"How much should I expect to pay?" It's the question I get most, and the honest answer is that the hourly rate tells you almost nothing. Here are the numbers anyway, plus the costs that don't appear in quotes.
TL;DR: Hourly runs $15–30 entry, $30–60 experienced, $60–100+ senior. Fixed price: $500–1,500 landing page, $1,500–4,000 five-page site, $3,000–8,000+ custom build, $4,000–12,000+ with WooCommerce. Budget separately for hosting, the ~$89/yr Divi licence, plugin licences, photography and copy. Content delays cause most overruns.
Hourly Rates
| Level | Rate | Typical work |
|---|---|---|
| Entry-level | $15–30/hr | Content updates, small edits, layout tweaks |
| Experienced | $30–60/hr | Full builds, redesigns, Theme Builder templates |
| Senior specialist | $60–100+/hr | Migrations, custom code, performance work, consulting |
Rates track location as much as skill. Eastern Europe, South Asia and Latin America cluster at the lower end of each band; US, UK, Western Europe and Australia at the upper. A $35/hour builder in Poland and a $85/hour builder in Boston can produce identical work.
Project Pricing
| Project type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Single landing page | $500–1,500 |
| 5-page business site | $1,500–4,000 |
| Full custom website | $3,000–8,000+ |
| WooCommerce + Divi | $4,000–12,000+ |
| Divi 4 to Divi 5 migration | $800–3,000 |
| Monthly maintenance retainer | $50–200/month |
Fixed price is better for both sides when scope is genuinely clear. It's worse for both when it isn't, because the freelancer pads the number to cover the unknown and you pay for risk that may not materialise.
What Drives the Number
Complexity, not page count. A twelve-page brochure site with one template costs less than a four-page site with a members area, a booking integration and a custom post type. Repetition is cheap. Novelty is expensive.
Page count is not linear. Pages five through twelve cost a fraction of pages one through four, because the templates, the design variable system and the presets already exist. If you're planning to add pages later, say so up front — it changes how the foundation gets built.
Design source. A finished Figma file with defined spacing and states is fastest. A rough wireframe is slower. "Something like this site but for us" is slowest, because the design work is now inside the build and nobody priced it. AI-generated mockups sit in between — real direction, still needing interpretation, and converting them to Divi layouts is its own skill.
Content readiness. All copy and images supplied, final, in one folder: fast. Copy arriving page by page over three weeks: expensive, and not because of the writing.
Dynamic content. A blog that pulls posts by category, an author archive, a filtered portfolio — that's Loop Builder work, and it's genuinely more involved than static pages. Worth every hour, but price it in.
Revisions. Two to three rounds is standard. Get the definition in writing — "a round" means one consolidated set of feedback, not eleven emails over a fortnight.
Costs Quotes Usually Exclude
This is where two quotes that look $600 apart turn out to be identical.
| Item | Typical cost | Who normally pays |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | $10–50/month | You |
| Divi licence | ~$89/yr or ~$249 lifetime | You |
| Premium plugins | $50–300/yr total | You |
| Stock photography | $0–500 | You |
| Copywriting | $100–500/page | You |
| Ongoing maintenance | $50–200/month | You |
Buy the Divi licence yourself. It should be registered to your account, not your developer's. If you part ways, you keep updates and support instead of discovering your site is running an unlicensed theme. At around $89/year or $249 for lifetime unlimited sites, this is the cheapest line on the list and the one that causes the most trouble when it's in the wrong name. The lifetime licence maths is straightforward if you plan to keep the site more than three years.
Reading a Quote
Ask for these five things in writing. A freelancer who supplies them without friction is usually a good sign on its own:
- Deliverables list — which templates, which pages, which integrations
- Revision rounds — how many, and what counts as one
- Timeline with content deadlines — including what happens when you miss one
- Post-launch support window — 14 days, 30 days, or none
- Who owns and hosts the licences
Red flags: a quote with no scope document, a rate under $15/hour for a build, an unwillingness to name a timeline, and "SEO included" with no explanation of what that means. That last one is nearly always a Yoast install.
Payment structure is usually 50% up front and 50% on completion, or 50/30/20 across milestones on larger projects. Nobody experienced works fully on completion, and nobody reasonable asks for 100% up front.
My Take: The Hourly Rate Is the Least Useful Number Here
Here's my one strong opinion: the hourly rate is the worst predictor of project cost in this entire article, and comparing rates is how people end up paying twice.
I've built over 100 Divi sites and I've cleaned up a lot of other people's. The arithmetic is consistent. A $25/hour builder who needs 40 hours costs $1,000. A $70/hour builder who needs 12 hours costs $840. Same site, and the second one has a preset system, working Theme Builder templates and a mobile layout that survives a 390px viewport.
Then there's the version I get called for: the $25/hour build that took 40 hours, doesn't work on mobile, has inline styles on 60 modules instead of presets, and needs 15 hours to repair. That's $1,000 plus $1,050. The cheap option cost more than double.
So the number to ask for is not the rate. It's the estimate in hours, and then what they'd change if you gave them 20% more. A builder who can answer that has done this enough to have a mental model of the work. A builder who quotes a rate and won't estimate hours is telling you they don't know how long it takes.
And the honest corollary — sometimes you shouldn't hire anyone. If you need five pages, your budget is under $800, and you have a weekend: buy the Divi licence, import a layout pack, replace the content. It'll be a 7/10 site and it will be live. Paying someone $700 to rush a five-page build produces a worse outcome than doing it yourself unhurried, because at that budget nobody is doing the parts that matter — mobile testing, speed work, template structure. Hire when the site has to do something, not just exist.
Getting Better Value
Write requirements before asking for quotes. Specificity gets accurate numbers. Vagueness gets padded ones.
Have content ready. This is the single largest lever you control. Content delays cause more overruns than every technical problem combined.
Bundle the work. One engagement covering six pages costs meaningfully less than six engagements, because setup happens once.
Pay for the foundation. Presets, variables and Theme Builder templates feel like invisible work and they're what makes month eighteen cheap. A site built with everything styled inline costs more to change than to rebuild.
If you're hiring through a marketplace, the Upwork process has its own quirks worth reading before you post a job.
Straight Answers
Hourly rate? $15–30 entry, $30–60 experienced, $60–100+ senior.
Total site cost? $500–1,500 landing page, $1,500–4,000 for five pages, $3,000–8,000+ custom.
What's excluded from quotes? Hosting, Divi licence, plugin licences, photography, copywriting, maintenance.
Who buys the licence? You do, in your own name. Around $89/year or $249 lifetime.
Why do projects overrun? Content delays first, scope creep second.
How many revisions? Two to three, defined in writing.
The Last Word
The realistic range for a proper five-page Divi site in 2026 is $1,500 to $4,000, plus roughly $200–400 a year in licences and hosting. Anything far below that is buying someone's inexperience; anything far above should come with a scope document explaining why.
Ask for hours, not rates. Have your content ready. Own your own licence. Those three things affect the final number more than which freelancer you pick.
If you'd like a quote against your actual requirements rather than a range from a table, tell me what the site needs to do — including if the answer is that you should build it yourself and keep the money.
Related Reading
- How to Hire a Divi Developer on Upwork — vetting, job posts and the questions that filter fast
- Converting AI Designs to Divi 5 Layouts — a growing service line that changes project pricing
- Divi 5 Speed Optimization Tips — what "performance included" should actually mean in a quote