the build cost for each additional language, plus translation. Doing it at the start is much cheaper than adding a language to a finished site.

The costs people forget

Accessibility

The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025. It covers, among other things, e-commerce services: websites and apps used to sell to consumers. Microenterprises providing services (fewer than 10 staff and annual turnover or balance sheet total of €2 million or less) are exempt from its requirements. If you sell online and are above that size, accessibility work belongs in the budget. Even if you are exempt, building accessibly from the start costs little extra and makes the site easier for everyone to use.

Cookie consent and privacy

If your site uses analytics or advertising cookies, EU rules require consent before they are set, with refusing as easy as accepting. Budget for a consent management platform (many charge a monthly fee), a privacy policy and correct set-up of analytics and ad tags so they respect the user's choice.

VAT

Agencies in the EU usually quote prices before VAT. The EU requires a standard VAT rate of at least 15%, and rates vary by country, so a quote from another member state can look cheaper or dearer than it is. Between businesses in different EU countries, VAT on services is normally handled by the customer under the reverse-charge mechanism. Check the treatment with your accountant before you compare quotes.

Running costs

After launch, plan for:

• hosting: from about €10 to €100 or more per month depending on traffic and service level;
• domain renewals;
• software licences (premium plugins, consent platform, booking tools);
• maintenance and security updates, often €50 to €300 per month on a support plan;
• content changes and new pages.

Over three years, running costs can approach the original build price.

Buying from another country

Many businesses in high-cost countries hire agencies in lower-cost ones, and it can work very well. A few rules make it safer:

1. Make sure someone on the project writes natively in your customers' language, or budget for a local editor.
2. Agree in writing on who owns the design, code, content and domain.
3. Ask where the site will be hosted and who will have access to personal data from forms.
4. Ask to see live sites they built in your sector or language.
5. Agree on overlapping working hours and response times for support.

The cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest site. A site that doesn't bring in enquiries costs the full price and returns nothing.

How to get comparable quotes

Send every agency the same short brief:

• what your business does and who the customer is;
• the pages you need and the main action (call, booking, quote, purchase);
• languages;
• features (booking, payments, CRM);
• who provides text and photos;
• your target launch date and budget range.

Then compare quotes line by line, not just on the total.

Where PNE fits

PNE Solutions builds bilingual and multilingual websites for small businesses in Canada and Europe, with each language set up for search from the start. Our website design page explains what a project includes. If you are still choosing a provider, our guide on how to choose a web agency in Europe covers the questions to ask about hosting, GDPR and ownership.

Sources

• Hourly labour costs — Eurostat Statistics Explained
• Comparative price levels of consumer goods and services — Eurostat Statistics Explained
• Freelancer-Kompass — freelancermap
• Languages, multilingualism, language rules — European Union
• European Accessibility Act — European Commission
• Directive (EU) 2019/882, Article 4 — legislation.gov.uk
• VAT rates — European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union
• Cookies et traceurs : que dit la loi ? — CNIL