How Much Does It Cost to Hire a WordPress Developer?

Short answer: Codeable, a marketplace that says it vets its WordPress experts, lists $80 to $120 an hour plus a 17.5% service fee, and about $2,500 to $7,500 for a professional brochure site. Our own builds with custom plugins or WooCommerce start at $15,000. This page explains what sits behind numbers like these and what moves them.

What the published data says

We found no independent data on WordPress pricing, and the one source we could verify is a vendor's own cost guide. Codeable's cost guide, dated 30 October 2025, states an expert rate of $80 to $120 an hour, adds a 17.5% service fee in addition to the developer's rate, and puts a professional brochure site at $2,500 to $7,500.

Read that as one data point, not a market survey. Codeable sells these services, we found no sample size stated, and it is a marketplace price. A freelancer working directly and an agency with a project manager and QA will each price differently.

Freelancer, marketplace or agency

Each option buys something different.

• Freelancer. Often the lowest hourly cost, with direct access to the person doing the work. The risk is continuity: one person is also one point of failure when they get busy or change jobs.
• Marketplace expert. A vetting process, with a 17.5% service fee on top of the rate.
• Agency. A higher price for a team: design, engineering, QA and someone accountable for the timeline. That matters most when the site drives revenue.

A developer with a low hourly rate who takes three times as long, or who builds something you cannot maintain, costs more than a pricier one who does not, so compare the total cost rather than the rate.

What moves the price

These five commonly move a WordPress quote.

1. Scope and architecture. Page count, WooCommerce, multisite or a headless front end each set a different starting point.
2. Integrations. A contact form that posts to HubSpot is cheap. A two-way sync with an ERP, with retry logic and conflict handling, is a project in its own right.
3. Content migration. Moving ten posts is trivial. Migrating ten thousand records with custom fields needs scripting, testing and reconciliation. See WordPress migration.
4. Custom functionality. Anything with real business rules, such as a product configurator or a booking flow, is quoted per module rather than per page. See custom plugin development.
5. Timeline. We add a rush premium for compressed timelines, because they put senior engineers on the work all at once.

Costs outside the quote

A build price rarely covers everything you will pay for. Budget separately for hosting, premium plugin licences, stock imagery or photography, and maintenance and changes after launch. Ask each candidate to list what is and is not included.

What we charge

Our pricing is published on the pricing page, so you can put it next to any other quote. Custom builds start at $5,000 for up to eight core pages. Builds with custom plugins or WooCommerce start at $15,000, and multisite or headless builds start at $50,000. Maintenance starts at $750 a month, and every build carries a 30-day warranty. These are starting points: after a discovery phase we issue a fixed-price proposal for the agreed scope.

How to compare quotes fairly

Ask every candidate the same five questions, in writing.

1. Is the price fixed for the scope, or an estimate that can grow?
2. Whose repository does the code live in, and do I get access on day one?
3. What is built custom, and what is a page builder or a third-party theme?
4. Who writes the code, and will they be in the meetings?
5. What happens after launch? Is there a warranty, and who fixes a bug in month two?

A quote that cannot answer these questions is worth questioning before you sign it.

Getting a quote from us

If you already know what you are building, a short call is the fastest route. We will tell you what the work involves and what it should cost, whether or not you hire us. You can read how a custom theme build is scoped, see what changes at scale in our enterprise buyer's guide, or send us the brief.