A Drupal to WordPress migration service costs roughly $8,000 to $40,000 in the US for a small or mid-size business site, going by one 2026 migration cost guide, and a UK specialist publishes starting prices from £4,000 for a simple company site or blog. Moving the content alone takes 4 to 8 weeks, and a full rebuild with a new design can run for several months. The biggest risk is SEO: Drupal and WordPress build their page addresses differently, so every old address needs a permanent redirect or your Google traffic drops.
I'm Mohit, a freelance WordPress and Next.js developer in Gurugram, India, and I work with clients in the US and the UK. This guide is written for the business owner who has to approve the budget, not for the developer who does the work. I'll explain each technical word in a line as it comes up.
How much does a Drupal to WordPress migration cost in the US and the UK?
Most small and mid-size business sites in the US land between $8,000 and $40,000, and UK specialist pricing starts at £4,000 and climbs with size and custom features. Enterprise sites with many content types and integrations are a different bracket: tens of thousands at the low end, six figures at the top.
There's no official price list for this work, so the honest way to show the market is to put published figures side by side. Each row below links to the page the number came from.
| Who it fits | Published price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US small to mid-size site (the guide's worked example, a 600-page university department site, comes to $22,000) | $8,000 to $40,000 | Project Cost Estimator |
| UK company website or blog, pre-made theme, contact form | From £4,000 | Another Coffee |
| UK large news or content site with custom functionality | From £6,995 | Another Coffee |
| UK online store content with custom content types | From £9,595 | Another Coffee |
| Full migration to WordPress by a US agency | Starts at $5,000, most projects $10,000 to $100,000 | cmsMinds |
| Enterprise Drupal site (many content types, integrations) | $50,000 to $200,000 | rtCamp |
Two things to notice. First, the UK figures are starting prices, and the company says so itself: they're examples, and a real quote depends on your site. Second, the spread inside each row is wide because "a Drupal site" can mean a 40-page brochure or a publishing archive with fifteen years of articles.
If you're in the UK and comparing a migration against a full redesign, one UK agency puts a migration with no redesign in the region of £8,000 to £18,000, against £10,000 to £80,000 for a typical UK website redesign. That page is about a different platform, so treat it as a sense-check on agency pricing, not a Drupal quote. I've covered the redesign side separately in how much a website redesign costs in the UK.
Multidots, an agency that does this work, is blunter about the floor: a Drupal to WordPress migration usually costs at least a few thousand dollars. If someone quotes you a few hundred, they're selling a content import, not a working website.
What moves the Drupal to WordPress migration cost up or down?
Four things decide most of the bill: how many kinds of content you have, how many custom features need rebuilding, a redesign done at the same time, and how carefully the SEO work is done. Page count matters less than people expect.
Here's each one in plain terms.
Content types. In Drupal, a "content type" is a template for a kind of page: a news article, a staff profile, an event, a product. Each one has its own set of fields (date, location, author, price). In WordPress these become "custom post types" with custom fields, usually built with a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields. A site with two content types is a short job. A site with twelve, all linked to each other, is where the weeks go. Project Cost Estimator says the same thing from the pricing side: Drupal's content model maps awkwardly to WordPress, and replacing features module by module is the slow part.
A real example of this structure work is Orilite, a website I built in 2023 for an AAC block and mortar brand from the client's Figma design. It was not a Drupal move, but the content job was the same kind: I wrote custom PHP templates and used Advanced Custom Fields for the product and marketing content. The client reported 40 percent less time on content updates afterwards.
Custom modules and integrations. A module is Drupal's word for an add-on. If your site has a member login, a CRM connection, a booking flow or a search that filters by five things, each of those has to be rebuilt or replaced with a WordPress plugin. rtCamp names content volume, custom types and Views, and integration complexity as its main cost drivers.
Design. Keeping your current look and rebuilding it in WordPress costs less than a fresh design. Most owners redesign anyway, because the Drupal site is usually several years old. That's a fair choice, but be clear with yourself that you're then paying for two projects in one.
