Craft CMS pricing confuses people because it sits in three layers. The platform licence from Pixel & Tonic, the cost of the developer or agency building the site and the ongoing cost to keep the thing running after launch. Quotes that only mention the first layer are misleading. Quotes that lump everything together hide what you can negotiate.
This guide separates the three layers and puts UK numbers against each one for 2026. The figures are based on what UK senior freelancers and small Craft specialist agencies actually charge this year. Larger agency rates run higher and include layers I do not have visibility on.
The Craft CMS licence cost
Craft Solo is free. It supports one admin account, no advanced user permissions, no live preview for editors and no support contract. It is the right choice for a personal site or a side project but not for a business site with multiple content editors.
Craft Pro is the licence most businesses need. As of 2026 it costs $299 per project, paid once, with $59 per year for updates after the first year. Updates are optional but skipping them quickly becomes a liability because security patches stop arriving. Plan for the $59 to be paid each year.
Craft Commerce adds $999 per project plus $199 per year for updates. Commerce is the right answer for digital products, subscription billing, complex pricing rules or custom checkout. It is overkill for a small WooCommerce-style storefront with simple physical products.
Add-ons from the Craft plugin store have their own pricing. Most useful business plugins fall between $39 and $99 per project with optional yearly update fees. Budget around $200 to $500 in plugin costs for a typical content site.
The cost of building a Craft CMS site
UK senior freelance Craft developers charge between £400 and £700 per day for project work in 2026. London rates sit at the higher end. Outside London the range narrows. Specialist Craft agencies charge meaningfully more, often £1,000 to £1,500 per day blended, because the headcount supports project management, design and quality assurance as part of the work.
For a content-led brochure site with around ten to fifteen content types, a senior freelancer typically delivers in twelve to twenty-five working days. That puts the build cost between £4,800 and £17,500 before licence and design costs. Add design at £3,000 to £8,000 if you do not already have visuals.
A more involved Craft Commerce build with custom pricing rules and integration to an existing back office runs longer. Forty to eighty working days is normal. That puts those projects in the £20,000 to £60,000 range with a senior freelancer, or £50,000 to £150,000 with an agency.
The ongoing cost to keep a Craft site running
Hosting for a Craft site varies. Managed Craft hosts like Servd start around £15 per month for small sites and rise to £200 or more for higher-traffic sites with staging environments and CDN included. Generic VPS hosting on DigitalOcean or Hetzner is cheaper but adds management overhead.
Maintenance retainers cover the work between releases. Updates applied in staging, security monitoring, backup verification, content support and a defined block of development hours each month. UK senior freelance retainers for Craft typically run between £500 and £1,500 per month depending on the included hours and the size of the site. Agencies charge more.
Skipping the retainer is a false economy. Sites without ongoing care drift into a state where the next update is expensive, the next security patch is risky and the next feature request requires a discovery phase. Spend on the retainer is spent on avoiding much larger spend later.
What changes between a senior freelancer and an agency
The headline numbers differ. The work, done well, does not. A senior freelance Craft developer with a decade or more of experience delivers the same quality as an agency lead developer because in many cases they are one and the same person at different points in their career.
What an agency adds is project management, design capacity, quality assurance and account handling. For a project that needs all of those, an agency is the right call. For a project where the client team handles project management and design, a senior freelancer is the more efficient choice.
How to compare quotes properly
A quote should separate the platform licence, the build cost, the design cost if applicable and the proposed ongoing retainer. If a quote lumps all of these together, ask for the breakdown. The breakdown reveals where the cost actually sits and where you can negotiate.
Be cautious of quotes that come in well below the ranges in this guide. Either the scope is smaller than you think, the developer is junior or the work will be padded with change requests after the project starts. Cheap Craft work tends to cost more in the long run because the foundation is wrong.
For more on Craft CMS work, see the Craft CMS developer UK page or the what Craft CMS really costs to own post for the long-term perspective.
Frequently asked questions
Is Craft CMS more expensive than WordPress?
Upfront, yes. WordPress is free and most WordPress builds use free themes and plugins. The total cost of ownership over five years often favours Craft because update risk is lower, plugin sprawl does not happen and the build does not need to be redone when a critical plugin is abandoned.
Do I have to pay the $59 per year update fee?
Technically no. You can keep using the version you bought. But security patches and bug fixes stop. For any business site, the $59 should be treated as compulsory.
Can a single freelancer deliver an enterprise-grade Craft site?
Yes for the technical build. For projects that need significant design, project management or QA capacity in parallel, a small agency or a freelancer plus designer pairing usually fits better.
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