What does it cost to build a Chinese website?

Most guides we read on building a Chinese website stop at advice and never mention money. The few that do give one total, and it rarely matches your case.

This guide lists what you actually pay for, with each price attributed and dated. It’s part of our work on translating and localizing a website for China.

None of these prices are ours, and none is a quote. Most come from firms that sell these services.

What does a Chinese website cost in total?

We found no reliable total for 2026, and we don’t think one could exist. The budget depends on your path, and five paths cost very different amounts.

Path	What you pay for	Published reference	ICP needed?
Chinese pages on your current site	Translation, developer time	Per-word rates below	No
Separate Chinese site, hosted outside the mainland	Translation, build, hosting	HK$8,000 to HK$30,000 for a template site in Hong Kong 10	No
Current site, plus a near-China delivery service	Setup, monthly fee, translation	Chinafy Starter: $3,500+ setup, plus $280+ or $310+ a month 19	Not on its default setup 19
Mainland hosting on a partner’s entity	Package, translation	$795 for 12 months, or $66.25 a month, in a 2017 listing 23	Yes, on the provider’s license. Check with an adviser, see below
Mainland hosting on your own entity	Entity, hosting, agent, build, translation	$5,000 to $15,000 as a project, MSA Asia 2026 20	Yes

Three of those references need care. MSA Asia’s total covers the ICP project and lists no site build or web copy.²⁰

Chinafy’s Starter plan is for template sites of 10 pages or fewer, and translation is a separate service, outside the plans.¹⁹

The partner route needs the most care. MSA Asia warns that “borrowed-entity ICP filings” are “being unwound,” and says MIIT has tightened enforcement since 2024.²⁰

That’s one firm’s claim, and we found no official text behind it. Take this route to a local adviser before you price it.

1. Testing demand?

   Yes: stay outside the mainland, then new pages or a separate site.

2. No, Chinese entity already in place

   Mainland hosting and ICP

3. No, no entity

   See a local adviser before you compare a partner's entity with setting up your own.

How much does Chinese translation cost?

Published rates disagree, but those that name Chinese mostly sit around $0.10 to $0.20 per word. It’s the line you control best, because you choose how many words go in.

Source	Scope	Published rate
ProZ data, via Centus, June 2025 1	English to Chinese, average	$0.10 per word
Centus, June 2025 1	Human website translation, all languages	$0.08 to $0.30 per word
Centus, June 2025 1	Marketing content, all languages	$0.10 to $0.20 per word
Milengo, 2026, search excerpt 2	Marketing translation from English, all languages	$0.021 to $0.206 per word
DigMandarin, undated 3	English to Chinese	$0.10, or $0.20 for specialized work
NJStar, unreliable date 4	Website work, on a Chinese-English page, pair not stated	$0.07 to $0.14 per word
Chinafy, 2020 6	About 10,000 words, under ICP application costs, text and languages not stated	About $412, or $0.04 per word by our math

The sources also disagree at the top. Centus quotes about $0.40 per word for “localization,” well above its own translation rates.¹ That label has no fixed meaning, so ask what it adds.

So word count moves the bill as much as the rate does. Start with which pages to translate first before you ask for a quote.

Check the unit before you compare

A rate means nothing until you know what it counts. Ask whether it applies to English source words or to Chinese characters.

CBL Translations, which sells legal translation, reports a “characters (no spaces)” count that billed a Hong Kong trading company for over 200,000 characters on documents of about 20,000 Chinese characters.⁵

It’s a single case, translated from Chinese into English, but the question costs nothing to ask.

Machine translation lowers the rate, not the need for review

Centus says basic machine translation is often free, or $0.01 to $0.05 per word.¹ A 2025 study of tourism texts, translated from Chinese into English, still concluded that “human post-editing remains necessary.”⁷

The sources we read give no rate for post-editing into Chinese, so get that quoted.

Our guide to machine translation covers where it holds up, and how to translate your website covers the process.

Do you need a new site, or just new pages?

Often just pages, and this choice sets your build budget. Nanjing Marketing Group, an agency, argues for a separate Chinese site.⁹ Baidu’s 2014 guide says to use a directory until a section has enough content to stand alone.¹³

That guide is old and speaks of site sections, not language versions. Still, it doesn’t push you toward the expensive option.

The tradeoff is hosting. Google notes that a subdirectory keeps a single server, while a subdomain allows separate ones.¹⁴ So pages in a subfolder inherit your current host’s speed in China.

If you do build, these are the public references:

Source	What it covers	Published price
YSD, Hong Kong, August 2026 10	Template corporate site	HK$8,000 to HK$30,000
YSD, Hong Kong, August 2026 10	Custom corporate site	HK$30,000 to HK$80,000+
YSD, Hong Kong, August 2026 10	E-commerce site	HK$35,000 to HK$150,000+
Alibaba Cloud community author, January 2026 11	Template site, mainland market	RMB 1,000 to RMB 5,000
Chinafy, 2020 6	Designer, custom banners and subpages	$1,028+

YSD names multi-language work as a price driver, but doesn’t price Chinese separately.¹⁰ The Alibaba Cloud figure is one user’s article, not an Alibaba Cloud price.¹¹

Agency floors tell you more than headline prices. We read Clutch’s China listing on November 1, 2026: 31 of its 50 firms showed a minimum project. Those ran from $1,000+ to $50,000+, with $1,000+ and $5,000+ the most common.¹²

Hourly rates there were most often $50 to $99.¹² Those are self-reported listings.

