How much does a web application cost in the UK in 2026?

Plenty of agencies won't put a number on a web application until you've had a call or two. I understand why. Every project is different, and a number on a page gets quoted back at you. But not knowing the rough cost is the first thing that stops people getting in touch, so here are ours, and what moves a project up or down.

All prices here are ex VAT and are the same ones on our pricing page.

The short answer

Ours start at £20,000 for a focused first version and at £65,000 for a multi-part platform, in three packages:

• Launch, from £20,000. A focused first version or MVP. Core features, clean design, hosting set up and a codebase you can build on.
• Growth, from £38,000. Your own backend and admin area, payments and subscriptions, and integrations with the other systems you rely on.
• Platform, from £65,000. Several connected parts, more than one type of user, and more work than a core team can do alone, so we bring in an extended team from our bench and deliver it in phases.

Every build starts with a £5,000 discovery sprint, which I'll come back to. If you want a rough range for your own project, the cost estimator uses the same numbers and takes about a minute.

Mobile apps cost more, from £25,000, because there are two platforms to build for and app store releases to manage.

What actually drives the cost

The package gets you into the right range. Where you land inside it comes down to a handful of things, and none of them are how many pages there are.

Scope

The biggest factor by a distance. Not the number of features on a wish list, but the number of distinct jobs the software has to do well. A booking tool that takes bookings is one job. A booking tool that also handles staff rotas, deposits, refunds and reminders is five, and each one has edge cases. The cheapest thing you can do for your budget is decide what the first version doesn't need to do.

Integrations

Connecting to Stripe, Xero, a CRM or your own warehouse system is rarely hard in itself. What takes the time is everything around it: what happens when the other system is down, when the data doesn't match, when someone changes a record in both places at once. A well-documented modern API is a day or two. An old system with no API and a CSV export emailed at midnight is a project of its own.

Users and roles

One type of user who can see their own data is simple. Customers, staff, managers and an admin who can see everything, each with different permissions, is not. Every role multiplies the screens, the rules and the testing. If you have more than two roles, you are probably in Growth or Platform territory.

Compliance

Personal data, payments, health data or anything regulated adds work that nobody sees when it's done right: audit logs, data retention, access controls, penetration testing and the paperwork your customers' security teams will ask for. It's worth knowing early whether you'll be selling to large organisations, because their procurement questionnaires will ask about all of it.

Design

If you already have a brand and designs, the build is quicker. If you're starting from nothing, design is real work: user journeys, the key screens, and a design system the developers can build from. Our in-house studio does this as part of the build, and it's cheaper to do it properly at the start than to restyle a finished product.

Ongoing care

The build price isn't the whole cost. A live application needs framework and security updates, monitoring and small fixes. Our Care plan is £1,250 a month for that. Whoever builds your application, budget for something similar, because software that nobody maintains gets more expensive to fix every month it's left.

When a website is enough

Quite often, someone comes to us asking for a web application when a good website would do the job. If what you need is to explain what you do, show your work, rank in search and take enquiries or bookings through a form or a third-party tool, that's a website. Ours start at £7,500.

You need an application when people log in and do things: manage their own data, track orders, run part of their business through it. A useful test is whether the thing you're describing has users or visitors. Visitors need a website. Users need an application.

There's a middle ground too. Plenty of businesses start with a website and an off-the-shelf tool for bookings or payments, and only build their own application once the off-the-shelf tool is the thing slowing them down. That's often the right order.

Why discovery comes first

We don't give a fixed price for a build until we've done a two-week discovery sprint, and it costs £5,000. That can feel like paying for a quote, so it's worth explaining.

At the start of a project, neither of us knows the scope well enough to price it fairly. An agency that gives you a fixed price after one call has two choices: pad the number to cover what they don't know, or quote low and make it back on change requests. Either way, you pay for the uncertainty.

Discovery removes most of it. In two weeks we run workshops with your team, map the user journeys, agree a feature list you sign off, design the key screens and plan the architecture and data model. At the end you get a fixed quote for the build. The scope, designs and plan are yours, so if you decide to build with someone else, or not at all, the work isn't wasted.

How the money works

Builds are fixed price once discovery is done, paid in three parts: 30% to start, 40% at a midpoint milestone and 30% on delivery. The milestones are agreed in writing before we begin. Anything outside the agreed scope is charged at our day rate of £650 and agreed with you before it happens.

What to do next

If you'd like a rough number for your own idea, try the estimator. If you'd rather talk it through, book half an hour and we'll tell you which package it sounds like, or whether you need a website instead.