How much does a UX audit cost in the UK?

A UX audit in the UK can cost nothing, or it can cost more than the website it's reviewing. Both can be the right answer. The price depends on who does the work, how many pages they look at, and whether they talk to real users or only review the site.

This guide sets out what you get at each level, with real published prices from UK firms, so you can work out which one fits your site and your budget.

A note on where we stand. AgoraScan is made by Grid Design, a UK design studio that also sells agency-led UX audits. So we sell at both ends of this range, and we've tried to be fair to each.

The short answer

• Do it yourself with a checklist: free, plus a day or two of your time
• Automated UX audit tool: free to around £30 for a single site
• Freelance UX consultant: around £450 to £1,100 for a one to two day audit
• Agency, focused audit: commonly £2,500 to £6,000
• Agency, larger audit with research: £5,000 upwards, and well into five figures for big sites

Level 1: Do it yourself with a checklist

Cost: free. What you pay with is time.

You take a structured checklist, open your key pages on a phone and a laptop, and work through each check. Our guide to doing a UX audit step by step sets out the method, and our UX audit checklist lists every check with what good looks like.

What you get is only as good as your discipline. The hard part isn't the checklist. It's looking at your own site as a stranger would. You know what you sell, so a vague headline reads as clear to you. Owners also tend to skip the measured checks, like contrast and tap target sizes, because they need tools to test properly.

It's a good fit if you have more time than budget, a small site, and a willingness to be hard on your own work.

Level 2: An automated UX audit tool

Cost: free to around £30 for a single site.

An automated tool loads your pages, runs the checks that can be measured (accessibility, speed, mobile layout), and reviews the page against a checklist. You get a score, a list of issues and suggested fixes, usually in minutes.

What you get: speed, consistency and a low price. A tool checks the same things the same way every time, which makes it useful for comparing before and after. It won't get tired on page four.

What you don't get: anything that needs knowledge the page doesn't contain. A tool doesn't know your customers, your margins, your analytics or why last year's redesign happened. It can tell you the main button is hard to spot. It can't tell you that your best customers come from a referral partner and never see the homepage.

Level 3: A freelance UX consultant

Cost: freelance UX consultants in the UK charge around £450 a day. A focused audit of a small site usually takes one to two days, so expect roughly £450 to £1,100 once the write-up is included.

What you get: an experienced person looking at your site with fresh eyes, and the chance to talk it through. A good freelancer will ask what the site is for before they start, and will tailor the findings to your business rather than a generic checklist.

What to watch: at this price there's rarely time for user testing or a deep look at analytics. Quality varies a lot between consultants, so ask to see an example report before you book. Check whether the price includes a call to walk through the findings.

Level 4: A UX agency

Cost: agencies commonly quote £2,500 to £6,000 for a focused audit, and some publish their prices. Box UK quotes a fixed £5,000 for a UX audit. Civic lists its UX audit at £4,960 + VAT. Built for Mars gives a range of £5,000 to £50,000, with most audits between £8,000 and £15,000.

What you get: a team rather than a person, usually a UX lead plus specialists in accessibility, content or research. Larger audits often include analytics review, user testing or interviews, stakeholder workshops and a presentation to your team. The output is typically a prioritised report with recommendations, sometimes with sketches or wireframes of the fixes.

What to watch: much of the price at this level pays for research and for working with your team. If you don't need those things, you're paying for them anyway. Ask exactly what's included, and how many pages, journeys and devices are covered.

What drives the price

Whoever you hire, the same few things move the number up or down.

How many pages and journeys

Reviewing a homepage and a contact page is a small job. Reviewing a full checkout, account area and twenty product templates is not. Most quotes are really an estimate of how many pages and journeys someone has to work through.

Whether real users are involved

An expert review is one person's informed judgement. User testing shows you what actual customers do, and it often finds problems an expert would miss. It also costs more: recruiting participants, running sessions and analysing them all take time. This is the single biggest difference between a £1,000 audit and a £10,000 one.

Whether analytics are reviewed

Looking at your analytics shows where people actually drop off, so the audit can focus there. It needs access, setup checks and someone who knows how to read the data, which adds days.

What you get at the end

A list of issues is quick to produce. A written report with screenshots, priorities and specific fixes takes longer. Wireframes of the fixes, a workshop or a presentation to your board take longer again.

Accessibility depth

Checking the common WCAG failures is part of most audits. A full WCAG 2.2 AA conformance audit, with keyboard and screen reader testing on every template, is a separate and larger piece of work.

When a cheap automated audit is enough

For a lot of small business websites, it honestly is. An automated audit is usually enough when:

• Your site is small, with a handful of key pages
• You suspect the problems are the common ones: unclear headline, weak calls to action, no proof, slow on mobile, poor contrast
• You want a prioritised list you or your developer can work through, not a strategy
• You want to check a site before a launch or after a redesign
• You're a freelancer or agency who needs a consistent first pass across many client sites

Most of the problems we find on small business sites are visible on the page itself. You don't need a research programme to find out your headline doesn't say what you do.

When you genuinely need an agency

There are good reasons to spend thousands, and we'd say so even if we didn't sell agency audits ourselves. You probably need people, not just a tool, when:

• The site makes a lot of money, so a small improvement in conversion pays for the audit many times over
• You need to know why people behave the way they do, which takes user research
• The journeys are complex: multi-step applications, account areas, configurators, large shops
• You've fixed the obvious problems and results still aren't moving
• You need to persuade a board or a team, and a presentation from an outside expert carries weight
• You have a legal or contractual accessibility obligation and need a formal conformance audit

How to get value either way

1. Decide what the site is for before anyone starts. One main action, one main audience. An audit without a goal produces a list without priorities.
2. Start cheap. Run a free or low-cost audit first and fix the obvious problems. If you then hire someone, you're not paying a day rate for them to tell you your text is too faint.
3. Ask for priorities, not volume. A short list ranked by impact and effort is worth more than a long one.
4. Ask for specific fixes. "Improve trust" isn't actionable. "Add two named testimonials beside the quote button" is.
5. Check what's included in writing: pages, devices, user testing, analytics, accessibility depth, and whether there's a call or presentation.
6. Measure again afterwards. Run the same checks a few weeks after the changes so you know what improved.

Where AgoraScan fits

AgoraScan sits at the automated level. The free scan checks one page on desktop and mobile and gives you an overall score, six category scores and your top three issues in full, with screenshots. You don't need a card.

A full audit is £29 inc. VAT. It covers up to five pages, lists every issue with screenshot evidence and a specific fix, and includes a PDF for your developer or designer and a free re-scan within 30 days. If you want your site checked every month, Watch is £12 a month including VAT, with email alerts when something gets worse. Agencies and freelancers auditing every month can use the Studio plan at £79 + VAT a month or the Agency plan at £199 + VAT a month.

It won't replace user research, and it doesn't know your business the way a consultant who's spoken to you will. What it does is find the common, fixable problems quickly and cheaply, so any money you spend on people later goes on the questions only people can answer.

Not sure which level you need? Start with the free scan. If the top three issues are things you can fix this week, you may not need anything more yet.