Understanding UX Audit Pricing in 2025
If you just want the short answer: in 2025 most UX audits cost somewhere between $1,000 and $25,000, with enterprise scale or heavily regulated products reaching $30,000 to $75,000. Lightweight heuristic reviews for a small site can sit at the lower end, while full usability testing, accessibility, and complex flows push you to the higher end.
That is the headline number. The more important question is what you are actually buying for that UX audit cost and whether you are getting fast, actionable insight or a very expensive PDF that quietly dies in a folder called "To Read".
Let us unpack what drives UX audit pricing, what different types of audits look like, and where a tool like Krux fits as a faster, more scalable alternative when you do not have 15k and six weeks to spare.
Krux AI delivers expert-level UX audits at subscription pricing—$7.99-$12.99 per month for unlimited audits. Run comprehensive analysis for a few dollars per audit instead of thousands, and get results in minutes instead of weeks.
The Quick Answer: Typical UX Audit Cost Ranges
You will see a lot of variation, but as a rule of thumb:
Basic UX heuristic audit for a simple site or small app
- Often $1,000 to $5,000
- Usually 1 expert, limited number of screens, checklist style findings
Comprehensive audit for a SaaS or e-commerce product
- Often $8,000 to $25,000
- Heuristics, flows, some light user testing, maybe competitor review
Enterprise or regulated domain audit
- Often $30,000 to $75,000+
- Multiple flows, complex permissions, accessibility, stakeholder workshops, usability testing
Accessibility only audits
- Often $1,000 to $1,800 for focused checks
Those numbers are not random. They reflect a mix of methodology, talent, risk, and overhead. If you know what is inside that price, you can very quickly tell whether a quote is reasonable or ridiculous.
What Are You Paying For When You Pay for a UX Audit?
Type of Audit
Not every UX audit is created equal. Broadly, you are paying for one or more of these:
Heuristic evaluation
- A UX expert reviews your product against well-known principles like Nielsen's heuristics
- Relatively low cost
- Fast to run
- Good for surfacing obvious usability issues
Cognitive walkthrough
- The auditor walks specific tasks step by step, asking things like: Will the user know what to do here? Will they see this control? Does this label make sense in context?
- More time intensive, more aligned to real workflows, and a better fit for SaaS and complex tools
Usability testing with real users
- This is the heavy lift version. You recruit 5 to 10 real users, run recorded sessions, and analyse all the qualitative and quantitative data
- High insight
- High cost
- Lots of time for recruitment, moderation, and analysis
Accessibility and performance analysis
- In 2025, performance and accessibility are part of UX, not nice add-ons
- Audits that include Core Web Vitals, mobile optimisation, and WCAG compliance require people who can speak both design and engineering, so the rates go up
The more your audit leans toward empirical testing and technical checks, the more hours and expertise are required—which pushes your UX audit cost higher.
Who Is Doing the Work
The same scope can cost 3x more or less depending on who actually does the audit.
Junior UX designer
- Focus: surface level issues, UI consistency, obvious friction
- Typical use: very small products or early sanity check reviews
Mid-level UX designer or researcher
- Focus: flows, user journeys, standard testing
- Good for typical B2C SaaS, onboarding, and core flows
Senior or principal designer or researcher
- Focus: tying UX problems to business metrics, roadmap, and strategy
- They will tell you which problems actually move conversion, retention, and revenue
You are not just paying for hours. You are paying for quality of judgment. A senior designer may cost more per hour, but needs fewer hours to identify the 10 issues that matter, instead of 80 small cosmetic nits.
Who You Hire: Agencies vs Freelancers vs Productized Services
Provider type is one of the biggest drivers of UX audit pricing.
Design Agencies: The "Safety Tax"
Agencies tend to sit at the top of the pricing spectrum:
- Hourly rates often $100 to $150, with specialist work at $200 to $400
- Project fees starting around $1,000 to $5,000 for very small audits
- $8,000 to $25,000 for comprehensive audits of a SaaS or e-commerce product
- $30,000 to $75,000+ for enterprise, multi-product or multi-market engagements
Freelancers: Cheaper But Riskier
Freelance UX designers and researchers typically charge:
- $30 to $60 per hour for junior talent
- $60 to $100 per hour for mid-level talent
- $120 to $200+ per hour for senior experts, especially in the US and Western Europe
Productized Audit Services
Over the last few years, a middle tier has appeared: fixed scope, fixed price audits for specific problems. These often sit around $1,000 to $1,800.
Hidden UX Audit Costs That No One Puts on the Quote
The invoice you receive is rarely the true UX audit cost. There are several hidden line items most teams forget to account for:
- Internal Time to Hire and Manage - With freelancers in particular, you have to budget for time spent sourcing candidates, reviewing portfolios, and running interviews
- Opportunity Cost of Delay - Bad UX does not politely wait while you negotiate contracts
- The Shelfware Problem - Reports that sit unimplemented because they arrived too late, were too generic, or required too much interpretation
Enter Krux: Compressing UX Audit Cost, Time, and Admin
Krux sits in a different category to agencies and freelancers. It is essentially an AI-powered UX audit tool that lets you run expert-style reviews on demand, at subscription pricing.
Krux pricing:
- Strategist plan: $7.99 per month - 10 UX analyses per month
- Innovator plan: $12.99 per month - 25 UX analyses per month, plus extra roadmap opportunity insights
Even if you ran only 5 serious audits a month, you would be paying a few dollars per audit rather than thousands.
That does not make human experts obsolete. It simply means you can:
- Use Krux for fast, frequent, high-coverage audits of flows as you iterate
- Reserve expensive human-led audits for the genuinely strategic, high-risk problems
Understanding UX Audit Costs
💰 Cost Range Transparency - Learn the real market rates: $1,000-$5,000 for basic audits, $8,000-$25,000 for comprehensive SaaS audits, and up to $75,000+ for enterprise.
🔍 Provider Comparison - Understand the trade-offs between agencies ($100-$400/hr), freelancers ($30-$200/hr), and AI-powered tools like Krux.
⚠️ Hidden Cost Awareness - Factor in internal management time, opportunity cost of delay, and the shelfware problem that wastes audit budgets.
📊 Smart Budget Allocation - Learn when to invest in expensive human audits versus using AI for rapid iteration and frequent validation.
For startups and founders, the math is clear: AI-powered tools let you compete on product quality without enterprise budgets. And if you're looking to save money on user testing, the two-phase approach (AI first, then strategic user testing) can cut costs by 60-80%.
Get Expert UX Analysis Without the Expert Price Tag
Krux AI delivers comprehensive UX audits at a fraction of traditional costs. Run unlimited audits with subscription pricing instead of paying $8,000-$25,000 per project.
- Run comprehensive audits for under $13/month vs $8,000-$25,000 per traditional audit
- Get results in minutes instead of waiting weeks and burning budget
- Audit multiple flows monthly with subscription pricing vs one-shot project fees
- Use AI for rapid iteration, save human audits for strategic validation
