UK firms that outsource web development to India typically pay £15–£50 an hour, against £50–£150 an hour for an onshore UK or Western European team, according to Wise. The gap is real. The hourly rate isn't the whole bill, though. Payment fees, rework and the hours your own team spends managing the work decide how much you actually save.
I'm Mohit Goyal, a web developer in Gurugram, India. Between March and October 2025 I built nine websites for Aura Clips, a London agency that works with UK hospitality and e-commerce brands. So this post covers the market numbers, the costs the hourly rate hides, and what the UK–India time difference looks like from my side of it.
£15–£50/hr
Typical offshore rate, India (Wise)
£50–£150/hr
Typical onshore UK rate (Wise)
4.5 / 5.5 hrs
India ahead of UK, summer / winter
9
Sites I built for one London agency in 2025
What do UK firms pay to outsource web development to India?
According to Wise, UK firms typically pay £15–£50 an hour for an offshore developer in India, £25–£70 an hour for Eastern Europe and £50–£150 an hour for an onshore UK team. These are published market ranges, not my rates. Each source measures something a bit different, so treat them as a guide, not a quote.
| Option | Typical rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK or Western European team (onshore) | £50–£150 per hour | Wise |
| UK freelance web developer (one agency's estimate) | £30–£80 per hour, £250–£600 per day | Osdire |
| Eastern Europe (nearshore) | £25–£70 per hour | Wise |
| India or Southeast Asia (offshore) | £15–£50 per hour | Wise |
| Offshore junior developer | £12–£25 per hour | Wise |
| Web developers on Upwork (all countries) | $15–$50 per hour (about £12–£40), median $30 | Upwork |
Why is the India range so wide? Because it covers very different work. A GoodFirms survey puts the bottom end at $10–$15 an hour. At that price you're usually getting template sites built by juniors, often inside a bigger agency. Higher up you find senior developers who build from Figma, set up Stripe, connect HubSpot and write custom WordPress plugins, without a UK project manager translating every request for them.
What does that mean for an actual project budget?
Take a 60-hour build. That's roughly £900–£3,000 from a developer in India, £1,800–£4,800 from a UK freelancer and £3,000–£9,000 from an onshore UK team. A rate means nothing until you multiply it by hours, so here's the sum (an illustration, not a quote):
| Who builds it | Rate range | 60-hour build |
|---|---|---|
| Offshore developer in India | £15–£50/hr | £900–£3,000 |
| UK freelancer | £30–£80/hr | £1,800–£4,800 |
| Onshore UK team | £50–£150/hr | £3,000–£9,000 |
In practice two things bend this maths. A cheap developer who takes twice the hours, or needs a round of rework, ends up costing what a pricier one would have. Wise says the same: senior people can lower the total by cutting rework. And hours swing a lot with scope. A five-page brochure site is not the same job as a WooCommerce store with delivery rules. If you want full UK project prices by type of site, I've broken down what a WordPress website costs in the UK.
What hidden costs eat into the saving?
The big ones are payment fees, scope creep, your own team's time and slow feedback. Scope changes alone can push real costs 30–50% over the original quote, according to Wisemonk.
- Payment fees. Wise says traditional UK banks typically add a 2–6% exchange markup plus a £20–£60 transfer fee on overseas payments. Spread over several milestone payments, that's not small change.
- Scope creep. Wisemonk estimates real costs run 30–50% above the original quote once changes and integrations pile up. Fixed-price quotes often carry a risk buffer already, and anything outside the agreed scope is billed on top.
- Your own time. Someone on your side has to onboard the developer, answer questions and review work. Wise names onboarding, QA rework and communication overhead as the main hidden costs.
- Slow feedback loops. Fewer shared working hours don't change the rate. But a question that sits unanswered for a day pushes the deadline back a day.
Most of this is easy to fix. Get the quote in GBP. Pay through a low-fee transfer service. Write the scope down before anyone starts (my free Project Scope Generator turns a two-line idea into a structured scope). Keep feedback in one place.
How does the work run across the UK–India time difference?
India is 4.5 hours ahead of the UK in summer and 5.5 hours ahead in winter. India runs on IST (UTC+5:30, no daylight saving), so my afternoon in Gurugram lines up with your morning and my evening lines up with your afternoon. Most changes you send in your afternoon can be done before you're back at your desk.
