Loading...
Buyer's Guide • UK & Ireland
The honest answer: it depends on what you are buying, and in the UK and Ireland it is hard to even find out, because most firms quote on request rather than publishing prices. This guide sets out the price figures that are actually published, with sources, and the structural factors that make one audit cost five times another.
Our Audits
From $950
Fixed price, WCAG 2.2 AA
Pricing Scales On
Templates, not pages
Unique page types drive effort
Where the Value Is
Manual testing
Scans find only a subset of failures
UK & Irish Market
Quote culture
Most firms price on request
There is no standard price for a web accessibility audit, and any page that gives you a single confident number without a source is guessing. What we can do is tell you what is actually published, who published it, and what our own audits cost.
The spread between those numbers is not vendors being greedy or cheap. It reflects genuinely different products sold under the same word, which is why the next section matters more than any headline figure.
Audit effort, and therefore cost, scales on a handful of structural factors. When you request quotes, these are the variables each vendor is silently estimating:
This is also why per-page pricing can mislead: two vendors quoting the same per-page rate can produce wildly different totals depending on how they count pages, templates, and flow states.
The cheapest audits on the market are automated scans dressed up as audits. Automated testing is cheap or free for a reason: it can only detect a subset of WCAG failures, the ones a machine can judge without context. It can tell you an image has no alt attribute; it cannot tell you the alt text that is there is wrong. It can find a form field with no label; it cannot tell you the checkout is impossible to complete with a keyboard.
Manual testing, with a human working through your site using a keyboard and screen reader, is where both the cost and the value of a professional audit live. That is the part you are actually paying for, and the part a scan-only product quietly omits while using the same word.
The smart move is to use both, in order. Run our free URL accessibility auditor and contrast checker to establish a baseline before paying anyone. Fix what they find, then spend your audit budget on the manual testing that machines cannot do.
Whatever you pay, the deliverable should contain the same core elements. Use this as a checklist when comparing quotes:
Never buy a report sight unseen. We publish a sample audit report so you can see exactly what the deliverable looks like; ask any vendor you are considering for the same.
For UK and Irish organisations, the question behind the price question is legal exposure, and the drivers on this side of the Atlantic are different from the US lawsuit machine:
Weigh the audit price against the cost of not knowing where you stand. For the US picture, where an inaccessible site can turn directly into legal spend, see our ADA website lawsuit cost guide. And an audit is not only risk avoidance: accessible sites reach more customers, and our accessibility ROI calculator lets you put your own numbers on that.
One practical note on the quote-on-request culture: because so few UK and Irish firms publish prices, the burden of making quotes comparable falls on you. Send every vendor the same written scope, insist on an itemised quote against it, and ask for a sample report. That is the closest thing this market offers to price transparency.
There is no single market rate, and most UK and Irish agencies do not publish prices at all. US vendors such as AudioEye and DigitalA11Y publish ranges of roughly $1,500 to $5,500 for small business sites, with per-page rates around $100 to $250. In the UK, independent consultant Jim Byrne publishes audit prices from 2,500 GBP. Our own fixed-price WCAG 2.2 AA audits start at $950, including manual testing, assistive technology checks, a full report, and a verification retest. Whatever you pay, get the scope itemised in writing so you can compare quotes like with like.
Because an audit is not one product. The main cost drivers are structural: how many unique templates and page types your site has (not the raw page count), how many user flows need testing (checkout, signup, account management), the depth of testing (automated scan versus manual and screen reader testing versus a full assistive technology matrix), the platforms covered (web only, or also iOS and Android apps and PDFs), the deliverables (a defect list, a full report with remediation guidance, or VPAT and ACR production), the number of retest rounds, and the day rates of the consultants doing the work. Two quotes that differ by thousands are usually describing two different products.
No. Automated scanners are genuinely useful and worth running first, but they detect only a subset of WCAG failures. They cannot judge whether alt text is meaningful, whether a keyboard user can complete your checkout, or whether a screen reader announces form errors sensibly. Those judgments require a human tester working with assistive technology, and that manual work is where both the cost and the value of a professional audit live. Use free tools to establish a baseline and clear the obvious defects, then pay for manual testing on what remains.
It depends on scope, and be wary of anyone quoting a fixed duration before seeing your site. As a general shape: a small site with a handful of templates is typically a matter of days of testing and reporting, while a large engagement covering many flows, native apps, and documents runs to weeks. The same structural factors that drive cost (template count, flow count, testing depth, and platforms) drive duration in the same way.
A written scope stating which pages, templates, flows, browsers, and assistive technologies were tested; findings mapped to specific WCAG 2.2 success criteria; severity ratings; evidence such as screenshots or code references; plain-language remediation guidance your developers can act on; and a defined retest to verify fixes. If a quote does not specify the deliverable, ask to see a sample report before you sign. A cheap audit that produces an unusable spreadsheet of scanner output is not a bargain.
No law mandates an audit as such. What the law requires is accessibility: the Equality Act 2010 places an anticipatory duty on UK service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and the European Accessibility Act imposes accessibility requirements on in-scope products and services in the EU, with criminal penalties available in Ireland. An audit is not the legal obligation; it is how you find out where you stand against the obligation, and the evidence base for fixing what it finds.
Usually not by default. A VPAT (the template used to produce an Accessibility Conformance Report, or ACR) is a distinct deliverable that documents your conformance position for procurement teams. Most vendors price it as an add-on to an audit, because it requires the audit evidence plus additional authoring work. If you sell to government, education, or enterprise buyers who ask for an ACR, tell prospective auditors up front so the quote includes it.
This page is provided for general educational purposes. Third-party price figures are drawn from the named sources' published content and are indicative only; they are not offers, and actual pricing for any engagement, including ours, depends on scope. Nothing here is legal advice. For obligations under the Equality Act, the European Accessibility Act, or other laws, consult a qualified professional.
Comprehensive tools, checklists, and guides to help you create inclusive digital experiences