WordPress Cost Calculator

Hosting, plugins, your hours, and retainers in one annual number, next to what the same site costs elsewhere.

WordPress the software costs nothing. The site does. At Layer3Labs, we run our own sites on static stacks and migrate client sites off WordPress, so these are the lines we add up first. This calculator puts the four lines most owners never add together on one page, using the hosting prices each vendor publishes and the numbers only you know: how many paid plugins you run and how many hours a month someone spends keeping the thing upright.

Calculate What Your WordPress Site Costs per Year

How We Calculate Your Numbers

  1. Hosting: the monthly plan price multiplied by 12. The dropdown carries the September 2026 list price from each vendor's pricing page; pick “something else” to enter your own.
  2. Plugins and themes: the count of paid plugins multiplied by the average yearly price you enter. We do not guess an average because plugin pricing ranges from free to a few hundred dollars a year each.
  3. People: hours per month multiplied by the hourly cost you enter, multiplied by 12. This is usually the largest line and the one owners most often leave out.
  4. Retainer: a monthly developer or agency fee multiplied by 12, if you have one.
  5. Alternatives: the platform fee per year for Squarespace Core, Webflow Premium, Framer Pro, and Ghost(Pro) Publisher as listed on their pricing pages in September 2026, plus a static-site row using the hosting figure you enter.

What Each Line Costs

Hosting is the line people quote and the line that matters least. Hostinger's Premium plan is $2.99 a month on a 48-month term and $10.99 a month when it renews. WP Engine's Essential plan starts at $28 a month. Kinsta's single-site plan is $30 a month billed annually. Those are real differences, but they are dwarfed by the hours a site consumes once it carries a dozen plugins that each need updating and occasionally break each other.

The security line is not hypothetical. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 91 percent of them in plugins, and 46 percent were not fixed in time for public disclosure. Every paid plugin in your count is also an update someone has to run.

For the full breakdown, including three worked profiles and what the same site costs on each alternative, read How Much Does WordPress Really Cost?.

What to Do with the Number

If your WordPress total is close to a platform fee, stay: the software is fine and a move buys you nothing but a project. If your people line is most of the bill, the cheaper platform is the one that stops consuming hours. Hosted builders remove patching. A static site with content in Git removes the admin panel entirely and lets an AI agent handle routine edits. The WordPress alternatives hub lists the options by situation, and the migration service page explains what moving involves.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • The software is free and open source. Hosting, paid plugins and themes, and the hours someone spends keeping it patched are not. This calculator adds those lines up so the "free" label stops hiding the bill.
  • From each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026: Hostinger Premium renews at $10.99 a month after its intro term, WordPress.com Business is $25 a month billed annually, WP Engine Essential starts at $28 a month, and Kinsta's Single 35k plan is $30 a month billed annually. Prices change, so check the Hostinger, WordPress.com, WP Engine, and Kinsta pricing pages before you decide.
  • Because any number we put there would be invented. Plugin prices vary from free to a few hundred dollars a year each, and maintenance hours depend on how many plugins you run and how often something breaks. Enter what your site actually costs you.
  • No. The alternatives table compares platform fees only. A migration or rebuild is scoped per site; read the <a href="/guides/wordpress-migration-service">WordPress migration service page</a> for what that involves and what is preserved.
  • A site built with a static framework such as Astro, with content stored as files in a Git repository and edited through a Git-based CMS. There is no PHP admin to patch and hosting is usually cheap or free, which is why we let you enter your own figure rather than assume one.

Want a Second Opinion on the Number?

We audit the plugins, hours, and hosting behind your WordPress bill and tell you whether staying, simplifying, or moving is the cheaper path for your site.

Book a Consultation