Platform Cost Comparison
Next.js vs WordPress — what the custom build really costs
Quick Answer
A Next.js build costs about 2.5× a WordPress build of the same scope — $8,000–$20,000 against $3,000–$8,000 for a brochure site — and takes 1.8× as long. It wins the running cost ($0–$20/month hosting, no plugin renewals, against $15–$80/month plus $300–$1,500 a year of licences) and loses the one that compounds: on WordPress anyone with a login edits the site, on a custom build a developer does, unless someone paid to build an editor too. Multipliers are our engine's own, applied to identical scope; cost bands come from 600+ project quotes across 6 markets.
This comparison gets argued on performance and developer taste. Those are real, and they are not what moves the budget. The budget moves on three things: how many wheels get reinvented, how long the project runs, and who is allowed to change a sentence on the homepage a year from now.
Price both on your own scopeBuild cost by site type — WordPress against Next.js
Identical scope on each row; the gap is the 2.5× multiplier the engine applies to custom work.
| Project type | WordPress min | WordPress max | Next.js (custom) min | Next.js (custom) max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brochure site, 8–12 pages | $3,000 | $8,000 | $8,000 | $20,000 |
| Content site with custom templates | $8,000 | $18,000 | $20,000 | $45,000 |
Side by side
| WordPress | Next.js (custom) | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine multiplier on identical scope | 1.0× (baseline) | 2.5× |
| Timeline multiplier | 1.0× | 1.8× |
| Complexity modifier | 0 | +20 |
| Brochure site, 8–12 pages | $3,000 – $8,000 | $8,000 – $20,000 |
| Content site with custom templates | $8,000 – $18,000 | $20,000 – $45,000 |
| Hosting, per month | $15 – $80 | $0 – $20 at small scale |
| Plugins / licences, per year | $300 – $1,500 | $0 |
| Who makes a copy change | anyone with a login | a developer, unless a CMS was built in |
Multipliers from our pricing engine; bands are typical-case midpoints across 6 markets. Run your own scope through the calculator for a figure with your market and team in it.
The three-year number nobody quotes
Take a marketing site that gets a handful of changes a month. On WordPress: a $5,000 build, $40/month hosting, $600 a year of plugins, and the marketing team edits copy themselves — about $8,000 over three years. The same site in Next.js: a $12,500 build, $10/month hosting, no licences, and every copy change goes through a developer at two hours a month — about $19,000 over three years at $100/hour, and that developer hour is the whole difference.
Flip one variable and the answer flips: give the Next.js build a real CMS (Sanity, Payload, headless WordPress) and the marketing team edits again — but you paid for that CMS in the build. That is the honest trade, and it is why the question is never “which is cheaper” but “who will touch this site, and how often”.
Pick WordPress when…
- ✓The site is content: pages, posts, landing pages, a team that publishes without asking anyone
- ✓You want the cheapest route to a professional site that someone else can maintain anywhere in the world
- ✓The features you need already exist as plugins you would otherwise pay to rebuild
Pick Next.js when…
- ✓The thing you are building behaves like an application — state, accounts, calculators, dashboards
- ✓The front end must share components or a design system with a product you already ship
- ✓You employ React developers, so the maintenance cost that kills custom builds is already paid
- ✓Integrations rather than plugins define the work — your CRM, your ERP, your own API
Frequently asked questions
How much more does Next.js cost than WordPress?
About 2.5× on the build for identical scope. Our engine applies a 2.5× multiplier to a custom React/Next.js build and 1.0× to WordPress, with a 1.8× timeline. A brochure site that costs $4,000 on WordPress lands near $10,000 as a custom build, and an $8,000 WordPress project lands near $20,000. The licence cost goes the other way: WordPress core is free but the plugin stack is not, while Next.js has no licence at all.
Why is a custom build 2.5× when the pages look the same?
Because almost nothing comes for free. On WordPress a theme, an editor, a media library, a form plugin, SEO fields and a login system already exist; on a custom build each of those is a decision, a dependency and a test. The engine also adds 20 points of complexity to custom work, which feeds the risk and contingency lines — custom projects overrun more often, and the estimate says so.
Is Next.js cheaper to run than WordPress?
Usually yes, and by less than people expect. A Next.js site on a managed platform runs $0–$20/month at small scale against $15–$80/month for managed WordPress hosting, and it has no plugin renewals. But it needs a developer for changes a WordPress editor would make alone, and that is the cost that actually shows up: one hour of developer time a month is more than a year of hosting.
When is WordPress the wrong answer?
When the site is an application rather than pages: dashboards, calculators, logged-in state, heavy third-party integrations, or a front end that has to share components with a product. Also when you already employ React developers — the cheapest stack is usually the one your team maintains without hiring.
Can I have both — WordPress for content, Next.js for the front end?
Yes, headless WordPress with a Next.js front end. Price it as the custom build plus the WordPress build, not as a discount on either: you keep the editor your marketing team knows and you add a front end someone has to maintain. In our data it lands between a plain custom build and a plain WordPress build plus 30–40%, and it only pays off when both sides are genuinely used.
Ready to build? Three ways to do it
The right path depends on budget, not preference. These bands come from our own published cost data.
Do it yourself
$0–$500
WordPress on cheap hosting like SiteGround — enough for a simple site you maintain yourself.
Hire a freelancer
$500–$5,000
Custom design and setup without agency overhead — the sweet spot for most small-business sites.
Browse Fiverrdevelopers →Custom project
$5,000+
Scope it properly before you talk to anyone — our calculator prices your exact feature list so quotes can't inflate.
Price my project →Disclosure: some links above are partner links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Recommendations come from our cost data, not from who pays us.