Website Redesign Cost and How to Read a Quote: Japanese and Dutch Survey Data, 11 Line Items Explained, and Where Extra Costs Appear (2026)

Say you ask three agencies to quote for a redesign and get back ¥800,000, ¥2.4 million and ¥4.5 million. In most cases none of them is too high or too low. The three agencies are quoting for different jobs.

What a website costs depends less on the number of pages than on what is done and how far it goes. Putting quotes side by side when their scope differs is not a comparison.

This article first checks which surveys the commonly quoted price figures come from, and sets Japanese and Dutch (European) figures side by side in yen and euros. It then explains how to read 11 line items that appear in redesign quotes, how to compare quotes, and where extra costs tend to appear. Whether you need a redesign at all is covered in "10 Signs You Need a Website Redesign".

Main sources for this article

• Web Kanji (Utill Inc.), "Average website production cost", published 30 May 2024 (n=846)
• JetB Inc. (Yuryo WEB) phone and email surveys of web agencies (published 19 April and 6 August 2024)
• Knab "Zzp Uurtarievenboekje 2026", Freelance.nl "Freelance Markt Index" and Simplicate "Benchmark report Agencies Q4 2025" (Netherlands)
• Google Search Central on site moves, W3C's WCAG 2.2, the European Commission on the European Accessibility Act, and the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) on VAT

1. Where the market figures come from

"Market price" depends on who counted what

Trace the figures in articles about website costs and most lead back to the same few surveys. And each survey counts something different.

A survey that totals orders placed through a matching service shows what buyers paid. A survey that asks agencies for their prices shows what sellers quote. The table lists the surveys used in this article by subject and method.

The Japanese surveys report project totals and the Dutch surveys report hourly rates. That reflects how differently quotes are framed in the two countries, which sections 3 and 4 look at in detail.

There are no official statistics for redesigns

Neither Japan nor the Netherlands appears to publish official statistics on website redesign costs specifically. The Web Kanji figures cover new builds, and the JetB figures do not separate redesigns from new sites.

This article uses the figures above as a reference for what building one website costs, and covers the items a redesign adds separately in section 8.

2. Japan: why the mean is twice the median

In order data, more than half cost ¥500,000 or less

The Web Kanji survey totals 846 new-site orders placed through the service between January 2022 and December 2023. The mean was ¥825,000 (about €4,690) and the median ¥434,000 (about €2,470). The mean is about 1.9 times the median because a small number of large projects pull it up.

Eight in ten orders were ¥1 million (about €5,680) or less, but 7% were above ¥2 million. Budgeting on the ¥825,000 mean alone gives too much for a small site and too little for a multilingual or feature-rich one. Corporate sites made up 46.6% of orders, so the data mainly reflects small and medium-sized businesses.

Agencies surveyed quote about ¥1.1 million on average

JetB Inc. asked web agencies listed on its directory, Yuryo WEB, about their prices by phone and email between October 2023 and April 2024. Across 106 valid responses, the overall mean was about ¥1.1 million (about €6,250). The lowest price started at around ¥30,000 and the highest was ¥6.5 million.

In a corporate-site survey of 116 agencies, the mean was ¥1,255,345 (about €7,130) and the most common band was ¥500,000 to ¥1.5 million. Landing pages (46 agencies) averaged ¥460,000 and recruiting sites (32 agencies) about ¥1.09 million. The chart below sets the Japanese figures side by side.

Why the two surveys disagree

The Web Kanji mean of ¥825,000 and the JetB mean of about ¥1.1 million are about ¥275,000 apart. Neither is wrong. They are counting different things.

Neither represents Japan as a whole, and neither says whether figures include tax. Japanese consumption tax is 10%, which is ¥100,000 on a ¥1 million project, so put quotes on the same tax basis before comparing.

A practical reading: for a small or medium company site, many projects fall between ¥500,000 and ¥1.5 million (about €2,840–8,520). A quote far outside that range is a prompt to check how its scope differs.

3. Netherlands and Europe: priced by the hour, not the project

In the Netherlands, the hourly rate comes first

Dutch agencies and freelancers usually lead with an hourly rate (uurtarief). The total follows from the hours estimated for each task, and industry surveys report rates rather than project totals. All figures below exclude Dutch VAT (BTW).

