How Much Does a Mortgage Broker Website Cost?
This article is by Australia's #1 Mortgage Broker SEO Agency, we've helped brokers generate over $500M in new leads through Google and AI-search. We can help you too, simply book a call here.
You've probably looked at a competitor's website and thought yours could do better. Maybe it's outdated, slow on a phone, or just not bringing in enquiries the way it should. Getting a new website is one of the clearest investments a broker can make, but the price range is enormous and the difference between options isn't always obvious from the outside.
What you pay for a broker website depends almost entirely on what it's built to do. A template site gets you online. A site built around SEO and your local market gets you found. Those are different products at different prices, and knowing the difference saves you from paying twice.
At Copyburst, we build broker websites as part of our mortgage broker SEO work, so we see exactly what different builds cost and what they actually deliver. Below, we'll show you what's in each price tier, what's worth paying for and what to watch out for.
Key takeaways
- Price alone doesn't tell you whether a website will bring in enquiries.
- A site built for SEO from the start costs more and earns it back in leads.
- You should own your domain, hosting and logins outright, no matter who builds it.
What does a mortgage broker website typically cost?
A broker website in Australia costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars a year on a template platform to $10,000 or more for a custom build designed around search and lead generation. The right number depends on what the site needs to do for your brokerage, not on what sounds reasonable.
There are three real tiers. At the low end, you're on a DIY builder or an aggregator-provided site: fast to get up, limited in what you can control. In the middle, a small agency or freelancer builds something that looks professional. At the top end, a build is designed around your services, your location and how borrowers search, with SEO baked in from day one. That last option costs more upfront and tends to cost less over time, because you're not rebuilding from scratch in two years when the enquiries don't come.
What are your three main options?
- DIY template or aggregator site: typically $0 to $1,500 upfront, plus a monthly platform fee. You get something live quickly, but the pages are generic, you share a template with other brokers and there's usually little room to add the service or location pages that rank in Google.
- Freelancer or small agency build: typically $2,000 to $6,000. You get a site that looks the part, but SEO is often an afterthought. Pages target the wrong searches or none at all, and the site needs significant work before it ranks for anything useful.
- SEO-led broker website: typically $5,000 to $12,000 or more depending on scope. Built around what your clients search for, with pages for each loan type and client group, a real local SEO structure and ongoing support. This is where a website becomes a lead source rather than a brochure.
The table below shows how the three options compare on the things that actually affect your enquiries.
| What matters | Template or aggregator | SEO-led broker build |
|---|---|---|
| Pages for each loan type | Generic or none | Built from search data for your services |
| Local pages for your area | Rare, usually not possible | Planned around your actual market |
| Loads fast on mobile | Varies widely | Built to pass Google's mobile-first requirements |
| You own everything | Often tied to the platform or aggregator | Domain, hosting and logins are yours |
| Feeds your Map Pack ranking | Little to no contribution | A stronger site supports your local rankings |
| Expert tip Pull up your current website on your phone the way a first home buyer would. If it loads slowly, the text is hard to read or the contact button is buried, that's lost business right there. Google uses the mobile version of your site to decide where you rank, so what a borrower sees on their phone matters more than how it looks on a desktop. |
What's actually included in the price?
This is where brokers get caught out. Two quotes for $5,000 can include completely different things. One might be a five-page design with no SEO work at all. The other might include a full service page structure, local pages for your area, a connected Google Business Profile and ongoing optimisation. The number on the invoice doesn't tell you which one you're getting.
When you're comparing quotes, ask about these specifically:
- Service pages: a separate page for each thing your clients search for, such as refinancing, first home loans, construction, self-employed and investment lending.
- Local pages: pages built around your suburb or region, with genuinely useful content about lending in your market, not just your name and postcode swapped into a template.
- Ongoing work: whether the price is a one-off or includes monthly SEO, updates and reporting on what's ranking and what's enquiring.
- Ownership: who holds the domain, the hosting account and the website login when the project is done.
“The broker sites that don't bring in enquiries tend to have one thing in common: they were built to look good rather than to rank. There's no page for refinancing, no page for first home buyers, nothing a borrower searching for help would actually land on.”
Adam Maynard · Founder, Copyburst · Chat to Adam →
Say you're a broker covering a capital-city market who works mainly with refinancers and first home buyers. A $3,500 template site gives you a homepage and an about page. A borrower searching "refinance broker" in your suburb finds nothing, because there's no page for it. The enquiry goes to the broker one suburb over who has a dedicated refinance page sitting in the top three results. That's what the price difference actually buys.
| Mortgage broker SEO Need help with a broker website that ranks? We help mortgage brokers get found first in Google, Google Maps and AI search.
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Should you leave your aggregator website?
