How much does an accessibility audit cost?

Published prices for a WCAG audit of a small website, about ten pages, sit in the low thousands. Across five vendor price lists we read in November 2026, four for audits and one for an entry-level review, priced in US dollars, pounds and euros, ten pages came to roughly 1,000 to 6,000 in each list’s own currency, before VAT where VAT applies. On the UK government’s G-Cloud framework, suppliers list day rates of roughly £600 to £1,250 for an accessibility specialist. The public contract awards we found run from £7,500 for a single annual audit to £300,000 for two years of audits on government systems. Below is where those figures come from, what drives them, and how to describe your scope so quotes are comparable.

Our guide to the website accessibility audit covers what an audit involves, step by step.

How audits are priced

Four units turn up in published prices, and each hides a different scope:

• Per page or screen. The auditor prices each page in the sample, often in tiers by complexity. A “page” here is one the auditor tests in depth from its representative sample, not every URL on your site.
• A fixed package. A set price for a set number of pages or components, sometimes in tiers by site size or complexity.
• Per day. Common in public-sector frameworks. The total depends on how many days the auditor estimates for your scope.
• Per engagement. One price for a defined job, which may include user testing, an accessibility statement, repeat audits or a certificate.

None of these units tells you what is in the sample, which assistive technologies are tested, or whether a retest is included. Those are what you compare.

What published prices show

We read every figure below on 1 November 2026. Prices change, and we name no vendor for its prices: the vendor figures are summarised across the lists we read. The public contract awards are the buyers’ own published records.

Vendors’ price lists

We read five published price lists: four for manual audits and one for an entry-level review. Two are in US dollars, one in pounds and two in euros.

• For about ten pages they come to roughly 1,000 to 6,000 in the list’s own currency, before VAT where VAT applies, and more where pages are complex.
• The three lists that price per page run from tens of US dollars for a simple page to several hundred euros for the most complex page they put a price on.
• Two lists sell fixed packages sized for a small site, about ten pages; larger or more complex sites cost more or are quoted separately.

UK public framework rates (G-Cloud 15)

On the first page of a search for “accessibility audit” on the government’s Digital Marketplace, 22 audit listings from 18 suppliers give a day rate for the “Accessibility specialist” role. They run from £600 to £1,250. These are role rates on the suppliers’ rate cards, not audit prices, and the pricing documents that state a basis quote them per day, excluding VAT. One supplier’s pricing document puts a typical audit at five to seven days.

UK public contract awards (Contracts Finder)

Award notices give the contract’s value, not what was finally spent, and they do not say whether VAT is included.

What the figures tell you, and what they don’t

They agree on the order of magnitude for a small site. The vendor lists land in the low thousands for about ten pages. Five to seven days at the median framework day rate, about £750, comes to £3,750 to £5,250, in the same band.

They do not agree on what a page is. One list tiers pages by type, another by technical complexity, and a fixed package may count a component as a page. A per-page price is only comparable once you know how the sample is chosen.

Day rates for the same role differ about twofold. Seniority, location and what the supplier bundles into a day explain some of it. Compare the days quoted for your scope, not the rate alone.

Contract awards are bigger because they buy more. The Arts Council’s award included user testing, help with the accessibility statement and a certificate. HMRC’s covers audits of government systems over two years.

They say little about assistive technology. Some of the lists include screen reader testing, at least one framework listing sells assistive technology testing as a day-rate add-on, and some do not say. It is the line most worth asking about.

What drives the price

Every source above prices the same few things, in different units:

• Distinct templates and states, not URLs. A thousand product pages from one template are largely one template to test; a checkout with six steps and three error states is nine views. Representative sampling is how auditors keep the page count down, and GOV.UK asks for “a representative sample of your page templates and content types”; we explain how to choose those pages in template-based auditing.
• Complexity. Interactive widgets, custom components, maps and signed-in areas take longer than static content, which is why per-page prices come in tiers.
• Complete processes. WCAG counts a process (sign-up, checkout, booking) as conforming only if every step does, so every step is in scope.
• Environments and assistive technology. Each extra combination of screen reader, browser and device, and testing on mobile as well as desktop, adds time.
• The target. WCAG 2.2 adds six A and AA criteria to 2.1, and one of the lists charges more per page for a test that includes them.
• What the report must be. A findings report is one thing; a formal accessibility conformance report (ACR, often written in the VPAT format) for procurement is priced on top on the two lists that price one, from a few hundred to a few thousand US dollars, and a third list offers one as part of its audit service.
• How inaccessible the site is now. More failures mean more to document, and two of the lists name the site’s current state as a cost factor.
• Retests, below.

What a retest costs

A retest re-runs the checks on what failed and reports what is no longer found. None of the five vendor lists says its headline price includes one: each prices a retest separately, as a share of the original fee, as fixed-price re-checks, by the hour or by a new quote, or does not say. Public contracts can include it: the Department for Work and Pensions’ award for auditing the Universal Credit journeys included re-auditing its three online journeys: claimant, agent and landlord portal.

The UK government’s service manual tells teams working to its Service Standard to “arrange a follow-up audit when you book your initial audit, so you can check you’ve fixed any issues”. That is good advice for anyone: price the retest before you sign, not after the report lands. We explain what a re-audit can and cannot confirm in the audit guide’s last step.

How to pay for less scope without testing less

You cannot negotiate away the hours a person needs for the criteria only a person can judge. You can stop paying for everything else.

1. Count templates, not pages. List each distinct template and state, and ask for one representative page of each, plus a random sample on top to catch what the template list missed. That follows the structured-plus-random sampling in W3C’s evaluation methodology (WCAG-EM), which also asks for every step of each complete process and a random sample of 10% of the structured one.
2. Fix what automated rules find before the auditor starts. Every missing label or contrast failure you fix first is one the auditor does not log by hand, so more of the paid time goes to keyboard, screen reader and judgment-based criteria. We list which criteria an automated rule can check, one by one.
3. Get an evaluator in early. GOV.UK suggests asking an auditor “to spend a couple of days during alpha reviewing your designs and prototypes”. At that stage a change costs a sketch, not a rebuild.
4. Prepare. Give the auditor test accounts for signed-in areas, a list of your processes with their steps, and the screen reader and browser combinations you must support. Time spent working these out is billed time.

Don’t cut the random sample, the assistive-technology testing or the retest. They are what make the report trustworthy. GOV.UK’s advice is blunt: “Do not automatically go for the cheapest supplier”, and make sure auditors “do not rely exclusively on automated tools”.

A scope worksheet to send with your request

Send the same scope to two or three auditors and you can compare their answers line by line. Write down your answer to each item below; it describes your scope, not a price. The column “Why it changes the price” says why the auditor needs each item.

Ask each auditor to say which of these their price includes and which are extra. What the finished report should contain is a separate question: see what an audit report should contain, with a template.