Free tool

How long does it take to build a website?

Say how many pages, whether the words and photos exist yet, what the site has to do and who is building it. You get a range of hours and weeks, a table of where the time goes, and every assumption behind it as a number you can change.

Your site

How many pages?

Home, about, services, contact is four. Count a shop or a menu as one page; the products and dishes are counted below.

Is the copy written?

Are the photos ready?

What does the site have to do?

Sell products

Roughly how many products?

Take bookings or appointments

Show a menu with prices

Hire things out (cars, boats, equipment, rooms)

Run a blog

Who is building it?

A worked example

Five pages, some of the copy and some of the photos to hand, nothing to sell or book, built by the owner with a website builder. Change the answers to make it yours.

Hours of work

16-30 hours

Calendar time

2-4 weeks

Where the time goes

Task	Sum	Hours
Getting set up	once	1
Laying out 5 pages	5 x 1.5 h	7.5
Finishing the copy	5 x 1 h	5
Sorting and topping up photos	once	2
Choosing and uploading images	5 x 0.25 h	1.25
Going live	once	3
Planned hours		19.75
Range at x0.8 and x1.5		16-30

How the hours become weeks

Your 19.75 hours at 2 a day is 9.9 working days.
Plus 2 working days waiting on things nobody can hurry (the domain, a payment account).
Scaled by the same low and high multipliers: 9.9 to 16.8 working days, which is 2-4 weeks.

The one number we measured, and what it does not mean

In the 90 days to 20 September 2026, 37 accounts published a site on Webkio. The median time from signing up to a live site was under an hour, and the slowest 4 days. That measures publishing a first version from a template, which is what the free website builder does, not finishing a site you are proud of. The estimate above is for the finishing. Everything else on this page is an assumption, labelled as one.

The assumptions, editable

Every number below drives the estimate above and none is a measured statistic. Disagree with one, change it and press Estimate it again; your figure replaces ours and is marked.

Getting set up hours, once

Account, template, business details, logo and colours.

Laying out a page hours per page

Choosing and arranging the sections for one page, before any words go in.

Writing a page from nothing hours per page

A page of copy takes most people an evening the first time. Half this if you have notes.

Fitting copy you already have hours per page

Pasting, trimming to fit and reading it back in place.

Photographing the business hours, once

An afternoon with a phone covers most small businesses. Half this if you have some photos to sort.

Choosing and uploading images hours per page

Picking, cropping and uploading the images for one page.

Adding a product hours per product

Photo, description, price and variants for one product, about fifteen minutes.

Setting up the shop hours, once

Payments, shipping, tax, returns policy and a real test order with your own card.

Setting up bookings hours, once

Services, availability, deposit and cancellation policy, reminders and a test booking.

Entering the menu hours, once

Every dish with its price and allergens, typed rather than uploaded as a PDF.

Setting up rentals hours, once

Fleet, pricing, deposits, rules, calendar sync and a test reservation.

Starting the blog hours, once

Setting it up and writing the first three posts, because a blog with one post looks abandoned.

Going live hours, once

Domain, legal pages, analytics and working through the launch checklist.

Professional speed multiplier on build hours

A freelancer or agency has done this before, so their build hours are multiplied by this. Copy and photos stay with you either way.

Agency process hours, once

Discovery, design mock-ups and project management. It is what you are paying an agency for, and it takes time.

Hours a day you can give it hours per working day

Alongside running the business. The single number that most changes the calendar.

Hours a week they give your project hours per week

A freelancer or agency has other clients; your site gets a slice of their week, not all of it.

Feedback rounds with a freelancer rounds

A first draft and a revision is the usual shape.

Feedback rounds with an agency rounds

Design sign-off, build review and a final check, each waiting on you as much as on them.

Days each feedback round takes working days per round

You look at it, you reply, they act on it. Three working days is optimistic for a busy owner.

Waiting on other people working days, once

The domain resolving, a payment account being approved: things nobody on the project can hurry.

Low end of the range multiplier

Things rarely come in far under the plan.

High end of the range multiplier

They often come in over it, so the high end is wider than the low.

Nearly there? The website launch checklist is the last afternoon in this estimate as a list you can tick, with the free tool for each item. The longer read is how long it takes to build a business website, told in the order it happens.

Why the table is the answer and the headline is not

A single number for how long a website takes is a guess wearing a suit. The number that matters to you is the one line in the table you know is wrong: you write faster than two hours a page, or you will never get two hours a day, or the agency quoted five feedback rounds. Change that line and the range above is yours rather than ours.

Two things are deliberately kept apart. Hours of work are the hours somebody sits down for; calendar time adds the waiting - for your own evenings, for a freelancer's other clients, for a domain to resolve. And being found by search is not in either, because it is not work: it is weeks of waiting after launch that no estimate can shorten.

How this is worked out

Hours are a sum of named lines, each the product of a count you entered and an assumption you can edit: setup once, laying out each page, writing or fitting the copy per page, photographing the business once and preparing images per page, a fixed block for each module you ticked plus a per-product line for a shop, and going live. A freelancer or agency multiplies the build lines by a professional-speed factor and an agency adds a process block; copy, photos, products and the menu stay on your side. Calendar time runs your hours and theirs in parallel at the daily and weekly paces you set, then adds feedback rounds and waiting days. The low and high ends multiply the whole by two factors you can change. No figure for freelancers or agencies is quoted as fact. The one measurement is ours: in the 90 days to 20 September 2026, 37 accounts published a site with a median of under an hour from signup to live (fastest under an hour, slowest four days), and that measures a first published version, not a finished site.

Standards and documentation it follows

Guides that use this

Quoting this tool

Free to quote and link. Cite it as Website build time estimator, a free tool by Webkio, https://webkio.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-website. The method above is the whole method, so a figure you quote can be checked by anyone with the same inputs.

Questions

How long does it take to build a small business website?

With a website builder and your own time, a five-page site with some copy and photos to hand comes out at roughly 16 to 30 hours of work spread over two to four weeks, on the assumptions this page states. Change the assumptions and the answer changes; that is the point. Publishing a first version is far quicker: in the 90 days to 20 September 2026, the 37 accounts that published a site on Webkio had a median of under an hour from signing up to a live site.

Why is it a range and not a number?

Because nobody knows your pace, your copy or how many evenings you will actually get. The low end assumes things go roughly to plan; the high end assumes the usual overruns. Both multipliers are in the assumptions and you can tighten or widen them.

Where do the freelancer and agency figures come from?

They are assumptions, labelled as such. We could not find a primary source for how long freelancers or agencies take that would survive being checked, so rather than quote one we show our guess for each driver - hours a week they give your project, feedback rounds, agency process - and let you replace it with the number your quote actually says.

Why do I still have hours when somebody else is building it?

Because the copy, the photos, the prices and the menu are yours. A freelancer does not know what you charge and an agency does not photograph your kitchen unless you pay for that separately. Owners most often underestimate their own side of a hired build, so the table keeps it visible.

Does this include getting found on Google?

No, on purpose. Being indexed takes days to weeks after launch and ranking takes longer, and neither is work you do - it is waiting. It is a different question from how long the build takes, and folding it in would make the calendar look like a promise it is not.