Most aggregators give you a profile page or a co-branded site as part of your membership. It's not nothing: it gets you a presence online and sometimes some domain authority from the aggregator's main site. But you don't own it, you can't add the pages you need and if you ever change aggregators, you start from scratch.
The question isn't whether the aggregator site is free. It's whether it's doing the job. Check whether your name or brokerage shows up in Google when a borrower searches for the services you actually offer in your area. If it doesn't, the free site is costing you enquiries every week.
| Expert tip Search your own name and your brokerage name in Google, then search "mortgage broker" and your suburb. Note what comes up and what doesn't. If your aggregator profile is the only thing showing, and it's not ranking for any of the searches your clients actually make, that's the gap your own website fills. Copyburst does this audit with every broker we work with before we build anything. |
Does website speed really affect your enquiries?
It does, and it affects your rankings too. Google uses the mobile version of your site to decide where you rank, and slow loading is one of the clearest technical reasons a site underperforms. A borrower who clicks on your result from a phone and waits for it to load will go back and click the next broker instead.
Google measures page experience using Core Web Vitals. The "good" thresholds are: a page's largest content loading in 2.5 seconds or less, a response to interaction within 200 milliseconds, and minimal layout shift as things load (0.1 or less). These aren't the most important ranking factor (Google says helpful, relevant content comes first), but a slow or unstable page holds back an otherwise good site.
“When we look at a broker's existing site before a rebuild, speed is almost always the first thing we fix. Not because it's the biggest win, but because a slow site makes every other improvement harder and it's usually straightforward to sort out properly.”
Adam Maynard · Founder, Copyburst · Chat to Adam →
Speed is something a good build gets right from the start. It's a rebuild conversation when a broker's existing site is slow but otherwise close to what they need.
What's the catch with cheaper broker websites?
The real cost of a cheap website isn't the upfront price. It's what you spend to fix it later, or what you miss while it's not working. A $2,000 site that never ranks costs more over three years than a $8,000 site that brings in refinance clients from month one of an SEO campaign.
There are a few specific things to watch for:
- You don't own it: some builders and aggregators own your domain or your site files. If you leave, you lose everything including any rankings you've built. Always confirm ownership in writing before you sign.
- No redirect plan on a rebuild: if you change platforms or URLs without setting up permanent redirects from old pages to new ones, Google treats it as a new site and your existing rankings reset. As Google's own guidance says, site moves with URL changes require permanent redirects and rankings will fluctuate while Google processes them.
- Guaranteed rankings: Google's own guidance states clearly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Any website agency that promises a specific position or a number of leads as part of the sale is overpromising. The work drives the result; the result isn't a product.
| Expert tip Before you sign anything, ask the agency: who owns the domain, who owns the hosting, and who holds the login to the website platform? If the answer to any of those is "we do", ask why and what happens when you leave. Your website is a business asset. You should hold the keys to it the same way you hold your ABN. |
| Mortgage broker SEO Need help with a broker website that ranks? We help mortgage brokers get found first in Google, Google Maps and AI search.
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What else do brokers ask about website costs?
Will I lose my rankings if I move to a new website?
You can protect your rankings with permanent redirects from every old URL to its new equivalent. Google's guidance says to expect some fluctuation while it processes the move, but rankings typically recover. Skip the redirects and you're starting from scratch.
Do I need a blog on my broker website?
Not as a first priority. Getting the core service and local pages right matters more than a blog. Once those are in place, articles that answer the questions borrowers actually search (like "how much can I borrow as a self-employed person") can bring in additional traffic and build your authority.
How does website quality affect my Google Maps ranking?
More than most brokers expect. Google says local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that a business's position in web results is also a factor. A stronger website contributes to your Map Pack ranking, so the two aren't separate.
How does Copyburst approach building a broker website?
We start with search data: what your clients are actually looking for and where you're not showing up. From there we plan the page structure, write the content and build the site on Duda, with speed, mobile performance and local SEO built in. Everything is owned by you.
Can Copyburst rebuild my website as part of an SEO plan?
Yes. For brokers whose existing site is holding back their rankings, we build a new one as part of the broader SEO engagement. The design, content and structure are all planned around what you need to rank and convert, not done as a separate project and handed over.
Your next steps
Start by checking what your current site actually does for you. Search for the loan types you specialise in, in your area, and see whether your site appears. If it doesn't, you know the gap. From there, work out what kind of build closes it: a clean, fast, properly structured site with the pages your clients search for is the floor, not a premium. When you're ready to build a broker website that works for your brokerage, talk to our team.
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Sources and further reading
This article provides general information about SEO, AI search and digital marketing for mortgage and finance brokers. It is not credit assistance, financial, legal or tax advice, and does not take into account your business circumstances. Search, ranking and lead outcomes vary and are not guaranteed. Figures are sourced from the organisations named and were current at the time of writing.