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Eight questions about pages, design, commerce, content and your deadline. You get a complexity score out of a hundred, the build tier scopes like yours tend to land in, and the factors driving it. You do not get a price — we have not set ours publicly yet, and a figure invented from eight answers would be worth less than nothing to you.
The calculator
Pick the closest option in each group — the result updates as you go. If two options both look right, pick the more demanding one; a scope that surprises you upward is the expensive kind.
Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs entirely in your browser.
Complexity 25 out of 100. Standard — Growth tier. Around 6 to 12 pages. Typically three to four weeks.
Most projects that look like this land in our Growth tier — the site is the main channel, so it needs real templates, a content model your team can use, and search work at launch.
This is not a quote, and it contains no price. It is a complexity score and the tier scopes like yours tend to land in. Our tiers and what each includes are on the pricing page. A real figure needs a conversation about your actual scope.
How it works
Each answer carries a weight, the weights are added up and normalised to a hundred, and the total is mapped onto one of our three build tiers. The weights come from where the hours actually go on projects we have delivered, not from a formula. Here is the reasoning behind each one, so you can disagree with it.
Twelve case studies on one layout is one piece of work. Twelve pages that each look different is twelve. The question asks for pages because that is what people know, and the weighting assumes the normal relationship between the two.
The gap between a template used close to how it ships and a design made for your brand is the largest in the model, because it is the largest in practice. A reworked template sits between the two and is where most projects actually land.
Checkout, tax, shipping, stock, refunds and the emails around them are a system, not a page. That is why selling anything moves the score sharply, and why subscriptions or trade pricing move it further.
Each connected system is a build, a test, a set of error states and something that can break at a bad moment. Two integrations is not twice one, but it is more than one, and the model reflects that.
The most common reason a build misses its date is that the words for nine pages do not exist. If you are writing the copy, that is the cheapest path and also the one with the most risk attached, which is why the weighting is on who writes rather than on how much.
Not because of overtime, but because a hard date removes options — it forces decisions earlier, rules out the cheaper sequencing, and means scope has to be cut rather than extended when something surprises us.
Being straight about it
Because a figure produced by eight multiple-choice questions would be a guess dressed as a quote, and you would be entitled to hold us to it. Every cost calculator that outputs a price is doing one of two things: quoting a range so wide it tells you nothing, or quoting a narrow one it cannot honour.
So this returns what eight questions can honestly support — how complex the scope is relative to other projects, which of our three tiers it tends to land in, and what is driving that. Our tiers and exactly what each one includes are on the pricing page, and a real figure comes from a conversation and a written scope.
It also means you can use this without giving us anything. No email, no form, no follow-up sequence. The answers never leave your browser.
Any of these can matter more than all eight questions put together, which is why the output is a band rather than a figure.
Questions
What comes up on calls about estimating a website project. If yours is not here, ask it directly — you will get a straight answer rather than a brochure.
Ask a questionBecause a figure produced by eight multiple-choice questions would be a guess presented as a quote, and you would be right to hold us to it. What eight questions can honestly support is how complex your scope is relative to other projects and which of our three build tiers it tends to land in, so that is what it returns. The tiers and their inclusions are on the pricing page, and a real figure comes from a written scope.
It is a relative measure, not a measurement. Two projects with the same score will need a similar amount of work in our experience, but the score knows nothing about whether your content exists, how many people approve a design, or what state your current site is in — and any one of those can matter more than all eight answers. Treat it as a way to sanity-check a quote you have already been given, or to work out which conversation to have.
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser, nothing is submitted anywhere, and there is no email field to fill in. If you want to talk about the result you have to contact us deliberately, which is how it should work.
Then the score will be roughly right and the detail will be wrong, which is a good moment to just tell us what you are building. The options cover the common cases on purpose — a tool with forty questions is a quoting system, and a quoting system that cannot ask a follow-up question is worse than a conversation.
No, and this is worth saying plainly. A low score means a simple project, which is frequently the right project — the fastest, cheapest and most reliable site to ship. Complexity is a cost, not an achievement. If your score is low, that is good news.
Yes, and that is a genuinely useful way to use it. If your scope scores low and a quote arrives priced like a platform build, ask what in the scope justifies it. If it scores high and a quote arrives suspiciously cheap, ask what has been left out — usually content, testing, accessibility or anything after launch.
Keep going
The design question from the calculator, in full: what you give up with each approach.
Read itWhich platform, who maintains it, and what it costs to change your mind.
Read itHow many disciplines your scope needs, and who should actually build it.
Read itThe three build tiers, what each includes, and what pushes a cost up or down.
Read itThe calculator can tell you how big the project is. Only a conversation can tell you what it costs. Describe what you are building in a paragraph and we will come back with a fixed price against a written scope.