How to Price a White Label Website to Your Client (Agency Markup Guide)

Most agencies mark up white label development by roughly two to three times what it costs them, which lands a project the developer builds for £2,000 to £3,000 at £5,000 to £9,000 to the client. That is a starting point, not a rule. The right number depends on whether you price on cost, on the market, or on the value the site creates, and the agencies that make the most margin rarely price on cost alone.

Here is how to set the number properly.

First, separate your cost from your price

The amount a white label developer charges you is your cost of goods, not your price. Your price has to cover that cost plus everything you do around it: the client relationship, the brief, the design, project management, revisions, and the margin that makes the project worth running at all.

Agencies that quote cost plus a thin markup end up working for very little, because the developer’s figure never included any of your time. Price the project, not the build.

The three ways agencies price it

Cost-plus. Take what the build costs you and apply a multiplier. Simple, and fine as a floor, but it caps your margin at whatever the developer charges and ignores what the site is worth to the client.

• Common multipliers run from 2x for straightforward work up to 3x or more where you add significant design, strategy or account management.

Market-based. Charge what a client of that size expects to pay for that kind of site, regardless of your cost. A local trade business and a funded scale-up will pay very different numbers for the same build, and both are correct.

Value-based. Price against what the site does for the client. A site that is the main source of a business’s leads is worth far more than a brochure, and a client who understands that will pay for it. This is where the best margins are, and it only works when you have framed the project around outcomes rather than pages.

In practice, use cost-plus as your floor, the market as your sense-check, and value as your ceiling.

Typical UK ranges to the client

As a rough guide for what agencies commonly charge UK clients, with the white label build sitting underneath at a fraction of these:

Project type	Typical client price
Small business brochure site	£3,000 to £8,000
Marketing site with custom design	£8,000 to £20,000
WooCommerce or membership build	£12,000 to £35,000+
Bespoke web application or portal	£25,000+

These are indicative, not quotes. Your market, city and positioning move them considerably, and a well-positioned agency charges at the top of each band for the same underlying build.

A worked example

Say a client needs a custom marketing site with a few integrations. A white label partner builds it for £4,000. Here is the difference between the two pricing habits:

• Cost-plus, thin: you add 50% and charge £6,000. After the £4,000 build and your own time on brief, design and management, there is very little left.
• Priced properly: you scope it as a £14,000 project, because that is what the site is worth to the client and what the market pays. The same £4,000 build now sits inside a project with real margin.

Same developer, same code, more than double the profit. The build cost barely changed the answer. How you framed and priced the project did.

Don’t let the developer’s number anchor you

The most common pricing mistake is letting the white label quote set the ceiling. It should set the floor. Your client is not buying the developer’s hours, they are buying a working website delivered by an agency they trust, with someone accountable for it. Price for that, not for the line on your supplier invoice.

If you want the cost side of this to be predictable so your margins are too, a fixed quote against a defined scope is what makes it work, because you cannot price a project confidently when your own cost is a moving number.