What do you have to fix on the site itself?

Budget developer time for anything that fails from China. No source we read prices this work, because it depends on what your site loads. Expect these lines:

• Google dependencies. Maps, reCAPTCHA, video and analytics can each fail from China, so each may need a replacement. See which Google services fail in China.
• Forms. A contact form that fails costs you the lead, so fix it before anything cosmetic.
• Chinese fonts. Source Han Sans may be used and embedded under its SIL OFL license, so this line can be zero.¹⁵
• Testing. Your pages need a check from inside China, without a VPN.

We found no public price for a Founder web license, so ask a local adviser if you want one.

Our guide to website design for Chinese users covers the rest of the page.

What does hosting cost?

The server is usually a small line. What costs real money is the service around it, or the entity a mainland server requires.

Option	Published price	Needs
Your current host	No new cost	Nothing, but check speed from China
Alibaba Cloud starter server	$4 to $60 a month, region not stated in text 18	A developer to run it
Chinafy Starter, near-China delivery	$3,500+ setup, plus $280+ or $310+ a month 19	Template site of 10 pages or fewer
Chinafy Pro, near-China delivery	$5,500+ setup, plus $480+ or $520+ a month 19	Site with light interactivity, one domain or subdomain
Mainland hosting	$200 to $1,500 a year, MSA Asia 2026 20	Chinese entity and ICP
Mainland cloud server	RMB 800 to RMB 5,000 a year, community author 11	Chinese entity and ICP
Cloudflare China Network	No price published 21	Enterprise plan, ICP for each apex domain 21

Chinafy’s page shows two amounts for each of those plans and doesn’t explain the difference.¹⁹

Most purchase links on the Alibaba Cloud page point to a Hong Kong region ID, so confirm the region and price at checkout.¹⁸

Compare the options on what your visitors get, not on the invoice. Start with Hong Kong or mainland hosting and how CDNs behave in China.

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When do an entity and an ICP enter the budget?

Only if you put the site on mainland servers. Then they become the budget, and everything else looks small.

The filing itself has no government fee, though your provider may charge for processing.²² The real cost is the company behind it, and estimates disagree.

MSA Asia gives $3,000 to $8,000 for a WFOE in 2026,²⁰ while Chinafy listed $17,650 in 2020.⁶

MSA Asia’s table also lists $15,000 to $150,000 of registered capital, paid in over five years, without saying whether its $5,000 to $15,000 total includes that.²⁰

A commercial license goes further. China Briefing lists RMB 1 million in registered capital for one province, plus 3 dedicated staff.³¹

Our guide to what an ICP costs and how long it takes has the full breakdown.

What keeps costing after launch?

In the only itemized budget we found, the largest recurring cost is a person, not a server. Someone has to read inquiries, answer them and keep the Chinese pages current.

$17,685 (91%)

Local contact in Chinese

$1,771

Hosting, domain and design combined

Chinafy’s 2020 site budget shows the imbalance. Of its $19,456, a Chinese-speaking site manager took $17,685.⁶ That’s about 91% by our math, based on a six-year-old salary figure.

Recurring line	Published figure	Note
Chinese-speaking contact	$17,685+ a year, 2020 6	A share of a person may be enough, but no source prices that
New and updated content	Per-word rates above	Changes to your main site may need a matching update
Hosting or delivery	See the hosting table	Some plans bill annually 19
Domain	$15 to $50 a year, MSA Asia 2026 20	Check the renewal price
Accounting, if you have an entity	$2,300, 2020 6	Only with a Chinese company. Chinafy doesn’t say if this is yearly

If nobody can reply in Chinese, the site’s cost buys you unanswered messages. See how to answer Chinese inquiries without speaking Chinese.

How to build your own budget

You can have a usable first version in an afternoon. It won’t be a quote, but it will make quotes comparable.

1. Pick a path. Use the first table, and decide whether mainland hosting is in scope at all.
2. Count your words. Export only the pages you plan to translate.
3. Price translation. Multiply by two rates, one low and one high, then add a native review.
4. List your fixes. Note everything your Chinese pages load from services that fail in China.
5. Add your name. If you need a Chinese brand name, get a quote for the filing. See how to choose a Chinese brand name.
6. Add 12 months of recurring lines. Include the person, not only the hosting.

Then send the same scope to at least two providers. Ask each one what’s excluded, what unit it counts in, and who holds any account or license.

The bottom line

The biggest cost decision comes first: stay outside the mainland, or commit to an entity and an ICP. If you’re testing China, translate a small set of pages and reuse what you can.

Treat every price here as a starting point for questions, since most come from sellers. Your own word count and your own quotes will tell you more than any total online.

How Index in China can help

We translate your site into Simplified Chinese with a human reviewer, work on getting it indexed on Chinese search engines and send a monthly report on Chinese traffic.

An ICP isn’t part of the offer we list. We don’t give legal advice. See what we do, or book a 30-minute call.

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