Yen figures use the European Central Bank reference rate for 22 October 2026 (€1 = ¥175.97).

The Dutch surveys disagree too

The €73 for freelance web developers and the €106 for agencies are about 1.45 times apart. Again, the subjects differ.

Agency rates are higher because they cover a team of project managers, designers and developers, plus sales and overheads. In Simplicate's data, small, medium and large agencies averaged €103, €106 and €108, so agency size makes little difference. Freelance.nl reports that annual rate growth slowed from 5% to 2% after stricter enforcement of the Wet DBA, the Dutch law on assessing whether self-employment is genuine.

This research found no survey of European agency project totals with a disclosed method and sample size. Most total-cost ranges in English-language articles describe the US market or have no clear source, so this article does not give a European project total. Check both the hourly rate and the hours, and multiply them to verify the total.

VAT is 21%, but it depends on the customer

The standard Dutch VAT (BTW) rate is 21%. Between Dutch businesses, a €106 rate becomes €128.26 an hour.

However, the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) says services to businesses in other EU countries are generally taxed in the customer's country and invoiced without Dutch VAT, marked "btw verlegd" (VAT reverse-charged). Many services to businesses outside the EU are also taxed in the customer's country. A Japanese company hiring a Dutch agency directly will often receive an invoice without Dutch VAT, but there are exceptions, and Japanese consumption tax must be checked separately (section 14).

4. Comparing yen and euros

Convert the budget into hours

Converting Japanese and Dutch quote totals into one currency tells you little, because labour costs and scope differ. A more useful approach is to ask how many hours of work a budget buys.

Conversions use the reference rate for 22 October 2026 (€1 = ¥175.97), and rates exclude VAT. The Japanese surveys do not state their tax basis, so treat the hours as approximate.

The median Japanese budget buys roughly three days of a Dutch agency's time. If you approach a European agency with Japanese price expectations, the scopes may not meet. Conversely, when explaining a European quote to a head office in Japan, show the hourly rate and the hours separately.

For freelancers, check how many hours a week they can give

Knab's survey found that freelance web developers bill 22 hours a week on average, fewer than the 28 hours for all self-employed people. A 100-hour project for one freelancer is four to five weeks of billable time alone. Even at a lower rate, check the timeline and who covers holidays or illness.

Allow for exchange-rate movements

Between 1 July and 22 October 2026, the ECB reference rate moved between ¥175.97 and ¥186.99 per euro, a range of about 6%. ¥825,000 converts to anywhere from about €4,690 to about €4,410. If a euro quote is approved against a yen budget, allow for a few percent of movement before payment, and state in the contract which currency applies and who bears the exchange risk.

5. The 11 line items: an overview

Read the work, unit and price rather than the label

Line-item names vary between agencies. Ignore the label and read what work you are paying for, in what unit, and how much. This article groups redesign quotes into 11 items. The diagram below shows where they sit in the project.

The 11 items

The right-hand column is what to look for when checking whether anything is missing. The following sections take the items in turn.

6. Project management, planning and design

Project management: if it is a percentage, ask what it covers

Project management covers planning, meetings, scheduling and quality checks. Japanese quotes often show it as a percentage of the production fee. Check how many meetings, whose reviews and how much coordination it includes. Dutch agencies usually estimate "projectmanagement" in hours; check the assumed hours and what happens if they run over.

Planning and structure: cut it now, pay later

Planning includes requirements (what the site is for and what visitors should do), a sitemap and wireframes (the skeleton of each page). A quote without it looks cheaper, but decisions get made during the build, which causes rework. In a redesign especially, unless planning decides which old pages to keep, merge or remove, migration and redirects cannot be estimated.

Visual design: read it by template, not by page

Design is usually priced by the number of page templates, not pages. Pages that share a template need only one design, however many there are. Check how many templates, how many revision rounds are included and whether one or several concepts are presented. If a quote says "pages × unit price", ask whether pages that share a template are charged design fees too.

7. Development, CMS and licences

Development: get the test environments and speed targets in writing

Development turns the design into working HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The easily missed point is which browsers and devices will be tested. If that is not written down, fixing a layout bug after launch can turn into an argument about whether it is maintenance or extra work. Set a speed target here too. Google's Core Web Vitals define good as LCP 2.5 seconds or less, INP 200 milliseconds or less and CLS 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of users.