SEO care. One Drupal to WordPress specialist says the SEO work adds 30 to 40% to the core development estimate. The cost guide above prices the pieces separately: $500 to $8,000 for the URL mapping spreadsheet and $400 to $5,000 for setting up the redirects. This is the line owners are most tempted to cut, and the one that hurts most when it's cut.
A rough split of where the money goes, from cmsMinds: planning and the pre-migration audit take 10 to 20% of the total, moving the content takes 20 to 30%, quality checks 10 to 15%, and redirects and go-live 5 to 10% each. If a quote has no line for planning or checking, ask where those went.
Why are businesses leaving Drupal in 2026?
Mostly because Drupal keeps forcing expensive upgrades, and WordPress developers are far easier to find. The timing is sharp right now: Drupal 10 reaches end of life in December 2026.
"End of life" means the people who make Drupal stop releasing security fixes for that version. Your site keeps running, but new security holes stay open. Drupal 7, which a lot of older business sites were built on, reached end of life on January 5, 2025. So if you're on Drupal 7 today, you've already been without official security updates for well over a year, and if you're on Drupal 10, your deadline is close.
Moving between major Drupal versions has often been a rebuild in its own right. That's the moment many owners ask the obvious question: if I'm paying for a rebuild anyway, should I rebuild on something cheaper to run?
The second reason is people. W3Techs, which tracks what websites are built on, shows WordPress on 39.2% of all websites and Drupal on 0.6% as of November 2026. You don't need to care about market share for its own sake. What it means for you is practical: there are many more WordPress developers, agencies, plugins and hosts to choose from, so you're less likely to be stuck with one supplier and whatever they charge.
The third reason is your own team. Drupal's editing screens are powerful but not friendly. Marketing staff often wait on a developer for changes they could make themselves in WordPress.
Should you migrate Drupal to WordPress or stay on Drupal?
Migrate if your site is mainly pages, articles, forms and a blog, and your team wants to edit it without a developer. Stay on Drupal if your site is closer to a custom application with complicated permissions, many languages or dozens of linked sites.
I build on WordPress, so you'd expect me to say "always move". I don't think that. Drupal is very good at a few things, and moving away from them costs real money.
| Your situation | Better choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing site, blog, landing pages, lead forms | WordPress | Easier editing, more developers, cheaper upkeep |
| Drupal 7 site with no security updates | WordPress or a current Drupal | Either way you're rebuilding, so compare both quotes |
| Publisher with a large article archive | WordPress | Publishing is what WordPress was made for |
| Many sites sharing one system, or five or more languages | Probably Drupal | Webstacks says organisations with five or more languages should check that WordPress's plugin-based translation can match what Drupal has built in |
| Complex user roles, workflows and approvals | Probably Drupal | Rebuilding these in WordPress can cost more than upgrading |
A quick test: write down the three things your staff do on the site every week. If all three are "publish a page", "update some text" and "check the form enquiries", WordPress will suit you. If one of them is "approve a document through four departments", get a second opinion before you move.
One more honest point. Webstacks argues that the real gains from WordPress are your marketing team's independence and access to talent, not automatic savings. I agree with that. Don't migrate because someone promised your costs will halve.
What moves across automatically when you migrate Drupal to WordPress, and what gets rebuilt?
Your text, images, categories, users and comments can be moved by a script. Your design, your page layouts, your forms and anything that lists or filters content have to be rebuilt by hand.
That gap is the most common surprise in these projects. Owners hear "migration" and picture a copy and paste. It's closer to moving house into a building with different-shaped rooms: the furniture comes with you, but someone has to decide where each piece goes.
| Part of your Drupal site | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Articles and basic pages | Moved by a script or plugin |
| Images and file attachments | Moved, then checked for missing files |
| Categories and tags (Drupal calls these taxonomies) | Moved, sometimes merged or tidied |
| Custom content types and fields | Moved after the matching structure is built in WordPress |
| Users and comments | Moved; users may need to reset passwords, depending on the method |
| Theme and design | Rebuilt. A Drupal theme can't run on WordPress |
| Views (Drupal's tool for lists such as "latest news" or "events this month") | Rebuilt as WordPress templates |
| Paragraphs (Drupal's flexible page sections) | Usually need custom handling |
| Webforms | Rebuilt in a WordPress form plugin, with the email and CRM connections set up again |
| Page titles and meta descriptions | Moved with an add-on or a script |
| Page addresses (URLs) | Recreated to match, or redirected |
Paragraphs deserve a warning of their own. One agency that documented its own migration found that some imported pages appeared blank because the tool didn't support paragraph-based content. If your Drupal editors build pages from stacked sections, ask your developer how those will be handled before any price is agreed.
