What does it actually cost to hire a freelance web developer?

It's one of the first questions clients ask, and one of the hardest to answer without context. Search online and you'll find anything from €200 to €50,000. That range isn't dishonest, it's just that "build me a website" covers an enormous amount of ground.

Here's what actually determines the price, and what you should expect to pay for work that holds up.

Landing pages and web apps: the two most common projects

Most of what I build falls into one of two categories.

Landing pages and brochure sites are focused, conversion-driven websites. A single page or a small set of pages designed to present what you do and get visitors to take action. These typically range from €800 to €2,500. The variation comes from design complexity, the number of sections, animations, and whether copywriting or content strategy is included.

Web applications are more involved: custom interfaces, interactive dashboards, tools with real logic on the client side, and frontends that connect to external APIs or services. These start from €4,000 and scale up depending on scope and the number of integrations involved. You can see examples of both in my portfolio.

What drives the price of a website up

A few things reliably increase the cost of any project:

• Custom design from scratch vs adapting an existing direction you've defined
• Integrations with third-party tools (CRMs, booking systems, payment providers)
• Content that needs to be written, structured, or migrated
• Timeline — rushed projects cost more, always
• Ongoing changes during the build that weren't in the original scope

Being clear about these upfront is the fastest way to get an accurate quote and avoid surprises on both sides.

Why not just use a template or a page builder?

You can, and for some projects it makes sense. But there are real trade-offs.

Templates are designed to look good in screenshots. They're built to be flexible for anyone, which means they're optimised for no one. You end up with code you didn't write, plugins you don't fully control, and a performance ceiling that's difficult to break through.

Page builders like Elementor or Webflow are a middle ground. They work well for simple sites with straightforward requirements. The moment you need something that doesn't fit their model, you're fighting the tool.

A custom build gives you exactly what your project needs, nothing more and nothing less. Faster load times, cleaner code, and a UI that's actually yours rather than a theme adapted five times over. If you're weighing a custom build against a CMS, I go deeper on that trade-off in Nuxt.js vs WordPress.

What you're actually paying a freelance developer for

When you hire a freelance developer, you're not paying for someone to press buttons faster than you could. You're paying for the judgement to build the right thing, the experience to avoid expensive mistakes, and the technical quality that keeps working two years from now without needing to be rebuilt.

A cheap site that loses half its visitors to slow load times or a broken mobile layout isn't cheap. It's expensive in a way that doesn't show up on the invoice.

How to get an accurate quote

Every project I take on starts with a free consultation. No vague estimates, no hourly rates that balloon without warning. You describe what you need, I ask the questions that matter, and I give you a fixed quote with a clear scope.

If you're trying to figure out whether your budget fits what you need, get in touch and let's work it out together.