CMS: who can edit what matters more than setup cost

With an existing CMS (content management system) such as WordPress, the cost is mainly installation and building editing screens for your team. WordPress itself is distributed under the GPL (GNU General Public License) version 2 or later, so there is no licence fee. Ask for "CMS setup" to be broken down into which screens let whom edit what.

Also check the server's PHP version. According to PHP's official site, security support for PHP 8.2 ends on 31 December 2026, for 8.3 on 31 December 2027 and for 8.4 on 31 December 2028. Check that the quote does not leave you needing a PHP upgrade straight after launch.

Licences: whose name, and until when

Licences are easy to overlook and tend to cause trouble after launch.

Google says most Google Fonts are released under open licences such as the SIL Open Font License and can be used free of charge on commercial sites. But if paid fonts or annual plugins are licensed in the agency's name, they can stop working when the contract ends. The safe approach is to license them in your own name, or have the contract describe how licences will be transferred.

8. Content migration, SEO migration and redirects

These are the two costs a redesign adds

Compared with a new build, a redesign mainly adds moving the old site's content and moving its search value. Both grow with the number of pages on the old site.

Content migration: method and volume set the cost

Content migration moves the old site's copy, images, PDFs and articles to the new site. The method has the biggest effect on cost. Between the same CMS, much of it can be moved in bulk. From static HTML or a custom CMS, it is page by page, and the number of items becomes the number of hours. If the quote just says "content migration", always check how many pages or items are included. Without a cap, "more than expected" can become an extra charge midway.

SEO migration: everything starts from the URL map

If URLs change and you do not set up redirects from old to new URLs, you lose search rankings and the value of links from other sites. The table translates Google Search Central's site-move guidance into what it means for a quote.

Google says that for a small to medium-sized site, it can take a few weeks for most pages to move. Check whether the quote includes monitoring in Search Console for a few weeks after launch. If the domain changes, count renewing the old domain as a post-launch cost so that redirects can run for a year or more. Also check that Google Analytics (GA4) tracking and key events are set up again on the new site with the same definitions.

9. Multilingual sites and accessibility

Multilingual: translation and the mechanism are separate costs

A multilingual site has two kinds of cost: translation and the mechanism for switching languages. If a quote says "multilingual support", ask for them to be separated.

Google asks sites to describe language versions with hreflang. Each language version must point to itself and to every other version, and one-way references may be ignored. Because this must change whenever pages are added or removed, check that the CMS outputs it automatically. It is also easy to forget that every update needs translating after launch. Agree who translates updates and at what rate, so the language versions do not drift apart.

Accessibility: no target, no estimate

Accessibility (making the site usable regardless of disability or circumstances) cannot be estimated until you decide which standard to meet. The international standard is W3C's WCAG 2.2, usually at conformance level AA.

In the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 and covers consumer services such as e-commerce. According to the European Commission, services provided by microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees are exempt. The Dutch government portal business.gov.nl requires businesses in scope to publish an accessibility statement, and ACM (the Authority for Consumers and Markets) supervises e-commerce.

10. Maintenance and hosting: costs after launch

Do not compare launch costs alone

A common mistake is to compare only the upfront cost and ignore post-launch costs. What a care plan includes varies widely. Check whether each item below is included, charged separately or left to you.

A monthly fee may cover small updates while larger work such as a PHP upgrade is quoted separately. To compare upfront and ongoing costs together, add them up over three or five years.

11. Quote formats: lump sum, itemised, fixed price, time and materials

Four formats and when each fits

Quotes come in four broad formats. In Japan you will hear "isshiki" (a lump sum per item) and "tsumiage" (itemised hours). In the Netherlands, "vaste prijs" (fixed price) and "nacalculatie" (time and materials) are common.

A fixed price makes budgeting easier, but agencies tend to price in uncertainty or define scope narrowly. Time and materials is flexible, but without a cap and regular reporting of hours used, you may only find out at the end that the budget is gone.

