How much does a website cost in India in 2026?

"How much for a website?" is the most common question we get. It's also the hardest one to answer straight — because the honest answer is it depends on what you actually need. The same question, asked in Bandra versus Koramangala versus Gurgaon, gets quotes ranging from ₹8,000 to ₹15,00,000 for what the buyer imagined was the same thing.

This guide is our attempt to give you the honest version: real price bands for India in 2026, what each tier genuinely includes, and where we think the money actually earns its keep.

We'll be using our own pricing as one reference point — not because we're the cheapest, but because we've spent enough time in this market to know what the numbers usually hide.

Why prices vary so wildly

Three things drive the range:

• Who's building it. A college student, a freelancer with five years' experience, a 3-person agency, and a 30-person agency can all ship a "6-page website" — but the time, skill, and judgement baked in are very different.
• What "website" means. A single-page brochure site is not the same job as a bookings platform, a 40-page service catalogue, or an e-commerce store with 800 SKUs. The word is the same; the build is not.
• What's bundled. Copywriting, photography, SEO, analytics, hosting, domain, CMS training, post-launch support — some quotes include them, most don't.

The cheapest quote you receive is almost never for the same scope as the most expensive one. Always compare line-items, not totals.

With that out of the way, here are the real tiers we see in India in 2026.

Tier 1 — The freelancer (₹15,000 – ₹50,000)

The single-person freelancer is still the dominant option for Indian SMBs. You find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, via a friend-of-a-friend, or on Upwork.

What you usually get

• 4–8 WordPress or Elementor pages
• A template-based design lightly customised to your brand
• Basic mobile responsiveness
• Maybe a contact form
• Hosting setup (often on a shared reseller plan)

What you usually don't get

• Original copywriting (you'll be asked to "send us the content")
• Analytics or conversion tracking
• Real SEO setup (title tags done, sitemap maybe, structured data rarely)
• Performance optimisation — most freelance WordPress sites score below 50 on mobile Lighthouse
• Post-launch support beyond a few emails

When this tier works

You have very little budget, you have time to manage the process yourself, you already have your copy and photos sorted, and your website is genuinely just a business card. A restaurant menu page, a small clinic's landing page, a portfolio for a solo consultant — all fine.

When it doesn't

You need the site to generate enquiries or drive sales. For that, the build itself is only half the job — the other half is conversion thinking, which is rarely what a ₹25,000 freelancer has time or experience to provide.

Tier 2 — DIY platforms (₹3,000 – ₹15,000 per year, plus your time)

Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Framer, Webflow templates, Durable AI. The pitch is seductive: "launch in an afternoon."

The ads show a 20-year-old with a MacBook on a beach. The reality is 40–80 hours of your own time, a design that still looks like a template, and monthly bills that add up.

The hidden costs nobody advertises

• Subscription lock-in. ₹1,500/month × 12 = ₹18,000/year. Over 3 years, that's ₹54,000 for software alone.
• Apps and plugins. Booking tools, forms, email, SEO plugins — ₹500–₹3,000/month each adds up fast.
• Transaction fees (Shopify especially) — 1–2% on every sale forever.
• Migration pain. Leaving Wix or Squarespace means rebuilding from scratch. You don't own the code.
• Your time. If you value your time at ₹1,000/hour, a DIY site costs you ₹40,000–₹80,000 in labour.

When DIY works

You're pre-revenue, validating an idea, genuinely design-savvy, and want total control. Framer and Webflow are legitimately good tools. The platform isn't the problem — the assumption that "DIY = free" is.

Tier 3 — The junior agency (₹50,000 – ₹1,50,000)

Small agencies with 2–8 people, usually WordPress-first, sometimes Shopify. This is where most SMBs land when they realise the freelancer route is underdelivering.

What you usually get

• 6–12 pages designed from scratch (or lightly customised from a theme)
• WordPress + Elementor, or sometimes a block theme
• Basic copywriting (often rewritten from what you sent them)
• Basic SEO — meta tags, sitemap, some on-page structure
• Launch on your domain, SSL, basic analytics
• 30–60 days of launch support

What's still missing at this tier

• Performance work beyond the default Elementor setup
• Structured data / schema
• Conversion rate optimisation thinking — the site will look good, but nobody's measured where users drop off
• Any meaningful content strategy

This is the tier where the visual quality often looks fine but the commercial output is flat — lots of scrolling, very few leads.

Tier 4 — The senior agency (₹1,50,000 – ₹5,00,000)

This is our zone at gloood. It's also where most B2B, healthcare, and serious D2C brands sit.

What ₹2L – ₹5L actually buys

• Strategy upfront. We spend the first week understanding your buyer, your funnel, your competition — before any design happens.
• Custom design in Figma. Not templates. Done by someone with 8+ years of brand and UX work.
• Code-first build. We use Next.js. Sites load in under a second, score 95+ on mobile Lighthouse, and rank better because of it.
• Copywriting that converts. Real writers, not "we'll rewrite what you send."
• CRO baked in. Conversion paths, heatmap-ready layouts, above-the-fold decisions made on purpose.
• SEO foundations. Schema, canonical tags, sitemap, robots, redirect maps, Core Web Vitals — all handled.
• Analytics from day one. GA4, Meta Pixel, Google Ads, GTM wired up before launch. Not retrofitted.
• Post-launch support. 30–60 days of iteration after go-live, because the real learning happens once real traffic hits.

