How Much Does an Accessibility Audit Cost?

"How much will an accessibility audit cost?" is one of the first questions teams ask when the EU Accessibility Act or an ADA letter lands on their desk — and the honest answer is "it depends," because an "audit" can mean anything from a five-minute automated scan to a multi-week expert review with assistive-technology testing. This guide breaks down what actually drives the price so you can choose the right level for your situation. (General information, not legal or financial advice — figures vary by provider, region, and scope.)

What drives the cost

Scope. One landing page is cheap; a 200-page site, or a web app with many dynamic states, is not. Most of the cost scales with the number of distinct templates and flows that need checking, not raw page count.
Method. Automated testing is fast and inexpensive but only catches part of WCAG. Manual expert review and screen-reader/keyboard testing are where the real time — and cost — goes.
Who does it. A specialist accessibility agency or certified consultant costs far more per hour than doing a first pass in-house with a tool.
Deliverable. A raw list of issues is cheaper than a formal, client- or regulator-ready report (or a VPAT) with severity ranking and remediation guidance.
One-off vs ongoing. A single audit is a fixed cost; sites change, so many teams budget for re-checks, which adds up over time.
Remediation. Finding issues is only half the job — fixing them is often the larger expense, whether you do it in-house or pay the auditor to.

The three common options

1. Automated tools & browser extensions — lowest cost

Scanners (axe, WAVE, Lighthouse, WCAGwise) are free or low-cost and return results in seconds. They reliably catch a meaningful slice of WCAG issues — missing alt text, low contrast, missing form labels, structural problems. The catch: automated testing cannot detect everything (it can't judge whether alt text is meaningful, or whether a keyboard journey makes sense), so a clean scan is not the same as "compliant." See how the checkers compare and what scans catch vs miss.

2. Professional manual audit — highest cost

A specialist manually reviews your site, tests with screen readers and keyboard, and writes up findings against WCAG. This is the most thorough option and the most expensive — typically the largest line item in an accessibility budget, billed as a professional-services engagement. It's the right choice for high-risk sites, legal exposure, or when you need an independent, defensible report.

3. DIY-with-a-tool first, then targeted manual — the middle path

The cost-effective route for most teams: run an automated scan to clear the mechanical issues cheaply, fix what it finds, then spend manual-testing budget only on what automation can't cover. You walk into any paid audit with the easy problems already solved, so the expensive expert hours go to the hard parts — not to flagging missing alt text you could have caught for free.

How to keep the cost down

Scan and fix the obvious issues yourself first — every issue you remediate before a paid audit is expert time you don't pay for.
Prioritise by risk and traffic: audit your highest-traffic templates and key flows (home, sign-up, checkout) before the long tail.
Build accessibility into development so audits become confirmation, not rescue — see how to run an audit.
Document as you go (an accessibility statement) so you're not paying someone to reconstruct it later.

Where WCAGwise fits

WCAGwise is the inexpensive first pass: Scan your site free free to find the WCAG 2.2 AA issues and exactly where they are in your code, and Pro turns a whole-site scan into a branded, client-ready compliance report (with an accessibility statement) for a small one-time price — a fraction of a manual agency audit. It won't replace expert manual testing for high-stakes compliance, and we're honest about that: it's an audit aid, not a legal guarantee. But it's the cheapest way to find and fix most issues — and to decide whether you even need to pay for more.

How much does an accessibility audit cost?