The difference between €1,200 and €12,000 isn't the margin: it's the hours. Hourly breakdown for a standard corporate website project, using verified rates.
Because it is not the same website: it is the same number of pages with a different number of hours inside. At current Spanish market rates, €1,200 buys between 20 and 40 hours; €12,000 buys around 200. The difference is not in the studio's margin, it is in research, content, accessibility, performance, and testing.
When you place two quotes side by side, both say the same thing: "corporate website, 8 pages, responsive, basic SEO." The price multiplies by ten and the document does not explain why. We explain it using the only unit that does not allow for embellishment: the hour.
This article publishes the hourly breakdown of a typical project, item by item. Not a vague percentage, not a price range. Hours.
The question is poorly phrased: it is not the same website
A website budget does not describe an object, it describes an amount of work. "Eight pages" is a container. Inside, it can fit 20 hours or 200.
The pages that rank for this search today repeat price ranges without saying how many hours are underneath. A public example: Raiola Networks places a corporate agency website between €1,500 and €3,500 (raiolanetworks.com, accessed 08-27-2026). At the same time, freelance rate tables in Spain place a mid-level developer between €30 and €50/hour and a senior UX designer between €70 and €95/hour (tarifaautonomo.com, 2026). Both things cannot be true at the same time for the same scope: €3,500 at €45/hour is 78 hours, and 78 hours is not enough to research, write, design, build, test, and deliver eight templates.
That contradiction is the article. No one names it because naming it forces you to choose: either lower the scope or raise the price. We choose to say it, not dodge it.
That data point is the floor, not the rate. €24.88 is what one hour of an employed person costs a Spanish company, before overheads, licenses, insurance, training, non-billable time, and profit. A studio billing at €24.88 per hour is not being cheap: it is closing down.
The hourly rates in this article were verified on 08-27-2026 against public Spanish market tables and the labor cost published by the INE for the first quarter of 2026. Freelance rate tables are sector aggregates without published methodology: use them as an order of magnitude, not as an official reference.
The hourly breakdown of a typical corporate website
The model: corporate website with 8 distinct templates (home, services, service detail, about us, cases, individual case, blog, contact), with a content management system, contact form, analytics, and cookie consent, in Spanish. No shop, no private area, no ERP integrations.
The following hours are a reasoned estimation by the studio, not a market average: they emerge from dividing the work into nameable tasks and assigning to each the time it consumes when done thoroughly. You can argue with every line, which is exactly what we want.
| Item | Hours | What it includes | What happens if cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening (interviews, audit) | 10 | 3 interviews, analytics and competitor review | You design to the manager's taste |
| Defining (scope, success criteria, architecture) | 8 | What winning means, content map, closed scope | Everything becomes an "extra" halfway through |
| Mapping (grid, wireframes, prototype) | 18 | Structure of the 8 templates and mobile | It is mocked up by eye and redone |
| UI Design and system | 38 | Typographic rhythm, color, components, states, error and empty | A template bought with your logo comes out |
| Content (writing and editing) | 20 | Texts for 8 pages, titles, meta descriptions | The client writes them at 11:00 PM the day before |
| Front-end (layout and responsive) | 42 | Components, adaptive, contained animation | It breaks on mobile and large screens |
| Back-end, CMS and integrations | 20 | Editable content model, forms, email | No one on your team can touch anything |
| Accessibility and performance | 12 | Contrast, focus, semantics, images, Core Web Vitals | You fail compliance and load slowly |
| QA on devices and browsers | 14 | Real testing, corrections, final review | Your client finds the bugs |
| Analytics, legal, deployment, and handover | 10 | Consent, legal notices, CI/CD, documentation | You are left without access and documentation |
| Project coordination | 14 | Meetings, minutes, decisions, changes | No one knows the status of anything |
| Total | 206 |
206 hours. At €60/hour—a reasonable rate for a small Spanish studio with senior profiles—it is €12,360 plus VAT. At €45/hour, €9,270. At €30/hour, €6,180, and there you are paying junior profiles for work that requires judgment.
| Item | Figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Design, grid and system | 56 | Mapping + UI Design |
| Construction (front and back) | 62 | Includes responsive and CMS |
| Content | 20 | Actual writing and editing |
| Research and definition | 18 | Listening + Defining |
| Quality (accessibility, performance, QA) | 26 | The first thing to get cut |
| Analytics, legal, deployment, handover | 10 | What lets you continue without us |
| Coordination | 14 | — |
— = data being measured; we will publish it once we have our own sample.
