How much does a website accessibility audit cost?

Short answer: anywhere from $0 to several thousand dollars — because "audit" gets used for very different things. This page breaks down what each option actually includes, what it typically costs, and how to tell whether a price makes sense for a small business website.

Free automated scans: $0, and worth exactly that as a starting point

Free scanners check a page's code against rules that can be tested automatically. WAVE (from WebAIM) is free and checks one page at a time — useful, but its own documentation stresses that human judgment is still required. Our free mini-audit runs the industry-standard axe-core engine on your homepage in your browser and explains the findings in plain language.

The limit is real: Deque Systems estimates axe-core detects only about 58% of WCAG issues automatically. A scanner cannot tell whether your image descriptions are meaningful, whether your checkout works with a keyboard alone, or whether a screen-reader user can follow your page in a sensible order. A clean free scan is a good start — it is not evidence that a site is accessible, and no honest auditor will treat it as one.

DIY tools for your developer: from $49/user/month

If you have a developer, professional testing tools go further than free scanners. Deque's axe DevTools paid plans start at $49/user/month. Be clear about what you're buying: a developer tool that outputs raw issues in technical terms — not a business-ready, prioritised fix plan, and the manual testing still has to be done by someone.

Overlay widgets: from $490/year — but they are not audits

Overlay vendors charge subscription prices that can look like audit prices. accessiBe's accessWidget starts at $490/year, and UserWay's remediation services likewise start "from $490/year" (its widget itself is free). A widget is a layer of code added to your site; it does not audit your pages or fix most underlying barriers. The evidence is sobering: 69% of companies sued over website accessibility in the first half of 2025 were already using a widget or overlay (UsableNet), and in 2025 the FTC required accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive compliance claims. Paying $490/year for a widget is not a cheaper audit — it's a different product, one that leaves the underlying problems in place. Our overlay page covers the evidence in detail.

A manual audit by a specialist firm: roughly $1,250–$2,750 for a small site

The traditional option is a human auditor who combines automated scanning with manual testing — keyboard walk-throughs, screen-reader passes, zoom and reflow checks — across your key pages and templates. Published pricing guides put a manual audit of a small website at roughly $1,250–$2,750. Some providers don't publish prices at all (AudioEye is quote-based), and services-led firms typically sell the audit as the first step of an ongoing program, so the engagement grows from there. For a complex site — large e-commerce catalogues, booking systems, lots of interactive features — a thorough manual audit is often the right call, and it will cost more than the small-site range above.

What drives the price

• Site size and templates. Auditors price the number of distinct page types and flows, not raw page count. Ten product pages from one template are one job; ten different flows are ten.
• Interactive complexity. Checkout, booking, account dashboards, and multi-step forms need step-by-step manual testing, and that's where the hours go.
• Media. Video captions, audio transcripts, and PDF documents each add review work.
• Depth of manual testing. Automated-only is cheap; adding keyboard and screen-reader testing by a human is what makes an audit trustworthy — and what costs.
• What's included afterwards. A raw report is cheaper than a prioritised fix list your developer can execute, and re-testing after fixes adds cost again.

Where AccessFix fits: $149

Our full audit costs $149 — deliberately in the gap between "free one-page scan" and "four-figure agency engagement." It's cheaper for an honest reason: the whole-site crawl is automated-first, so the human time goes where it adds the most value — working through a manual-check list (keyboard navigation, focus visibility, form labels, image descriptions, key flows) and turning everything into a plain-language, prioritised fix list your own developer can execute. We don't pay specialists to hand-test every page, and we don't pretend the result is more than it is:

• It is not a full manual audit or a compliance certification, and no audit — ours or a $2,750 one — can guarantee compliance or protect you from a lawsuit.
• If your site is large or highly interactive, we will tell you a full manual audit is the better spend.
• Right now, founding customers can reserve the full audit for $49, payable only when the finished audit is delivered. Ongoing monitoring, if you want it afterwards, is $19/month.

Sources

• Published accessibility-audit pricing guides — manual audit of a small website, roughly $1,250–$2,750 typical.
• accessiBe pricing (accessibe.com/pricing) — accessWidget from $490/year. UserWay (userway.org) — widget free; remediation services from $490/year. AudioEye — quote-based, no public price.
• Deque Systems — axe DevTools paid plans from $49/user/month; axe-core automated detection estimate (~58% of WCAG issues detectable automatically).
• WAVE (wave.webaim.org) — free, one page at a time, human judgment required.
• UsableNet, H1 2025 ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report — 69% of sued companies were using a widget/overlay.
• US Federal Trade Commission, 2025 — order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive accessibility-compliance claims.