Can a plugin migrate Drupal to WordPress for you?
A plugin can move your content, but it can't give you a finished website. The best-known one is FG Drupal to WordPress, and its premium version costs €49.99.
According to the developer's own page, the free version moves articles, basic pages, categories, tags and images. It doesn't move users, comments, custom content types, custom fields, menus or attachments, and it doesn't redirect your old Drupal addresses. The premium version adds those, supports Drupal 4 through 11, and redirects Drupal URLs to the matching WordPress URLs. Page titles and meta descriptions need a separate add-on.
So is €49.99 the real cost of a migration? Only if your site is a simple blog and you're comfortable doing the rest yourself. The plugin doesn't design anything. It doesn't rebuild your forms, your listings or your homepage. The agency I mentioned above found the free version failed on custom content, menus and metadata, and that some URL structures were changed incorrectly.
My view: the plugin is a good tool in a developer's hands and a risky one as the whole plan. Most paid migrations use it, or a custom script, for the content step, then spend the real time on everything around it.
A content import is not a migration
If a quote only covers moving posts and pages into WordPress, you still need design, forms, redirects and testing. Ask for those to be listed and priced.
How long does a Drupal to WordPress migration take?
A simple brochure site can move in days, a content-heavy site takes 6 to 14 weeks, and a full rebuild with new design and custom features takes several months. Add a few weeks after launch for search rankings to settle.
Published timelines vary a lot, because the projects do:
| Type of project | Published timeline | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 50-page brochure site | 2 to 3 days | Gautam Khorana |
| Discovery and planning only | 1 to 3 weeks | Another Coffee |
| Content migration only | 4 to 8 weeks | Another Coffee |
| 5,000-page news archive with custom content types | 6 to 10 weeks | Gautam Khorana |
| 600-page university department site (worked example) | 14 weeks | Project Cost Estimator |
| Enterprise Drupal site | 2 to 4 months | rtCamp |
| Full rebuild with new design and all features | 6 to 12 months | Another Coffee |
Whatever you're told, leave room. Project Cost Estimator says migration timelines are routinely underestimated by 40 to 80%, and that search rankings need another 4 to 12 weeks to stabilise after launch. In my experience of website rebuilds generally, the delays rarely come from the code. They come from waiting on content decisions: which old pages to keep, who signs off the new homepage, where the logins for the old server are.
A sensible project runs in this order:
- 1
Audit
List every content type, form, integration and page address on the Drupal site, and record current traffic and rankings.
- 2
Plan
Decide what to keep, merge or delete, and map every old address to its new one.
- 3
Build
Set up WordPress, the design, the content structure and the forms on a private test site.
- 4
Move content
Run the migration, then compare counts: the same number of articles, images and users on both sides.
- 5
Test
Check redirects, forms, tracking and page speed, and let your team try the editing screens.
- 6
Launch and watch
Go live midweek, then watch Google Search Console and fix errors for the first month.
What are the Drupal to WordPress SEO risks?
The main Drupal to WordPress SEO risk is losing rankings because old page addresses stop working. Smaller risks are lost page titles and descriptions, missing pages, and a new site that accidentally tells Google not to index it.
Google itself says to expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during a move. A small wobble is normal. A collapse isn't, and it's nearly always self-inflicted. One specialist describes a client whose organic traffic dropped 67% by the Monday after a Friday launch because no redirects were in place.
Here's why Drupal makes this harder than, say, moving between two WordPress hosts.
