---
title: "Buying guides: price, process and choosing a supplier"
description: "What a website costs, how a quote is built, what you own afterwards, and how to choose between an agency, a freelancer and an AI builder."
url: https://torn.studio/en/topics/buying-guides
locale: en
---

# Buying guides: price, process and choosing a supplier

> **Short answer:** The buying guides answer the money questions and the choice questions that come before a web project: what the market charges, what moves a quote inside a band, which engagement model fits, what maintenance costs per year, and what you actually own once the work is delivered. Every figure carries a named source.

## Insights

- [The best AI web agencies in Sweden in 2026](https://torn.studio/en/insights/best-ai-agencies-in-sweden) — Which are the best AI web agencies in Sweden? — Six Swedish agencies build websites with AI tooling in 2026: Bueno, Kumpan, Sabest, SEOS Design, The Generation and Torn Studio. Kumpan, Sabest and Torn Studio publish their prices; The Generation states a team of thirty. The list runs alphabetically and rests only on what each agency publishes itself.
- [AI website agency vs traditional agency](https://torn.studio/en/insights/ai-website-agency-vs-traditional-agency) — Should I hire an AI web agency or a traditional one? — A traditional agency staffs a team of specialists and plans three to five months for a Swedish B2B project, with a 15–30% surcharge to compress it into six weeks. An AI-assisted studio staffs one person and plans in three to six weeks. The difference is coordination time.
- [How to choose a web agency in 2026](https://torn.studio/en/insights/how-to-choose-a-web-agency) — How do I choose a web agency? — Choose a web agency by deciding the job first, then checking what you can verify on your own: whether they publish a price, how their own site performs on real-user data, and whether the text stays readable with JavaScript turned off. Brief three of them identically, and compare on scope, languages, integrations and deadline.
- [Fixed price or retainer for a website?](https://torn.studio/en/insights/fixed-price-or-retainer) — Should I pay a fixed price or a retainer for a website? — Pay a fixed price when the scope can be written down, and a retainer when the work is continuous. Swedish agencies publish hourly rates of 850–1,800 kr and ongoing maintenance at 3,000–15,000 kr a month. A fixed price moves the overrun risk to the supplier, and you pay a margin for that.
- [What does website maintenance cost?](https://torn.studio/en/insights/what-website-maintenance-costs) — What does website maintenance cost per year? — Maintaining a website costs 10–20% of the build price per year in Sweden. A simple site lands at 1,000–7,000 kr, a business website at 8,500–17,000 kr, and a platform with integrations at 25,000–50,000 kr. Hosting and a domain are rarely in the quote.
- [AI website builder or an agency?](https://torn.studio/en/insights/ai-website-builder-vs-agency) — Should I build my site with an AI builder or hire an agency? — AI builders now ship server-rendered HTML: Lovable moved new projects to server-side rendering on May 13, 2026, and v0 emits Next.js. The old objection that a crawler sees an empty page has largely fallen away. What a builder still leaves to you is accessibility, multilingual routing, and the checks that hold a codebase together after the first month.
- [Do you own the code to your website?](https://torn.studio/en/insights/owning-your-website) — Do I own the code to my website? — You own the code to your website when the contract says so. Swedish copyright law transfers a computer program to the employer only where an employee wrote it; a commissioned agency keeps the rights until a written assignment transfers them. Ask for the transfer clause, the repository, the domain and the hosting account before you sign.
- [What a website actually costs in 2026](https://torn.studio/en/insights/what-a-website-actually-costs) — What does a website cost in 2026? — Swedish price guides publish 8,000–19,000 kr for what most small businesses pay and 80,000–200,000 kr for a mid-complexity B2B site. Both are true, because they describe different products. Name the product first — pages, languages, integrations, deadline — and the number follows. Torn Studio publishes five fixed tiers from 10,000 to 250,000 kr.