And here goes the line that no price table publishes: our measured breakdown, when we have a sufficient sample size, will go here and not in a headline.
What €1,200 really buys
€1,200 plus VAT, at €40/hour, is 30 hours. It is not little money: it is little time. And 30 hours is enough for one concrete and honest thing.
It is enough to install a purchased template, place the content you provide, adjust colors and fonts, publish, and test on two devices. It is legitimate work. It stops being legitimate when it is sold as if it included research, a design system, and accessibility.
That €1,200 bracket is market, not an Aura offer: our floor is €3,000 including VAT for a brand website.
The industry standard: The average Spanish studio budgets a price and then decides how much work fits inside. It adjusts the scope in silence: first the research disappears, then the content, finally the testing. The client discovers the cuts in production.
Our criteria: We agree on the scope in hours and items before signing, and the price comes from that. Fixed price per phase, agreed upon before starting. No surprise hours.
A €1,200 budget is not a scam. A €1,200 budget that promises the same as a €12,000 one certainly is.
Content: 20 hours that almost no one budgets
Writing eight pages with professional judgment takes between two and three full days. If the budget does not name the content, the work has not disappeared: it has been passed to you. And your time costs money too; it just does not show up on the invoice.
Accessibility: it is no longer optional in Spain
Law 11/2023 transposes the European Accessibility Act, and its obligations regarding digital products and services apply from June 28, 2025; the technical reference is the EN 301 549 standard, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 criteria at levels A and AA (tech4access.com, accessed 08-27-2026). Checking contrast, focus order, semantics, and text alternatives on eight templates is not ten minutes. It is hours, and they are in the table.
Performance: there are public thresholds, not opinions
Google publishes Core Web Vitals thresholds: LCP below 2.5s, INP below 200ms, and CLS below 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile of real users (web.dev/articles/vitals, accessed 08-27-2026). Meeting them requires deciding image weights, the number of fonts, and what to load and when. Those are professional decisions, not a checkbox in a plugin.
QA and handover: what separates a deliverable from a product
Testing on real devices, correcting, and re-testing is 14 hours in the model. The handover—code, source files, documentation, and access—is a few more. We deliver code, source files, and documentation so your team can continue without us.
Testing is not done by your client in production: we do it beforehand, on real devices.
VAT, which is not a detail
In Spain, web design and development services are taxed at the general rate of 21% (Law 37/1992 on VAT, art. 90). If you are a freelancer or a company with taxable activity, you deduct it and the relevant price is the base. If you are an association, an exempt clinic, or an individual, you do not deduct it: €12,000 is €14,520 in reality.
The sector advertises without VAT and the invoice arrives 21% higher; we publish the final number. No surprise hours and no surprise VAT. A budget that does not explicitly say "plus VAT" is not cheaper: it is more ambiguous.
How to compare the two budgets you have in front of you
- Ask for hours per item, not a global price: research, UX, UI, front, back, content, QA
- Check if the texts are written by the studio or by you
- Ask if EN 301 549 / WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility is within the scope or excluded
- Demand the committed performance threshold, measured in the field and not in a lab
- Confirm that the price explicitly states "plus VAT"
- Verify what is ceded in writing: code, source files, design, and documentation
- Ask who is the owner of the domain, the hosting, and the repository on launch day
- Ask for the number of support hours included after launch and their validity
How we work with this
| # | Phase | What we do | Deliverables |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Listening | We start by asking, not proposing. | Interviews · Audit · Agreed brief |
| 02 | Defining | We agree on what winning means before moving a pixel. | Objectives · Scope in hours · Success criteria |
| 03 | Mapping | Structure first, surface second. | Grid · Architecture · Prototype |
| 04 | Designing | A system, not a collection of screens. | Typographic rhythm · Components · States |
| 05 | Building | Code your team can read, not code that depends on us. | CI/CD · Accessibility · Performance |
| 06 | Launch and support | The launch is a checklist, not a leap of faith. | QA · Handover · 30 days of support |
Brand and website in 6-12 weeks, with a fixed price per phase agreed upon before starting. We accept a limited number of projects per year, which is why we can say no. If your budget and scope do not fit, we tell you on the first call, not in week six.