Drupal's addresses don't match WordPress defaults. Drupal sites often use paths like /content/our-services/web-design, built by an add-on called Pathauto. WordPress would naturally call that page something shorter. Unless the new site copies the old addresses exactly, or redirects them, every link from Google and from other websites lands on an error page.
Hidden duplicate addresses. Drupal gives every page a numbered address such as /node/1234 as well as its friendly one. Some of those numbered URLs are exposed to Google even on well-run sites, and they need redirects too.
Category pages that rank. Drupal's taxonomy pages (for example /topic/pricing) can bring in search visits on their own. They're easy to forget because nobody thinks of them as "pages".
Old redirects stacked on older redirects. A Drupal site that's been running for years usually has a pile of existing redirects. Add a new layer on top and you get chains: A goes to B, B goes to C. Google advises redirecting to the final destination directly.
Titles and descriptions left behind. The text that shows in Google results is stored by a separate Drupal module. With the FG plugin it needs its own add-on, so it's often missed.
The "discourage search engines" tick box. WordPress has a setting that hides a site from Google while it's being built. If it's still ticked at launch, your pages start dropping out of the results.
How do you protect SEO when you migrate Drupal to WordPress?
Keep the same addresses wherever you can, redirect every address that changes with a permanent (301) redirect, carry over titles and descriptions, and watch Google Search Console closely for a month after launch.
A 301 redirect is a forwarding instruction: when someone asks for the old address, the server sends them to the new one and tells Google the move is permanent. Google confirms that 301 and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank, which is its measure of a page's authority.
The checklist I'd want to see on any Drupal to WordPress project:
- Crawl the old site before anything else. A crawl is a tool visiting every page and listing its address, title and description. This list is your inventory.
- Pull the pages that earn traffic. Export the last 16 months of clicks from Google Search Console, so seasonal pages aren't missed. That 16-month window is what one specialist recommends.
- Build the redirect map. A spreadsheet with two columns: old address, new address. Every old address gets a row, including
/node/addresses and category pages. - Don't send everything to the homepage. Google warns against redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant destination such as the home page. Each old page should go to its closest match.
- Carry over titles, descriptions and image alt text. Then spot-check a sample by hand.
- Put the redirects in the right place. A redirect plugin is fine for sites with under roughly 1,000 redirects. Bigger lists belong in the server settings, where they run faster.
- Launch midweek. The same specialist's rule is Tuesday or Wednesday, never a Friday, so someone is at their desk when problems show up.
- Check indexing at 30 days. A useful target is at least 80% of main content pages indexed a month after launch.
- Keep the redirects. Google says to keep them for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year. I'd leave them permanently. They cost nothing to keep.
Done properly, rankings typically stabilise within 6 to 12 weeks. Google's own estimate is that a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move.
If you're changing your domain name at the same time, that's a second risk stacked on the first. I'd separate the two if you can. I've written about that in how to change your domain without losing SEO.
What does a Drupal to WordPress migration service include?
A proper Drupal to WordPress migration service includes an audit, a content plan, the WordPress build, the content move, a redirect map, testing, launch and a period of support afterwards. If a quote lists only "migration" as one line, it isn't detailed enough to compare.
Ask for the quote to be broken into these parts:
- Audit and plan. A written list of content types, features, integrations and page addresses, plus what will be kept, merged or dropped.
- Design. Either your current design rebuilt, or a new one. State which.
- WordPress build. Theme, content structure, forms, search, and any integrations with your CRM, email tool or payment system.
- Content migration. Which content moves, how it's checked, and who fixes formatting problems.
- SEO. Redirect map, titles and descriptions, sitemap, Google Search Console and analytics setup.
- Testing. On phones as well as desktops, and with your staff trying the editor.
- Launch. Who switches the domain over, at what time, and what the rollback plan is if something breaks.
- Aftercare. How long fixes are free after launch. For comparison, one large agency includes 30 days of post-launch support as standard.
- Training. A short recorded walkthrough for your editors.
Also ask what happens to the old Drupal site. Keep it online at a private address for a few months. You'll want to look things up.
What are the risks of running WordPress after Drupal?
