How Long Does It Take to Build a Website? (Honest Answer for 2026)
"How long does it take to build a website?" is one of those questions that sounds simple until you try to answer it. The honest answer: it depends. On what you're building, how you're building it, and how polished you want it to be.
Most of the stuff you'll find online is vague. "A few weeks." "It varies." Not wrong, but not useful. Here's a breakdown that actually gives you numbers and helps you decide which route makes sense for you.
The Short Answer
If you use a template or drag-and-drop builder and do it yourself: a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on how many pages you have and how much you tweak. If you hire a designer or agency: usually two to six weeks from kickoff to launch, sometimes longer for complex sites. If you use an AI website builder: you can have a first version live in under an hour. Refining it might add a few more hours or a day.
So the range is huge. The right question isn't "how long" in the abstract. It's "how long for the approach I'm actually considering?"
DIY with a Template or Website Builder
Tools like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress with a theme, or similar let you build a site without code. You pick a template, swap in your copy and images, and hit publish. For a simple site (homepage, about, contact, maybe a few service pages), expect a few days to a week if you're focused. If you're learning the tool as you go or you're picky about every detail, it can stretch to two or three weeks.
The time goes into: choosing and customizing the template, writing or adapting copy, finding or taking images, setting up navigation, and testing on different devices. You're not coding, but you're still making a lot of decisions. That's where the hours add up.
DIY works well when you have more time than money and your needs are straightforward. A local business site, a portfolio, a simple landing page. If that's you, block out a weekend or a few evenings and you can get something live.
Hiring a Designer or Agency
When you hire someone, the timeline is less about your own hours and more about their process. Discovery and brief: a few days to a week. Design: one to two weeks. Development and content: another one to three weeks. Revisions and launch: a few days to a week. So you're typically looking at two to six weeks from start to launch for a standard marketing or business site. Complex projects (e-commerce, custom apps, lots of pages) can run two or three months.
The upside: you get a pro result and you're not doing the work yourself. The downside: it costs more, and you're dependent on their schedule. Small changes later often mean more cost or waiting.
Hiring makes sense when the site is central to your business, you want a custom look and feel, or you need functionality that DIY and AI tools can't easily deliver.
Using an AI Website Builder
AI website builders let you describe what you want (e.g. "landing page for my consulting business with a services section and contact form") and generate a first version. You're not starting from a blank canvas or a generic template. You're starting from something that already matches your idea. So the "build" part can be very fast. First draft in minutes. Tweak the copy, swap an image, move a section, and you can be live in under an hour for a single page. A small multi-page site might take a few hours to a day once you're happy with the structure and content.
The catch: you still need to review, edit, and sometimes refine. The AI gets you 80% there; you do the last 20%. So "how long" is really "how long until you're happy with it?" For a lot of founders and small businesses, that's still way faster than DIY from scratch or waiting on a designer.
AI builders are a good fit when you want to ship fast, you're okay with a tool that helps you generate then edit, and you care about having control (editing, export, SEO) without spending weeks learning or paying thousands upfront.
When to Choose Which
Pick DIY/template when you have time, simple needs, and you're fine investing a few days or a week. Pick a designer when the site is critical, you want something fully custom, and you have the budget. Pick an AI builder when you want to go from idea to live site in hours, not weeks, and you're okay refining the output yourself.
A lot of people default to "I'll do it myself" or "I'll hire someone" without considering the middle option. If speed matters and you don't need heavy custom logic, an AI builder can cut the timeline from weeks to hours. Then you can always hand off to a designer or developer later if you outgrow it.
The goal isn't to pick the "best" method in theory. It's to pick the one that gets you live when you need to be live, at a cost (time and money) you can afford.
The Bottom Line
How long does it take to build a website? DIY: days to a couple of weeks. Designer: two to six weeks (or more). AI builder: first version in under an hour, refined in a few hours to a day.
Choose the approach that matches your timeline, budget, and how much control you want. If you want to get something live this week without hiring or spending a week in a template, an AI website builder is worth a look.
Last updated: January 30, 2026