Japanese contracts: ukeoi or jun-inin

In Japan, liability depends on whether the contract is ukeoi (a contract for work) or jun-inin (quasi-mandate). Under the Civil Code, ukeoi (Article 632) promises completion of the work, while jun-inin (Article 656) promises performing the tasks. Under ukeoi, if the deliverable does not conform to the contract, the client can demand repair or a price reduction, but under Article 637 the client must give notice within one year of becoming aware of the non-conformity. This is where post-launch bug fixes divide between "maintenance" and "non-conformity". The Information-technology Promotion Agency's (IPA) model contracts for information systems, which split contracts by phase (for example, jun-inin up to design and ukeoi for the build), are a useful reference.

12. Where extra costs appear

Extra costs come from work outside the scope

Most extra costs are not the agency raising its price later. They arise when work outside the original scope becomes necessary. The diagram follows the project timeline.

Causes and prevention

The common thread is that decisions put off become extra costs. Agree before signing what rate applies to out-of-scope work and who approves it, and most overruns can be prevented. No public survey gives a percentage for contingency, so if you hold one back, base it on your own past projects.

13. How to compare quotes

Align the request before comparing

The most important step is to give every agency the same brief.

1. List the old site's pages: URL, page type, and whether to keep, merge or remove each one
2. Write down goals and priorities: more enquiries, recruitment, reaching European customers, and so on
3. Decide which of the 11 items you need: languages, accessibility target, migration volume
4. List what your team will do: copy, photos, translation review
5. Send the same brief to about three agencies: and share answers to questions with all of them
6. Rearrange the quotes into the 11-item table: make gaps (exclusions) visible
7. Compare three- to five-year totals: upfront plus maintenance

A comparison template

A table like this one makes missing items obvious (example entries).

Every "not stated" or "not included" is a likely extra cost. A quote that looks cheap is usually one with many gaps. Ask for the gaps to be filled, then compare prices.

14. Where Japanese and Dutch quotes differ

Tax, invoices and business practice

Quotes, invoices and the rules around commissioning work differ between Japan and the Netherlands.

Japanese laws for clients

Japan's Freelance Act (Act on Ensuring Proper Transactions Involving Specified Entrusted Business Operators) took effect on 1 November 2024. When commissioning an individual who has no employees, the client must immediately state the work, fee and payment date in writing or by email, and pay within 60 days of receiving the deliverable, as soon as possible within that period. From 1 January 2026, the Subcontract Act was replaced by the Act on Proper Transactions with Small and Medium Entrusted Businesses (the "Toriteki Act"), which adds employee-count thresholds and widens its scope. Check the Japan Fair Trade Commission's materials to see whether your commissions are covered.

Commissioning across borders

Across borders, the same quote total can mean a different amount paid and different tax procedures. The Dutch Tax Administration says many services to businesses outside the EU are taxed in the customer's country, and Japan's National Tax Agency sets out consumption tax treatment of cross-border services by type. Both have exceptions, so check the tax treatment in both countries with a tax adviser before signing, and ask for the quote to state which country's tax applies and whether amounts include it.

15. Example cases (fictional)

The following are fictional businesses, not real companies or projects.

Case A: a Japanese professional-services firm, 20-page company site

Rearranging three quotes into the 11-item table showed that the cheapest one left out content migration and redirects. The old site had 30 articles that drew search traffic, and changing their URLs without moving them would lose that traffic. The sensible step is to request new quotes that include migration and redirects, then compare.

Case B: a Japanese trading company in the Netherlands, two-language site

A Dutch agency quoted €110 an hour plus itemised hours, and the head office in Japan saw the total as expensive. At €110, a €10,000 budget (about ¥1.76 million) buys about 91 hours. The effective approach is to show that the rate is close to Simplicate's average (€106), then explain how many hours each item takes. If translation is done in-house, those hours could also be negotiated out.

Case C: a Japanese retailer selling online to the EU

With 30 employees, the company does not qualify for the European Accessibility Act's microenterprise exemption. The quote's "accessibility support" turned out to be automated checks only, with no target standard. The brief should be revised to target WCAG 2.2 AA, include manual testing and an accessibility statement, and every agency asked to requote on the same basis.

16. Checklist

When you receive a quote, check the following.

