How much does a website cost from a European studio vs a UK or US agency?

A brand and website that a London agency scopes at £25,000 or a New York agency at $35,000 comes in around €12,000 to €15,000 from a senior studio in Bucharest, Lisbon or Warsaw. Same deliverables, same tools, same seniority. The gap is the cost of the city the studio sits in, not the quality of the work. That is the short answer. The longer one is about where the difference actually comes from, what you do not save on, and how to tell a good nearshore studio from a cheap one.

Where the difference comes from

An agency’s price is mostly its people’s time, and its people’s time is priced by where they live. A senior designer in London or New York needs a salary that covers London or New York. The same designer in Bucharest needs roughly a third of that for the same standard of living. Add office rent in the same cities and the agency’s hourly rate roughly follows.

What does not change with geography: the software, the platforms, the hosting and the payment processors. Figma, Webflow, Shopify, Stripe and Vercel charge the same in every country. So a nearshore studio is cheaper on its own time and identical on everything it buys on your behalf.

The same project, three cities

Take a typical Launch scope: brand identity with guidelines, a pitch deck, a six to eight page website designed and built, copy structure, SEO foundations and analytics. Here is what that scope tends to cost from a senior team in each place. Ranges are for established studios with published case studies, not freelancers and not the top five in each city.

Where the studio sits	Brand + website, typical range	Timeline
London agency	£20,000 to £35,000 (about €24k to €41k)	8 to 12 weeks
New York agency	$30,000 to $50,000 (about €28k to €46k)	8 to 12 weeks
Senior EU studio (Bucharest, Lisbon, Warsaw)	€8,000 to €15,000 (about £7k to £13k, $9k to $16k)	2 to 6 weeks

The timeline gap is not about working faster. It is about smaller teams with fewer handoffs. A studio where the designer and the developer sit on the same project from day one does not wait for a project manager to route a file.

Our cost calculator has a region selector that shows this for your own scope: pick the project type, the platform and the features, then switch the hiring region and watch the range move.

What a nearshore studio has to get right

The price only matters if the work lands. Four things separate a studio that is cheaper from one that is a bargain.

• Seniority you can verify. The person on the kick-off call should be the person doing the work. Ask. A studio that hands your project down after the contract is a different studio from the one you hired.
• Case studies with numbers. Not “we built a website”. Conversion, time to launch, hours saved. A studio that measures results will show them. Ours are here.
• A process that survives a time zone. Written scopes, a shared board, work shown while half done, decisions recorded. The time zone question is mostly a process question.
• Ownership on paper. Code, design files, hosting and analytics in your name from the first day. This should be in the contract, not a promise.

When a local agency is the better choice

Being honest about this is part of being trustworthy. Pay the local premium when the project needs the studio in the room: a retail launch with in-store material, a campaign that lives on billboards you need to stand under together, or a brand whose founder wants weekly lunches with the team. It is also the right call if your board or your procurement process requires a supplier in the same jurisdiction.

For a website, a brand and the platform behind them, the room is a video call and a shared design file, and the geography stops mattering the first week.

How to compare quotes properly

Line up three quotes on the same scope and check five things: who does the work, what is included in the price versus billed by a third party, who owns what at the end, what the timeline assumes from you, and what happens after launch. Price is the last column, not the first. The cheapest quote with the wrong answer to any of the other four costs more.

Want a number for your project?

We are an EU studio working mostly with founders in the UK, Europe and North America. Send us the scope you have, or the quotes you are comparing, and we will give you an honest range within one business day, including whether we think a local agency would serve you better.