· Michael · ScreenMySite
What does a website accessibility audit cost in 2026?
A manual accessibility audit of a small website costs roughly $1,000 to $7,000 in 2026, going by the price lists accessibility firms publish, and most small-site audits land between $1,250 and $2,750. Larger sites run from about $5,000 into five figures. Below are the published numbers with their sources, what moves a quote up or down, and how to tell an audit from an automated scan with a price tag on it.
What the published price lists say
Most accessibility firms quote privately, but a few publish their pricing or a guide to it. These are the figures on their pages as of September 2026:
- Accessible.org (pricing page, updated July 25, 2026): $100 to $250 per primary page or screen, $25 to $100 per light page. "Most accessibility audits cost between $1,250 and $2,750."
- DigitalA11Y (cost guide, February 5, 2026): $1,500 to $5,000 per audit, depending on scope.
- AudioEye (cost guide, March 12, 2026): a manual audit at $1,500 to $5,000 for a small site, $5,000 to $20,000 for a mid-size site and $20,000 to $50,000 or more for an enterprise site. By size, $1,000 to $3,000 for 1 to 10 pages and $2,500 to $7,000 for 10 to 30 pages.
The ranges overlap more than they disagree. For a small business site or a store, expect a quote in the low thousands from a firm that prices by the page.
Some things are priced separately. At Accessible.org, a VPAT (a formal accessibility conformance report, usually asked for in procurement) adds $350 to $950 depending on the standard, and expedited delivery adds $250 to $750.
What moves the price
How many pages are tested. Per-page pricing is the most common model, so scope is the biggest lever. A store has thousands of URLs but only a handful of templates (home, collection, product, cart, checkout, search), and every product page is built from the same one. An audit scoped to one representative page per template covers most of what a customer touches, at a fraction of a page-by-page price.
How complex those pages are. A text page is quick to test. A product page with a variant picker, an image carousel, a size-guide modal and a cart drawer is not. That is why per-page prices run from $25 to $250.
Which assistive technology is used. Testing with one desktop screen reader is standard. Adding JAWS, VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android and real devices multiplies the hours.
What you get at the end. A prioritised list of fixes, a full conformance table against every WCAG success criterion, a VPAT, or a combination. Each costs more to produce.
Whether a retest is included. Some firms re-check your fixes as part of the price; others charge again.
An audit is not an automated scan
Free scanners, including ours, run automated rules against a page. Automated scanning catches roughly 57% of WCAG issues. The rest, like whether a keyboard user can finish checkout, whether a screen reader announces a form error, or whether alt text actually describes the image, needs a person using the site.
That is what an audit fee pays for: someone's time operating your site the way a disabled customer would, and writing up what blocks them. Some red flags when comparing quotes:
- A cheap "audit" that is an export of automated results. If the deliverable could have come from a free tool, it did.
- A compliance percentage or score. WCAG has no percentage. A score tells you how many automated rules passed, not whether a customer can buy from you.
- Guarantees or certification. No recognised body certifies WCAG conformance, and no assessment can guarantee you won't be sued.
- An audit bundled with a widget. An overlay installed on top of the page does not change the HTML underneath, where the issues live.
Questions worth asking before you pay
- Which pages or templates are in scope, and does that include checkout?
- Is the testing done by a person, and with which screen readers and browsers?
- What does the report look like? Ask for a sample.
- Does each finding say which element is affected and how to fix it in the code?
- Is a retest of your fixes included?
Where ours sits
We sell one audit, at $499 flat, built for online stores. It covers one representative page per template, with the full purchase path done keyboard-only and again with the NVDA screen reader, plus a human review of the automated results. You get a prioritised report of 10 to 15 findings with dated screenshots and the fix for each. It is cheaper than the ranges above because it is scoped to a store's templates rather than priced page by page, and because it tests with one screen reader at targeted depth. It is not the exhaustive tier: JAWS, real mobile devices and a full assistive-technology pass are the full audit, at about $1,900.
If you want to see what the automated part finds first, run a free scan or look at a sample report.
Prices are as published by each firm on the dates shown and will change; ask for a written quote. This post is about the cost of accessibility testing, not legal advice. If you have received a demand letter or complaint, speak to a lawyer.
Sources: Accessible.org pricing · DigitalA11Y, How much does a web accessibility audit cost? · AudioEye, Web accessibility audit costs