Short answer
Custom Magento development typically costs £80 to £150 per hour at UK and EU agency rates, £100 to £200 per hour at US agency rates. A typical custom module costs £1,500 to £6,000; a full Magento storefront build runs £40,000 to £200,000+ depending on scope. Adobe Commerce projects average 20 to 40 percent more than equivalent Magento Open Source work because of additional licensing, Page Builder integration, and B2B complexity. Industry-typical ranges as of May 2026 based on engagements we have shipped or benchmarked since 2019.
Magento engineering rates by region
- UK and Western Europe: £80 to £150 per engineer-hour at agency rates. Senior Hyvä specialists at larger agencies sometimes bill £180 to £220.
- US: $120 to $250 per engineer-hour depending on coast and agency tier. East-coast premium for Adobe Commerce specialists.
- Eastern Europe: €40 to €80 per engineer-hour. Quality variance significant; vet the actual engineers, not the agency brochure.
- India and SE Asia: $25 to $60 per hour. Cost-effective for well-scoped, well-documented work. Total project cost often comparable to higher-rate agencies once rework and timezone overhead are included.
- Freelance contractors: 20 to 40 percent below equivalent agency rates because they carry no agency overhead. Risk concentrated in single-person dependency.
Common Magento work types and ranges
Custom module development
A single custom Magento module takes 10 to 40 engineering hours to design, build, test, and ship. At UK agency rates that works out to £1,500 to £6,000. Complex modules (payment gateways, custom checkout flows, third-party API integrations) can land at £10,000 to £30,000.
Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration
£15,000 to £80,000 depending on store complexity, custom code volume, and third-party module count. Magento 1 is end-of-life; any store still on it should plan migration as the highest- priority project. Most teams who delay end up paying more because emergency-mode migrations cost a premium.
Magento version upgrade (2.4.x to 2.4.y)
£4,000 to £15,000 for typical mid-market stores. Three-to-six week engagement. Cost driven by custom module count and third-party module compatibility checks. See our French B2B distributor case study for a representative engagement.
Performance optimization audit
£1,500 to £3,500 for the audit deliverable. £4,000 to £25,000 for the implementation work that follows, depending on whether the engagement includes a Hyvä migration recommendation. Full breakdown in the performance optimization guide.
Hyvä theme migration
£8,000 to £80,000+ depending on store size. Dedicated cost guide with detailed tier breakdowns.
Full custom Magento storefront build (greenfield)
£40,000 to £200,000+. Includes platform setup, theme development, payment integrations, shipping integrations, custom B2B or B2C feature work, data migration from existing platform, testing, and launch. Mid-market typically lands at £60,000 to £120,000.
Magento support and maintenance retainer
£1,000 to £8,000 per month depending on coverage. Tiers typically include monthly security patching, third-party module updates, performance monitoring, incident response, and a small bucket of feature/bug-fix hours. SLA-backed retainers cost more.
One-off bug fixes
£200 to £1,500 per bug depending on severity and depth. Most small bugs are 1 to 4 hours of work. Avoid agencies that won't quote bug fixes individually; that's usually a sign they want you on a retainer instead.
Custom integration work (ERP, CRM, PIM)
£5,000 to £40,000 per integration. Cost depends on the source system's API quality, data-mapping complexity, and whether the integration is one-way or bidirectional. ERPs without modern APIs (legacy SAP, custom in-house systems) cost significantly more.
Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source development cost
Same engineering rates per hour, but Adobe Commerce projects average 20 to 40 percent more total cost because of:
- The Adobe Commerce annual licence (typically £20,000 to £200,000+ depending on GMV tier).
- Page Builder content blocks that need template overrides when theming changes.
- B2B feature complexity (companies, shared catalogs, customer- group pricing rules) that adds engineering scope.
- Adobe Commerce-specific QA requirements (Adobe Stock integration, BI dashboards, advanced search).
For stores below approximately £20 million annual revenue, Magento Open Source is usually the right answer. The licence cost saved typically funds an extra year of engineering work.
What inflates Magento development cost (and how to avoid it)
- Unclear scope. The single largest cost driver. Spend the first week of any engagement on a discovery doc that lists every behavior change in plain English. Variations cost less than mid-project rewrites.
- Third-party module sprawl. Each additional third-party module adds compatibility-test overhead to every future engagement. Audit and consolidate.
- Custom code without tests. Untested custom code is debt. Future engagements spend time understanding and re-verifying it. Tests added at build time are 5 to 10x cheaper than tests added later.
- Skipped staging environments. Production-only changes risk customer-facing incidents that cost more to fix than the engineering hours saved.
- Decision latency. Agencies often bill waiting time. Make decisions on flagged questions inside 48 hours to keep velocity.
Red-flag pricing signals
- Fixed-price quote without a discovery deliverable. The agency is guessing. Either they price too high to absorb unknowns, or they price low and bill variations.
- Hourly rate below regional median by 50 percent. Either junior team, offshore overhead not disclosed, or loss-leader pricing that will get clawed back via scope.
- Mandatory long-term retainer for short-term work. Use retainers for ongoing support, not for project work.
- No public case studies or references. Cost aside, no track record is risk.
- Magento certifications without recent commits. Magento certifications expire and rarely keep pace with the ecosystem. Check the engineer's actual GitHub or open source work as the better signal.
How to budget for a Magento development engagement
- Define the outcome. Not "rebuild the checkout" but "reduce mobile checkout abandonment from 71 percent to 60 percent." Outcomes are quotable; tasks are not.
- Get three quotes. Compare not just total but how the scope is broken down, what's excluded, and how variations are billed.
- Allocate 15 to 25 percent contingency. Custom engagements have unknowns. Plan for them.
- Budget post-launch. 30 to 60 days of support and stabilization after go-live. Often forgotten.
- Build internal verification capacity. Your team needs to be able to evaluate the work being delivered. Hire or train someone with Magento knowledge if you do not already have one.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a Magento store cost to run annually?
Magento Open Source: £8,000 to £40,000 annually for hosting, SSL, third-party module renewals, and basic maintenance. Adobe Commerce: £30,000 to £250,000+ including the Adobe Commerce licence on top of the same operational costs. Custom development is on top of these baselines.
Should we hire freelancers or an agency?
Freelancers cost less per hour and work well for narrow, well-defined scopes. Agencies cost more but bring team redundancy, project management, and quality assurance. Most mid-market stores end up running a hybrid: a long-term agency for major work plus 1 to 2 trusted freelancers for ongoing smaller tasks.
What's the cheapest way to get a Magento store running?
Magento Open Source plus a Hyvä theme plus 5 to 8 well-chosen third-party modules can launch a small B2C store for £15,000 to £30,000 all-in. Use existing payment integrations rather than custom ones. Avoid bespoke checkout flows. Plan for upgrades as scale increases.
How long does a Magento custom module take?
Simple feature modules: 1-2 weeks elapsed time. Complex integration modules: 3-8 weeks. The variance is driven mostly by API quality of the external system and by how clearly the module's behavior is specified upfront.
Do Magento certifications matter when picking an agency?
Less than they used to. Magento Solution Specialist and Developer certifications were historically the strongest signals; they're still useful but the certification cadence has slowed. Check the team's actual recent GitHub or open source contributions to validate skill currency.
Next step
Define the outcome you want, get three quotes, compare apples to apples on scope and variation billing. If you want the eTechFlow team to scope, the services index lists every engagement type with typical ranges. Initial scoping is free.