A low price does not buy the same work for less: it buys less work. Choose the scope first and the price will emerge on its own.
Do you want us to review the two budgets you have on your table together, item by item, in a 30-minute call at no cost?
Frequently asked questions
Is it normal for two website quotes to differ by €10,000?
Yes, when one includes research, content, accessibility, and testing and the other does not. What is not normal is that both documents describe the scope with the same four lines.
Can I ask an agency for the hourly breakdown?
You can and you should: it is the question that most quickly separates those who have calculated the project from those who have just set a price. If the answer is "we work by project, not by hours," then ask for the scope by items with named deliverables.
Are the 206 hours in the model Aura's?
No. They are a reasoned estimation, item by item, for an 8-template corporate website, published so you can debate it. Our measured breakdown will be published with n, dates, and method, or it will not be published.
If I pay €1,200, is my website illegal?
Not necessarily, but it is highly likely that it will not meet the accessibility criteria required as of June 28, 2025, nor the Core Web Vitals thresholds. With 30 hours, a website is published; with 30 hours, it is not audited.
How long does a 206-hour website take?
Between 6 and 12 weeks in our case, because calendar time is also determined by your responses and your validations. Hours can be concentrated; your team's decisions cannot.
Keep reading
- How much does a website cost in Spain in 2026: breakdown by items, with VAT and 3-year cost
- What can actually be done with €800, €1,500, and €3,000: what is sacrificed in each bracket
- How to audit a website budget: 14 signs you are being sold smoke
- Do website prices include VAT? How to read a quote as a freelancer or SME
- Why almost no Spanish agency publishes prices (and these are ours)
Transparency note. Some of our own data in this guide is still being measured on real projects, with a single method. We will publish it with its sample size and date range once the sample is large enough; until then, every figure you see carries its source and date of consultation.
Sources
- https://ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/ETCL1T26.htm — INE, Quarterly Labor Cost Survey, Q1 2026 (press release from 06-16-2026): labor cost of €24.88 per effective hour worked, +5.4% annually; cost per worker and month €3,278.01. Used as the cost floor for an hour in Spain.
- https://tarifaautonomo.com/blog/tarifa-hora-desarrollador-web-espana — rate/hour table for freelance web developers in Spain (junior €18-30, mid €30-50, senior €50-80, lead €80-130+), updated to 2026, no methodology published. Used as an order of magnitude and noted as such in the article.
- https://tarifaautonomo.com/blog/tarifa-hora-ux-designer-espana — rate/hour for UX designers in Spain (junior €25-40, mid €45-65, senior €70-95, lead €95-150+), aggregate from platforms and offers 2025-2026, no primary sources cited.
- https://raiolanetworks.com/blog/precio-pagina-web/ — public web price ranges in Spain (corporate agency €1,500-3,500), no hourly breakdown or sources. Used to document the contradiction between published price and market hourly rate.
- https://web.dev/articles/vitals — Google: Core Web Vitals thresholds (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1) measured at the 75th percentile of real users. Used in the performance section.
- https://tech4access.com/ley-112023/ — Law 11/2023 (BOE of 05-08-2023), transposition of the European Accessibility Act: obligations regarding digital products and services applicable from 06-28-2025, technical reference EN 301 549 with WCAG 2.1 A and AA. Used in the accessibility section.
- Law 37/1992 on VAT, art. 90 — general rate of 21% applicable to web design and development services. Used in the VAT section.
Want to see this thinking applied to a real project?