Realistic 2026 ranges: a template build with basic setup runs under 50,000 rupees, a custom-designed marketing site with proper performance and schema typically lands between 85,000 and 3 lakh, and e-commerce or web applications are scoped beyond that. The differentiator is engineering discipline, not page count.
Website pricing confuses buyers because the same word covers a reskinned template and a engineered asset. Both have twenty pages. One loads in four seconds with no structured data, the other loads in under one second and gets cited by answer engines.
What you are actually buying at the higher tiers: performance budgets enforced in code, schema and entity architecture, accessibility, analytics that measure enquiries, and a build your team can update without a developer on retainer.
Questions that expose the difference
Ask any vendor for three things: a live site they built loading under a second on a phone, the structured data validating on that site, and who owns the code and accounts at handover. The answers separate engineering from decoration in five minutes.
Cheap sites are not a scandal, they are a stage. Just price in what they cannot do, because the rebuild arrives with your growth.