A $99 automated report and a $2,500 manual accessibility audit both get called “a website audit.” They’re not the same product, and the price tells you why.
- “Website audit” isn’t one product. An accessibility audit, an SEO audit, and a full technical audit test completely different things, and mixing them up is how people end up paying for the wrong report.
- A real WCAG accessibility audit from a specialist runs roughly $1,500-$5,000 per DigitalA11Y’s published pricing guide, or breaks down to about $100-$250 per page under Accessible.org’s own pricing, with a typical site landing around $1,250-$2,750.
- SEO audits cluster lower for most small businesses. WebFX’s own client survey found 43% of businesses paid $101-$750 for one, though a full technical audit on a larger site runs well past that.
- Automated scanners are cheap or free and catch a minority of real accessibility issues. A scanner can tell you a site fails. Only a human with a keyboard and a screen reader can confirm it actually passes.
- The cheapest audit on the market is often the most expensive one long-term, because what it misses, a keyboard trap, a real ranking blocker, a security gap, is exactly what turns into a lawsuit, a lost customer, or a rebuild later.
- Last updated September 9, 2026.
What is a website audit, and why does the price depend on which one you’re buying?
“Get a website audit” sounds like ordering one thing. It isn’t. An accessibility audit tests whether disabled visitors can actually use your site. An SEO audit tests whether search engines can find, crawl, and rank it. A full technical audit covers both of those plus performance and security. Ask three vendors for “an audit” and you’ll get three different scopes at three different prices, because none of them are testing the same thing.
That mismatch is where most of the sticker shock, and most of the cheap-audit disappointment, comes from. A $99 automated report and a $2,500 manual accessibility audit aren’t competing offers. They’re different products wearing the same name.
Here’s what each type actually costs, why manual testing costs more than a scan, how to compare quotes that look nothing alike, and what a bargain-bin audit quietly leaves out.
What does an accessibility (WCAG) audit cost?
A real WCAG accessibility audit from a specialist firm typically runs $1,500 to $5,000, according to DigitalA11Y’s published pricing guide, with the exact number driven by site size and how deep the manual testing goes.
Per-page pricing tells a similar story from a different angle. Accessible.org’s own published rates run $100-$250 per primary page or screen, and $25-$100 for lighter pages, with most full-site audits landing around $1,250-$2,750 and a WCAG-edition VPAT report added on for $350 if you need one.
What you’re actually paying for is hours, not a report template. A trained tester navigates your site with a keyboard alone, then again with a screen reader like NVDA or VoiceOver, checking form labels, focus order, and heading structure against the WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria the way Ontario law actually requires. That’s slower than running a crawler, and it’s why the price sits well above most SEO audits.
For an Ontario business staring down the December 31, 2026 compliance deadline, a real audit isn’t optional homework. It’s the only way to know what you actually owe before you file anything.
What does an SEO audit cost?
Most small businesses pay far less for an SEO audit than for an accessibility audit. WebFX’s own client survey found 43% of businesses paid between $101 and $750 for one, though a full technical SEO audit on a larger, more complex site runs well beyond that range.
The spread is wide because “SEO audit” covers everything from a five-minute automated crawl to a genuinely deep technical review. A lot of agencies don’t even sell audits as a standalone product. They fold the audit into the first month of an ongoing retainer, which is part of why WebFX’s own comprehensive audit service starts at $8,600 a month rather than a flat one-time fee. A cheap or free automated SEO tool will check the basics, broken links, missing meta tags, crawlability, reliably. What it won’t do is make the judgment calls: which pages are actually worth ranking for, which redirects matter, where your content strategy has a real gap. That’s the part that costs more because it takes a human who understands your business, not just your sitemap.
What’s included in a full technical audit, and why does it cost more?
A full technical audit is the accessibility and SEO checks plus a look under the hood: Core Web Vitals and load-time performance, basic security posture, and code or template quality. It costs more because it’s genuinely three or four specialist skill sets bundled into one deliverable, not one person running one extra tool.
This is also why a full audit rarely gets sold on its own. On every real project here, whether it’s a migration or a redesign, the process starts the same way: audit the existing site, plugins, theme, database size, custom code, and where visitors are actually dropping off, before a single line of code changes. That’s step one of the migration process and step one of the redesign process alike, because you can’t price or plan a fix for a problem you haven’t actually confirmed exists.
If you’re only trying to answer one question right now, accessibility risk, or ranking drops, a narrower audit targeted at that question is usually the cheaper and faster path. A full technical audit earns its price when you’re about to commit real budget to a rebuild and need the whole picture before you do.
Why does an automated scan cost less than a manual audit, and what’s the difference?
