What a UX audit costs in Australia (2026)

What a UX audit is (and what it isn't)

A UX audit is a structured review of your website or app that finds the usability problems, friction points and conversion blockers, then ranks the fixes by impact. A good one combines a review against established usability principles with your real data: analytics, session recordings, support tickets, whatever you have.

It isn't a redesign. You come away with a prioritised list of what to fix and why, not a new set of screens. That's the point: you find out where the money is leaking before you pay anyone to rebuild anything.

Typical UX audit costs in Australia

Published benchmarks give a useful starting range:

• Freelance UX audits in Australia typically cost $2,000–5,000, according to UntilNow (June 2026).
• For work billed by the hour, Raw Studio (August 2026) puts Australian freelance designers at $80–150 an hour and boutique studios at $150–220 an hour.
• Larger agencies and research consultancies usually quote above those ranges, especially when the audit includes moderated user testing with recruited participants.

Those numbers are wide for a reason. Two audits with the same name can differ in scope, depth and what lands in your inbox at the end. Here's what moves the price.

What drives the cost of a UX audit

Scope: one flow, key journeys or the whole product. Scope is the biggest factor. Reviewing a single page or flow, such as your checkout or a quote form, is a small, focused job. Reviewing the two or three journeys that make you money (say, landing page to enquiry, sign-up to first use, and checkout) is a bigger one. Auditing an entire product, with every role, setting and edge case, is bigger again.

A useful rule: count the screens and flows. Most quotes follow that number more closely than the size of your business does.

Deliverable format: report, annotated screens or walkthrough. How the findings are delivered changes the effort involved:

• A written report suits teams who need something to circulate, brief a developer with, or keep on file.
• Annotated screens put each issue right on the screen it affects, which is the quickest format for a designer or developer to act on.
• A recorded walkthrough talks you through the problems in context, which works well for busy founders who'd rather watch ten minutes than read twenty pages.

Asking for all three costs more than choosing the one your team will actually use.

Research depth. A review-based audit (a senior designer working through your product against usability principles and your analytics) is the fastest and most affordable option. Adding session recording analysis, a quick survey or a handful of moderated user tests adds time and cost, but also adds evidence. If your team keeps arguing about what users want, that evidence can be worth paying for.

Access to data. Audits move faster when the auditor can see your analytics, heatmaps or session recordings from day one. If none of that is set up, you're paying for more guesswork, or for setting up tracking first.

What you should get for your money

Whatever the price, a UX audit should leave you with:

• A prioritised list of issues, ranked by impact on your goals, not just by how bad they look.
• A severity rating for each issue, so you know what's critical and what can wait.
• A clear, specific recommendation for each one. "Improve the form" isn't a recommendation. "Cut the form from eleven fields to five and move the phone number to after the quote" is.
• Quick wins flagged separately, so you can ship improvements this week.
• A walkthrough or Q&A, so nothing gets lost between the findings and the people who'll fix them.

If you'd struggle to hand the deliverable straight to a developer, it's not finished.

How to choose the right UX audit

Start with the problem, not the package. If one page or flow is clearly underperforming, audit that first. It's the cheapest way to find out whether better UX will move your numbers. If you're planning a redesign, audit the key journeys before the brief is written, so the redesign fixes the right things.

Then ask each provider three questions:

• What exactly is in scope, by screens or flows?
• What format will the findings arrive in, and can I see an example?
• How long will it take, and is the price fixed?

The answers tell you more than the headline number.

Red flags to watch for

• An hourly estimate with no cap. You carry all the risk if the work runs long.
• A one-size-fits-all price. The same quote for a five-page site and a complex web app means one of them is being under-serviced.
• Automated reports passed off as an audit. Accessibility checkers and SEO crawlers are useful, but a tool's output isn't a UX audit. Someone has to judge what matters for your users and your business.
• No prioritisation. Two hundred issues in no particular order is a to-do list, not advice.
• Findings that only say what's wrong. Every issue should come with a recommended fix.
• No look at your real data. An audit that ignores your analytics is working from opinion.

How I price UX audits

I keep it simple: every audit is a fixed price in AUD, quoted upfront after a free 30-minute call. No hourly billing, no surprises halfway through.

There are three tiers, and the quote follows the scope:

• Audit sprint: one page or flow, up to about five screens. A low-risk way to see what an audit turns up.
• Standard audit: up to about 15 screens, or two to three key flows. The right size for most small and mid-sized businesses.
• Full audit: a large site or product, quoted from scope.

You choose the format: a written report, annotated screens or a recorded walkthrough. One is included; a second is an add-on.

I use AI to speed up the groundwork, like capturing screens and drafting notes, and I check every finding myself. That's what keeps most audits to one to two weeks from kickoff rather than a month. You can see what's included on the UX audit page.

The bottom line

In Australia, a freelance UX audit typically lands in the low thousands, and agency audits sit higher. The right price for you depends on how much of your product needs reviewing, how deep the research goes and how you want the findings delivered. Pay for the scope that matches your problem, insist on prioritised, specific recommendations, and make sure the price is fixed before work starts.

If your website or app isn't converting the way it should, send me a quick brief and I'll come back with a fixed quote. Or read more about how my UX audits work first.