• It states whether amounts include tax, and which country's tax
• For euro quotes, the hourly rate and hours are shown separately
• Project management states the number of meetings or the scope
• Planning deliverables (sitemap, wireframes, URL map) are listed
• Design states the number of templates and revision rounds
• Test environments, and who can edit what in the CMS, are stated
• Content migration states a cap or "all items"
• Multilingual work states the languages and whether translation is included
• Redirects and the URL map are included
• Accessibility states a target standard and a test method
• The care plan contents and licence holders are stated
• The rate and approval process for out-of-scope work are agreed
• You compared three- to five-year totals and, if cross-border, checked tax

Summary

• In Japan, website builds cost a mean of ¥825,000 and a median of ¥434,000 in order data, and a mean of about ¥1.1 million in an agency survey. The surveys measure different things and do not agree
• In the Netherlands, prices are per hour: €73 for freelance web developers and €106 on average for agencies (excluding VAT)
• Do not compare converted totals across yen and euros; convert a budget into hours of work
• Read a quote for the quantity and unit of each of the 11 items and what is not included
• Extra costs most often come from migration, redirects, languages, accessibility and maintenance. Agree the rate and approval process for out-of-scope work before signing
• Compare by sending the same brief, rearranging quotes into the 11-item table, and adding up three to five years

Sources

Japanese cost surveys

• Web Kanji average website production cost survey — PR TIMES: published 30 May 2024, 846 orders, mean, median and price bands
• Average website production cost (2024, nationwide) — Web Kanji: breakdown by site type and industry
• Website production price survey — PR TIMES (JetB): 106 agencies, mean about ¥1.1 million
• Corporate site production price survey — PR TIMES (JetB): 116 agencies, mean ¥1,255,345
• Landing page production price survey — PR TIMES (JetB): 46 agencies, mean ¥460,000
• Recruiting site production cost survey — PR TIMES (JetB): 32 agencies, mean about ¥1.09 million

Dutch rate surveys and exchange rates

• What does a freelance web developer earn? — Knab: web developers €73, all self-employed €83, 22 billable hours a week
• Hourly rates update 2025 — Freelance.nl: average €86.36, slower growth after the Wet DBA
• Benchmark report Agencies Q4 2025 — Simplicate: average base rate €106, by size, top 20% €120
• Resources for agencies — Simplicate: list of benchmark reports
• Euro foreign exchange reference rates: Japanese yen — European Central Bank: reference rate and range since July

Search, speed, languages and accessibility

• Site moves with URL changes — Google Search Central: URL mapping, 301/308, keeping redirects at least a year
• Redirects and Google Search — Google Search Central: redirect types
• Tell Google about localized versions of your page — Google Search Central: hreflang
• Web Vitals — web.dev: LCP, INP and CLS thresholds
• WCAG 2.2 — W3C: success criteria and conformance levels
• Evaluating Web Accessibility Overview — W3C WAI: automated tools and human evaluation
• European Accessibility Act — European Commission: scope, start date, microenterprise exemption
• European Accessibility Act for products and services — business.gov.nl: accessibility statement, ACM

CMS and licences

• License — WordPress.org: GPL version 2 or later
• Supported Versions — PHP: PHP support end dates
• Google Fonts FAQ — Google for Developers: open licences and commercial use
• SIL Open Font License: licence text

Tax, invoices and contracts

• VAT rates and exemptions — Belastingdienst: standard rate 21%
• VAT on services to customers in other EU countries — Belastingdienst: "btw verlegd"
• VAT on services to and from non-EU countries — Belastingdienst: services to businesses outside the EU
• Creating and sending invoices — KVK Ondernemersplein: required invoice details
• Overview of the invoice system — National Tax Agency (Japan): qualified invoices
• Consumption tax on cross-border services — National Tax Agency (Japan): transactions with foreign businesses
• Freelance Act — Japan Fair Trade Commission: written terms, payment within 60 days
• From the Subcontract Act to the Toriteki Act — Japan Fair Trade Commission: new employee thresholds
• Civil Code — e-Gov Laws (Japan): ukeoi, jun-inin, notice period for non-conformity
• Model transactions and contracts for information systems — IPA: contracting by phase

All sources were checked on 22 October 2026. The cost surveys cover buyers or agencies using each provider's service and do not represent the whole market. Tax and legal treatment depends on the transaction, so check with a professional before signing. Figures 3 and 4 were created by DevNJ from the sources above and contain no figures.