The main new risk is plugins. WordPress is easy to extend, and that's also how most WordPress sites get into trouble.
Webstacks notes that 96% of WordPress vulnerabilities come from third-party plugins, not from WordPress itself. The lesson isn't "avoid WordPress". It's "install fewer plugins, pick maintained ones, and keep them updated". A Drupal site that needed twenty modules doesn't need thirty WordPress plugins to replace them. A good build uses a small set and writes a little custom code where a plugin would be overkill.
The other risks are ordinary ones:
- Speed. A heavy theme or page builder can make the new site slower than the old one. Ask for page speed to be measured before and after.
- Lost features. Something small that staff relied on (an export button, an approval email) gets forgotten. The audit is where you catch these.
- Content freeze. Multidots warns of a period when you can't use the new site yet and can't add content to the old one, which can range from a few days to a handful of weeks. Agree the length of that freeze in advance. The switch-over itself, done from a test site, should take minutes.
- Upkeep. WordPress needs regular updates and backups. Budget a small monthly amount for maintenance, or agree who on your team does it.
What should you ask before you hire someone to migrate Drupal to WordPress?
Ask to see their redirect plan, how they'll handle your custom content types, and what's covered after launch. The answers tell you more than the price does.
Questions worth asking on the first call:
- Which Drupal version am I on, and does that change your approach?
- How will you move my content: a plugin, a custom script, or by hand?
- How will each of my content types be built in WordPress?
- What happens to Views, Paragraphs and my forms?
- Will my page addresses stay the same? If not, who builds the redirect map, and is every address on it?
- How will you prove nothing was lost? (You want counts compared on both sides.)
- Will I see the site on a test address before launch?
- Which plugins will the finished site depend on, and what do they cost each year?
- Who owns the hosting, the domain and the logins at the end?
- What's fixed for free after launch, and for how long?
And the red flags:
- A fixed price given before anyone has looked inside your Drupal admin.
- "The plugin handles everything."
- No mention of redirects, or redirects described as "we'll point old pages to the homepage".
- A launch planned for a Friday afternoon.
- No test site.
- A quote with one line and one number.
- Promises of zero ranking movement. Even Google says some fluctuation is normal.
The cheapest quote often leaves out the SEO work and the testing. Compare what's included, line by line, before you compare totals.
How can I help with a Drupal to WordPress migration?
I build and rebuild business websites on WordPress, and I do the technical SEO work that keeps rankings through a move. That's the part of a Drupal to WordPress project I'd take on myself: the WordPress build, the content structure, the redirects and the launch.
I'd like to be straight about my experience. The rebuilds shown on my site are moves from other platforms into WordPress, not from Drupal specifically. For the Institute of Indian Interior Designers I turned a static magazine into a WordPress publication site with custom article types, which is the same content-modelling job a Drupal migration needs. For a London agency I rebuilt their Framer site on WordPress with service templates, a blog and tracking. The method is the same one in this guide: audit, plan, build on a test site, move the content, redirect, test, launch.
What I do day to day that applies here:
- WordPress builds on Bricks, Elementor or a custom theme, from your current design or a new Figma file, set up so your team can edit pages without a developer.
- Custom post types and fields with Advanced Custom Fields, which is how Drupal content types are recreated.
- Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals: redirects, sitemaps, schema, Google Search Console and page speed.
- Hosting moves, DNS and monthly maintenance, so the switch-over has no downtime and the site stays updated afterwards.
If your Drupal site is a very large or heavily customised system, I'll tell you if I think a specialist Drupal migration team, or staying on Drupal, is the better call. I work from Gurugram with US and UK clients, and you deal with me directly throughout.
What's the next step?
Find out which Drupal version you're on, then make a one-page list: your content types, your forms, the tools your site connects to, and your ten most visited pages. That list is what any developer needs to give you a real quote instead of a guess. If you'd like help shaping it, my free Project Scope Generator turns a short description into a structured scope you can send to anyone quoting.
Then get in touch with the list and your Drupal site's address. I'll look at the site, tell you what will move cleanly and what needs rebuilding, and send you a written scope with a timeline.
