What an architecture studio website costs in 2026

An architecture studio website costs between $0 and about $15,000 to build. At the low end, a template plus a $10–25/month plan. At the top, an agency build. Photography and project writing sit outside that number — and matter more than the platform.

That is the whole budget for most studios. Here is what drives it — and where studios overspend.

What a studio site actually needs

Clients arrive with three questions. The site exists to answer them fast.

1. Is the work good? A work index that proves it, filtered by typology or year.
2. Can they do my project? Services, scale, and a project story that shows process.
3. How do I start? An inquiry that arrives with a brief — site, program, budget, timeline.

Everything else — press, awards, team — supports those three. Notice what is not on the list: a client login, a materials library, a shop. Those are phase-two conversations.

What drives the price

• Photography. The portfolio is the product. A full project shoot runs into four figures, and it recurs.
• Project writing. Process, constraints, decisions — the words that turn photos into credibility.
• CMS setup. Projects, materials, team, awards as structured content, not pages.
• Motion. Cinematic scroll and transitions, done well, are engineering. Done badly, they are a liability.
• Design and build. The biggest line, and the one templates remove.

The four routes

1. A template, published yourself

The Southward template is built for exactly this: seven page templates — home, work index, project detail, about, services, contact, and a 404 — with a Sanity CMS behind them. Projects, materials, team members, awards, and publications are structured content. It is $99 one-time, it is mine, and it deploys to Cloudflare Workers by default.

• Cost: $99 for the template, plus hosting (near-free on Cloudflare’s free tier).
• Time: a weekend to wire your content in — longer if you are writing project stories from scratch.

2. A template plus finishing help

You keep the template economics and hand over the parts that eat weekends: content migration, photo sequencing, copy editing, deployment. Freelancers commonly charge $1,000–$3,000 to finish a studio site. The template removes design and construction; you pay for the last stretch.

3. A freelancer build

Custom design on Framer or Webflow, from around $2,000–$3,000 for a small studio. Worth it when the studio’s brand genuinely needs a bespoke grid — and when the portfolio is already shot and written.

4. An agency build

Agency builds start around $4,800 for a homepage and run $15,000 for a full site; complex B2B builds land between $10,000 and $30,000. Worth it when the content operation is large. For a five-person studio with twelve projects, it is usually more than the job needs.

What the platforms cost

As of October 2026:

Platform	Plan	Price (yearly billing)	Notes
Framer	Free / Basic / Pro	$0 / $10 / $30 per month	Free publishes on a subdomain; Pro adds redirects
Webflow	Basic / Premium	$15 / $25 per month	Premium replaced the CMS plan in May 2026; domain extra
Astro + Sanity (Southward)	—	$99 one-time + hosting	Cloudflare Workers free tier covers most studios
Squarespace	Basic	From about $16 per month	Simplest route; lower design ceiling

Two notes worth knowing. Webflow’s CMS and Business site plans no longer exist — older guides still list them. And Framer’s free plan cannot connect a custom domain, so the real entry price is $10/month.

Where studios overspend

1. Custom motion before the portfolio is edited. Twelve great projects beat one animated page. Edit first.
2. An agency before the photography exists. Design amplifies images; it cannot replace them.
3. Rebuilding what a template covers. Work index, project detail, CMS, SEO — solved. Spend the budget on content.
4. A new site when the problem is the work. If the projects are thin, a rebuild changes nothing.
5. Paying twice. A “portfolio” on a directory is a listing. Your site is the practice.

How to decide in five minutes

1. Write down what the site must do — prove the work, explain services, start briefed inquiries.
2. If that is the list, start from Southward. It is the shortest route to a real site.
3. Budget for photography before design. The work is the argument.
4. Keep phase-two ideas — logins, libraries, shops — out of v1.

Still weighing platforms? Compare the builders or read the honest Framer review for studios. You can also browse all the studio templates. For the general version of this guide, see what a website costs in 2026.