An automated scan costs less because a script can check thousands of elements in seconds, while a manual audit costs more because a person has to actually try to use your site the way a real visitor would. Both have a place. They are not interchangeable, and pricing them as if they were is how businesses end up with a false sense of security.
Tools like Lighthouse, axe, and WAVE are a fast, genuinely useful first pass. They catch missing alt attributes, contrast failures, and some structural problems reliably. But the widely-held W3C/WAI position, backed by the practitioner-signed Overlay Fact Sheet, is that automated tools catch only a minority of real WCAG issues. Keyboard traps, confusing form errors, whether a screen reader user can actually complete a checkout: none of that shows up in an automated report. The FTC’s 2025 order against overlay vendor accessiBe, a $1,000,000 penalty for falsely claiming its automated widget could make any site WCAG-compliant, is the clearest public proof that “automated equals compliant” doesn’t hold up, covered in full in the overlay compliance breakdown.
The honest rule: a scanner can tell you a site is not compliant. It can never tell you a site is compliant. Only a human tester can do that.
Audit types compared: what’s included, and what a cheap version misses
Line the options up and the price differences stop looking arbitrary.
| Audit type | Typical cost | What’s included | What a cheap version misses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free automated scan | $0 | A crawl for broken links, missing alt text, obvious contrast failures, basic SEO issues | Keyboard traps, screen-reader experience, content strategy, and anything that needs human judgment |
| Accessibility (WCAG) audit | Roughly $1,500-$5,000, or ~$100-$250/page | Manual keyboard and screen-reader testing against WCAG 2.0 AA, a prioritized fix list | A scan-only version misses the manual pass entirely and can’t confirm real conformance |
| SEO audit | Roughly $101-$750 for most small businesses; more for a full technical pass | Crawlability, technical SEO, on-page checks, and (at the higher end) content and link strategy | A basic crawl misses strategic judgment calls: what’s actually worth ranking for, and why |
| Full technical audit | Highest of the four, scoped to the project | Accessibility, SEO, Core Web Vitals/performance, and security basics in one report | Nothing, if done properly, which is exactly why it costs the most |
Notice what’s consistent across every row. The cheap version always trades manual judgment for automation. Sometimes that trade is fine. Sometimes it’s the exact gap that gets a business sued or a redesign built on the wrong assumptions.
How do you compare audit quotes that all look completely different?
Ask the same five questions of every vendor, and the quotes suddenly become comparable even when the numbers on them aren’t close.
- What’s automated versus manual? If the answer is “fully automated,” you’re buying a scan, not an audit, no matter what the invoice calls it.
- What standard is it tested against? “Accessibility” isn’t a standard. WCAG 2.0 Level AA, specifically, is what Ontario law actually names. Anything vaguer is a red flag.
- What does the deliverable look like? A single pass/fail score tells you less than a prioritized list of specific fixes ranked by real user impact.
- Does it include a retest? An audit that ends at the report, with no way to confirm your fixes actually worked, is only half the job.
- Who’s actually doing the testing? “Our AI” or “our platform” is not the same answer as a named person or team with real testing hours behind the report.
A quote that answers all five clearly, even a more expensive one, is usually the better deal. A quote that dodges two or three of them is telling you something too.
Is a free website audit actually worth anything?
It depends entirely on whether “free” means purely automated, or automated plus a real human pass. A purely automated free scan is a fine starting point for the obvious stuff and nothing more. One that pairs the scan with an actual manual spot check is a legitimate first read on where your site stands.
The free scan here is an automated pass on your key pages, back to you as a plain-English punch list, no widget pitch attached. Run the free scan and you’ll know within days whether you’re looking at a quick fix or a real remediation project, before you pay anyone for a formal report.
That distinction matters most right now. With the December 31, 2026 AODA compliance-report deadline approaching for any Ontario business with 20 or more employees, a free scan is a reasonable way to find out where you actually stand before deciding whether you need a full paid audit at all.
Where do you go from here?
Match the audit to the question you’re actually trying to answer. Worried about AODA exposure or lawsuit risk? Start with a real WCAG accessibility audit, not a widget or a crawl. Traffic flat or dropping? An SEO-focused audit is the faster, cheaper path. Planning a rebuild or a migration and need the whole picture before committing budget? That’s when a full technical audit earns its price.
For the deeper walkthrough of what a real accessibility audit finds and fixes, see the website accessibility audit guide. For the legal side of why this matters in Ontario, the AODA website accessibility guide ties the whole picture together. Ready for the real thing instead of another scan? jbe.works Accessibility is built around exactly this: an honest audit first, code-level fixes second, no widget in the quote.
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