At this tier, you are not paying for a website. You are paying for a lead generation machine that happens to look like a website.

We've seen senior-agency sites pay for themselves in 3–6 months from new enquiries alone. A ₹2L site that generates one extra ₹50,000 enquiry a month has broken even in 4 months — that's the math that matters.

See King of Kurry and TrustTec for concrete examples of what this tier ships.

Tier 5 — Enterprise (₹5,00,000+)

Large agencies, in-house teams at mid-market companies, or specialist shops building complex platforms: headless commerce, multi-language, custom integrations, PIM setups, content operations at scale.

If you need this tier, you already know. It's not a typical SMB purchase.

The hidden costs nobody quotes

Whatever tier you pick, these are almost never in the first number you hear:

• Domain — ₹800–₹2,000/year
• Hosting — ₹500–₹8,000/month depending on traffic and stack (Next.js sites on Vercel: ₹0 on Hobby or ₹1,700/month on Pro)
• SSL — usually free via Let's Encrypt; a few hosts still charge
• Email (Google Workspace) — ₹150/user/month minimum
• Copywriting — ₹15,000–₹60,000 if not bundled
• Photography — ₹20,000–₹80,000 for a half-day shoot
• Stock images — ₹5,000–₹20,000 per year
• Maintenance retainer — ₹5,000–₹25,000/month if you want someone on call
• Revisions beyond scope — usually ₹1,500–₹5,000/hour at agencies

Ask for these to be itemised before you sign. If a quote doesn't mention them, that's not a saving — it's a conversation you haven't had yet.

How to actually choose

1. Start with the goal, not the budget. A ₹30,000 website that fails to generate leads is more expensive than a ₹2,00,000 one that does.
2. Price on expected output, not inputs. Ask: "how many extra leads per month would make this worth it?" and reverse-engineer from there.
3. Match tier to stage. Pre-revenue? DIY or freelancer is fine. Doing ₹50L+ a year and spending on ads? Senior agency — you are now losing money from every bad click that lands on a bad site.
4. Prioritise the team over the deck. Ask who will actually design and build your site. If the answer is vague, walk away.
5. Ask to see 5 live sites built by the same team. Not case study PDFs. Actual live URLs. Open them on your phone.

Red flags to walk away from

• "₹10,000 for a full website." The math doesn't work. At minimum wage, that's 20 hours of labour. A real website takes 80–150. Someone is cutting a corner you'll pay for later.
• "Unlimited revisions." This is either a lie or a guarantee that the project will drag for six months.
• No contract, or a two-page one. Always get a scope in writing with milestones and payment terms.
• Pressure to pay 100% upfront. A fair split is 40/40/20 or 50/50.
• No access to analytics post-launch. Your data should sit in your accounts, not the agency's.
• A portfolio made entirely of demo sites with no live URLs.

Case studies — what different tiers produced

• King of Kurry — restaurant site built at the senior-agency tier, with food-photography-led design and direct-order flows. Ticket size was ~₹2L; breakeven was inside 60 days because every direct order saved Swiggy/Zomato commission.
• TrustTec — B2B industrial site, also senior tier. A junior-agency redesign two years earlier had generated roughly zero inbound enquiries. The rebuild, at 3× the price, produced 8–12 qualified leads a month within quarter one.

The pattern is consistent: the tier that matches the ambition wins. The tier that's a mismatch — either too cheap for the goal, or too expensive for the stage — is the one you regret.

FAQ

Is WordPress or Next.js better?

For a brochure site where nobody's planning to change anything often, WordPress is fine. For a site that's a serious lead or revenue engine, Next.js is meaningfully better — faster, more stable, better for SEO, cheaper to host at scale.

How long should a proper SMB site take?

At our tier, 2–3 weeks for a 6–8 page site. Below 2 weeks is usually a template. Above 6 weeks usually means scope creep or a team that's juggling too many clients.

Should I pay monthly or one-time?

One-time fee + optional monthly retainer is standard. Beware "website as a service" subscriptions that lock you into a ₹5,000/month fee forever for a site that cost ₹25,000 to build. Do the math over 3 years.

Does design quality really affect conversion?

Yes, but not in the way most people think. It's not about being "pretty" — it's about clarity. Sites that convert well are the ones where the value proposition is obvious within 3 seconds and the next step is impossible to miss.

Can I start small and upgrade later?

Yes. We sometimes recommend it. Start with a 4-page launch, spend 6 months driving traffic, learn what actually converts, then invest in a larger rebuild. Better to test first than to over-build.

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If you want a straight answer on what your specific project should cost, get in touch. We'll tell you the real range — even if the honest answer is "we're not the right fit."