I think the difference is an advantage, if you use it. You look at a staging link after lunch and send one list of changes. I work through it while your office is closed, and the updated build is there when you log in the next morning.
The clearest example from the Aura Clips work is the Raasa Restaurant landing page, a coming-soon site for an Indian restaurant in Locksbottom. I built it overnight on WordPress and Elementor and put it live. Getting that from a team in your own time zone usually means paying them to work nights.
Where it falls apart is drip-fed feedback: three people, spread across WhatsApp, email and design comments. Each unclear message costs a full day, because I can't get an answer until we overlap again.
What did nine sites for a London agency show about the process?
Four things moved cost and pace more than anything else: how complete the Figma file was, how early I got into client accounts, when DNS changes happened, and having one point of contact. The nine sites were Ravens Ait, Whitfield Service Station, Wow Vastra, Crowne Plaza London Kingston, Samko Holdings, Warren House, Raasa, Cyprianis and the agency's own site. I've covered the agency relationship itself in white-label WordPress for UK agencies, so I'll stick to cost and pace here.
Figma handoff decides how many questions come back
Several of these builds started from a design. Cyprianis, for example, got a new homepage, an events listing and a private dining template, all built from Figma. If a design file has mobile frames, real copy and the states for menus and forms already drawn, I barely need to ask anything, and the time difference stops mattering. If it doesn't, every gap turns into a question that waits for the next overlap. That's why I build WordPress sites on Bricks, Elementor and Oxygen from finished Figma files.
Stripe and HubSpot need your accounts, not mine
The Ravens Ait venue site has 20+ event pages with Stripe bookings and HubSpot forms. The Crowne Plaza London Kingston site links rooms to IHG booking, with meeting enquiry forms and promo popups. Integrations like these are where offshore projects tend to stall. The developer's ready to go, and nobody has given them access to the payment or CRM account.
I'd say this whoever you hire. Set up Stripe, HubSpot, GA4 and hosting in your company's name and add the developer as a user on day one. Your payments and leads stay yours, and nobody loses a day waiting for a login.
Hosting and DNS changes suit UK quiet hours
I also handled hosting and DNS migrations across Hostinger and GoDaddy for these clients. DNS cutovers are safest when traffic is low, and the early UK morning, before anyone's browsing, is late morning in India. Book the cutover a few days ahead so the DNS TTL can be lowered first and the switch spreads quickly.
One point of contact removes a step from every message
The agency dealt with me directly, the person writing the code. That included custom plugins like the delivery radius checker and PrintNode receipt printing for Whitfield Service Station. With a bigger offshore agency, your message often goes to an account manager, then a developer, and the answer comes back the same way. Over a five-hour gap, every extra handoff can cost you a day.
Freelancer, agency or dedicated team: which model fits?
If you need a website rather than a software product, my view is that a fixed-price build with a senior freelancer, then a small monthly retainer, gives you the most predictable costs. Bigger builds that need several people suit an offshore agency. Long-running products suit a dedicated team.
| Model | Best for | Cost risk | Who you talk to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior freelancer, fixed price | Marketing sites, venue and booking sites, small stores | Changes outside the agreed scope are billed extra | The developer |
| Offshore agency, fixed price | Larger builds that need several people | Risk buffer built into the price, plus change requests | Account or project manager |
| Time and materials | Changing scope, ongoing improvements | Hard to forecast without a cap | Varies |
| Dedicated team, monthly | Long-running products | You pay whether or not there's work that month | Team lead |
The pricing models come from Wise's breakdown. After launch, a maintenance retainer is usually cheaper and easier to budget for than paying for fixes one at a time.
What should you ask before you hire?
Ask about currency, what's included, who does the work, overlap hours, revisions, ownership and support after launch. There's a fuller checklist for hiring a freelance web developer in India, and if your build is on Next.js, see what to check when hiring a Next.js developer in India. But these are the questions that move the price most:
- Is the quote in GBP, and is it fixed or hourly?
- Does it include Stripe, HubSpot, GA4 and Tag Manager setup, or are those extra?
- Who writes the code, and who answers my messages?
- Which hours overlap with the UK, and how fast do you reply?
- How many rounds of revisions are included?
- Who owns the code, hosting and accounts at the end?
- What does support after launch cost?
Got a Figma file or a brief? Send it to me through the contact page and I'll tell you what's in scope, what isn't, how the work would run across the time difference and how long it should take.
