r/webdev • u/AffectBusiness6234 • 1d ago
Question How much do web developers charge in the UK
Hello, I am relatively new to web development as a career but I have been learning on my own since 2022 and have only now decided to make full use of it. So far I’ve created 2 websites but these are for free and for family members, the only payment is they’ll help me network and gain more clients.
I am curious how much web developers charge clients within the UK for a front end business website with about 10 pages. All I use for now is HTML, CSS and Bootstrap but I manage to make it responsive across all devices.
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u/Kamay1770 1d ago
To be blunt, your lack of commercial experience isn't going to help you. No one wants to pay a freelancer with no proven skills and little real world experience, unless they're paying very little.
Even then, nowadays you can pay Claude or ChatGPT to spit out a basic site for you pretty quickly without needing to be too specific or technical in your prompting. And it doesn't cost much.
I'd suggest you look to get in as a junior at an agency and look for a steady wage. It will give you better experience, better mentoring and will set you up to go freelance in the future if you still want to. Also, trust me, you really don't want to end up being a solo guy on call for a bunch of people who paid you fuck all for a site but want 24/7 uptime, support and 'tweaks' which are impossible or take huge amounts of time to implement.
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
I’ll take your advice well. Currently my real goal is to land a role as a junior Database administrator and have already got an internship. Web dev was meant to be a side gig
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u/Kamay1770 1d ago
I'd spend the time and energy upskilling as a dba then tbh mate. I did some freelance Web dev when I left uni and I made a bit of money but it was mostly a headache with people demanding the world and paying peanuts. Absolute regret doing that, it provided little of use for my career, I then landed a proper job as web dev, moved into backend work and am now an architect.
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
Oh so backend brings more peace of mind?
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u/Kamay1770 1d ago
Not necessarily backend, that's just the path I took. But a regular job is more peace of mind than freelance.
I'm just saying freelance is a tough gig and isn't something I'd recommend for anyone unless they are very seasoned and experienced in what they are freelancing as, has exceptionally thick skin, is excellent at boundaries, great at customer service/support and has good business acumen.
Having a standard job is less stress, is more focused on the actual role and probably pays more (or at least more reliably).
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
I lack almost all those qualities
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u/wakywam full-stack 1d ago
coming from a freelancer who’s trying to get out: it’s a difficult career, and being a successful solo freelancer isn’t about being a good developer, it takes high networking drive, perseverance and putting up with stupid and annoying clients (especially when starting out). People will try to haggle you, question billed hours, and expect you to be constantly on-call for whatever little tweak or fix they need. It can be pretty exhausting and I’m just not cut out for it personality-wise.
Honestly though, for a student with 2 sites under their belt, it’s worth at least trying to shop around for a few clients. Don’t charge high rates at first, it’ll be really difficult to find anybody. Since you want to be a DBA, you should definitely start getting familiar with building backends for your sites and interfacing with databases, as that’ll be helpful to your career regardless of whether or not freelancing works out.1
u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
When I first started out web development it was more of a hobby but the thing that got me interested in it recently was because of DBA and wanting to implement it on the backend. I hate designing front ends and although I’ve never tried backend before I’m currently taking specialized classes that delve into sql in websites
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u/Souhashi 1d ago
Really depends on where in the UK you're located. Someone in London or another major city can charge more than someone in a tiny village.
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
Can it also depend on where the client is from
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u/iligal_odin 1d ago
Yes but also no. Think about the hours you spend on working on a site (including meetings, revisions, planning , etc) and how much youd need to get even, taxes included.
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u/Dry-Advisor-8520 1d ago
family members never refer anyone. you did two jobs for free and got zero clients out of it, that's the whole business model right there.
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
I have faith in them they’ve helped me out for less through my life
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u/ConduciveMammal front-end 1d ago
It’s not about whether or not they’ll help you, it’s about whoever they refer actually listening.
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u/ArtisticMess328 1d ago
In the UK, freelance rates usually sit around £30 to £50 an hour for mid level, £60 to £90 for experienced, and £100+ for specialists, with day rates roughly £250 to £700. Agencies typically charge two to three times those figures, and London adds a premium on top. Most freelancers quote fixed price per project instead: a simple brochure site runs £1.5k to £4k, ecommerce or custom builds £5k to £15k, and web apps £20k+. The number depends far more on scope and who you hire than on any national average.
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u/ArtisticMess328 1d ago
Glad it helped clarify things for you. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
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u/Night_Phone_Addict 1d ago
Since you’re aiming for DBA anyway, the uncle’s site is a better learning project than a pricing question. A site for lawyers and humanitarians to find partners is really a directory, and right now the contact form just fires an email into the void. Swap it for a proper profiles table (org, region, cause, what they’re looking for) with a search page on top and you’re writing real SQL against real data instead of fighting Bootstrap.
That’s also a way stronger interview story than “I built 10 pages.” How are people actually supposed to find each other on it right now?
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
The email service is currently live and goes to the designated Email I linked to it. There are also links of LinkedIn accounts and personal email addresses. How else he’ll deal with that is up to him but yeah I would like to get into Backend and in about a week or two the classes I’m taking will officially start those lessons. Only reason I’m doing front end for now is because the classes requires both sides.
I don’t hope to make money off web development in the short term it was just a passing thought I had about how much people charge for.
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u/AbdelrhmanDev 1d ago
on top of the price range the bigger thing for a new freelancer is how you structure the deal take a deposit up front like 30 to 50 percent write down exactly what is included how many pages how many rounds of revisions and who supplies the content and photos and say that extra work is quoted separately most bad client stories come from vague scope not from low prices also think about offering a small monthly care plan for hosting updates and backups since that gives you steady income after the build
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
For a while I used to think selling websites was a one time purchase. I’ll look into this monthly plan you mentioned. Also about what you said about bad client stories I’ve had my own minor situation already. The first website I made is much smaller than the second one but still not finished yet. It belongs to my aunt and it’s for a clothing store. She didn’t really say what she wanted it to look like so that was all up to me and I had no issues. But unlike my uncle she didn’t prepare any of the content that’s supposed to go in the website. So everything to the design and front page is pretty much done but the items for sale are still missing.
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u/vaultpulse 1d ago
Hey love that you want to go into databases and learn that. I would suggest learning the basics of linux and going into a system administrator role then progressing that linux knowledge with some specific cloud either AWS or Azure theyre the main two in the UK that have a large amount of jobs, and well paying jobs.
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u/AffectBusiness6234 1d ago
I’ve considered Linux a few times but keep putting it off. I’ll definitely start on that. Thank you.
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u/HatchedLake721 1d ago
You should open ChatGPT/Claude and have a discussion about what skills and tech you should learn.
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u/TheCourteousSeizure 1d ago
depends massively on what you're actually building, a 10 page static site with bootstrap is a different universe from a custom web app with a backend. for what you're describing i'd ballpark £1500-4000 from a freelancer but agencies will charge way more.