How much does a website audit cost for a small business?

The short answer

A website audit for a small UK business costs between nothing and about £1,500, depending on how deep it goes and who does it.

Type	Typical cost	What is covered
Free automated tool	£0	Basic technical flags, page speed, some SEO issues
DIY audit checklist	£0	A manual review using a structured checklist
Freelancer audit	£300 to £800	Technical SEO, content gaps, competitor comparison
Full growth audit	£500 to £1,500	SEO, speed, conversion paths, trust signals, local search, with a prioritised action plan

What determines the price

A free tool gives you raw data. A paid audit interprets that data for your business. The price difference comes down to three things:

• Interpretation. A crawler will list 400 issues. A person tells you which six matter and why.
• Scope. Speed and SEO only, or speed, SEO, conversion, trust and local search together. Problems usually sit at the joins between those, which is why the wider audit costs more.
• The output. A spreadsheet of findings, or a short ordered plan you can hand to a developer on Monday. See what is in an audit for the structure we use.

Where the value sits

A cheap audit can flag broken links and missing meta tags. A full growth audit connects the technical findings to enquiries: which pages are costing you leads, which speed issues hit mobile visitors, and whether your site structure helps or hurts local rankings.

That is the difference between a list of problems and an answer to “what should I fix first”. Our post on how to prioritise website audit fixes shows how that ranking works.

When a free tool is enough

Use a free tool when you have one specific question: is this page slow, is this image too big, is the site mobile-friendly. Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console answer those well.

Pay for an audit when the question is broader: the site gets traffic but not enough enquiries, rankings have dropped and you do not know why, or you are about to spend on a redesign and want to know what to keep. The post on signs your website needs a manual audit covers the symptoms in more detail.

How to judge a quote

• Ask for a sample report. If it is a tool export with a logo on it, keep looking.
• Ask how findings are prioritised. “By lead impact” is the answer you want.
• Ask what happens after. A good audit ends with a plan, not a sales pitch for a rebuild.

If you want to see what a full review looks like before deciding, the website audit service page explains the process, and the SEO ROI calculator will help you decide whether the likely gains justify the cost.