How Much Does Malware Removal Cost? European Price Guide

The worst part of a compromised website is not knowing the price in advance. Quotes range from a couple of dozen euros for “a scan” to several thousand for recovering an online store, and the difference is almost never the hourly quality of the work — it is what is actually being delivered. This article sets out what malware removal really costs across Europe, what drives the price, and how to compare quotes.

The short answer

For an ordinary business website on Joomla or WordPress, 2026 prices look roughly like this:

• Security diagnostics (establishing scope and cause, without recovery): €60–100.
• Malware removal and recovery of a standard site: €250–500.
• Online store or extensive compromise: €500–1,200 and up.
• Ongoing management and monitoring: €30–100 per month.

Quotes under €120 usually mean running an automated scanner and deleting whatever it finds. That is a legitimate service — it just does not address the cause, which is why reinfection is considerably more common with it.

What drives the price

Six things matter more than the size of the site:

1. Scope of the compromise. One injected script in a template is a different job from an active web shell with access to the file system and the database.
2. State of the backups. A clean backup from before the incident can halve the price. No backup means rebuilding the site from whatever is left.
3. Whether the entry vector has to be traced. Cleaning alone is cheaper. Establishing how the attacker got in means log analysis, time correlation of file changes and account review — and it is the only way to prevent a repeat.
4. Age and state of the system. A site on an unmaintained CMS with abandoned extensions often cannot simply be cleaned — it needs migrating.
5. Operational criticality. An online store adds checks on orders, checkout, payments, webhooks and customer data, and often work outside peak hours.
6. Urgency. Weekend or out-of-hours work costs more practically everywhere.

What the same work costs across Europe

The European market splits into roughly three bands:

• Lower band, about €90–160 — individuals and small studios in France, Austria, Germany and the UK. Usually a cleanup with no forensic component.
• Middle band, about €250–460 — German, Dutch and Hungarian agencies. Includes a report and normally identification of the cause.
• Upper band, about €590–1,500 — large incidents, online stores, sites holding regulated data.

Central European quotes typically sit at the bottom of the lower band. That is not because the work is more efficient there — it is because a narrower scope is usually being sold. These figures are indicative and reflect the state of the market in 2026.

Why platform subscriptions are so cheap

The large platform services sell “unlimited malware removal” in an annual subscription that costs less than a single manual intervention — a few hundred euros a year. It looks like an obvious choice until you read what is done for it.

These services run automatically, at scale, and they are good at it: the scanner finds known patterns, deletes them and puts a firewall in front. What you typically do not get is a specific person who works out how the attacker got in, coordinates with your hosting provider, checks the orders in your store, and tells you whether the site is still worth cleaning or should be migrated instead. For a simple infection they are entirely sufficient. With a repeat infection or an active backdoor you reach their limit — and by then lost revenue has more than covered the price difference.

A practical rule: if your site has gone down twice within a few months, the scanner is not the problem. Nobody found the entry point.

What should be included

Quotes can only be compared once you know what to look for. Before ordering, ask:

• Is a forensic copy of the site and database taken before any work begins?
• Does it include tracing the entry vector, or only removing findings?
• Are core and extensions restored from verified sources, or are the detected files simply deleted?
• Is credential rotation and hardening included?
• Will I receive a written report of findings and actions taken?
• Does it cover the Google review request and communication with the hosting provider?
• What is the warranty and what exactly does it cover?
• What happens if the scope turns out to be larger mid-way — and who approves that?

The last point matters most in practice. The scope of a compromise can only be established reliably during diagnostics, so an honest quote has two stages: first find out what happened, then price the recovery. A fixed price with no diagnostics either carries a large contingency, or you learn the real scope on the invoice.

Beware the “it will never come back” warranty

No supplier can honestly guarantee a site will never be compromised again — new vulnerabilities keep appearing, and after handover the site runs under your management. A meaningful warranty is therefore always conditional: it covers the same incident or the same entry vector, for a defined period, provided the agreed updates and hardening are in place. An unlimited guarantee against anything future is a marketing phrase, not a commitment.

Our pricing

So this does not end in generic bands — here is how we work:

• Security diagnostics €65–85. A standalone deliverable: report of findings, scope, probable cause and a recommended plan. Credited against the recovery if you order one.
• Website recovery €290–410 depending on incident scope, including the forensic copy, clean restoration, hardening and a final report.
• Conditional 30-day warranty on the same entry vector once the agreed measures are in place.
• Ongoing management €35 / €65 / €105 per month depending on the level of oversight and response time.

The costs that never appear on the invoice

The direct price of the intervention is usually the smaller item next to what surrounds it: orders lost while the site is blocked, clicks lost while Google shows a warning, hours spent corresponding with the hosting provider, and — for sites holding customer data — assessing whether a notification obligation arose. That is precisely why paying to trace the cause is worth it: the most expensive malware removal is the one you repeat a month later.

Frequently asked questions

Why can’t you quote a price over the phone?

We can quote a range and the price of diagnostics. The specific recovery price only exists once the scope is known — anything else is an estimate that either carries a large contingency or does not hold.

Is cleaning cheaper than rebuilding?

For an ordinary site, cleaning is cheaper. For a very old system with unmaintained extensions, migrating to a current version is usually the better investment — a restored site on an obsolete platform will be vulnerable again.

Does WordPress cost more than Joomla?

The scope of the incident drives the price far more than the platform. WordPress sites tend to carry more extensions and therefore a larger surface to check; older Joomla sites more often combine outdated components with compromised accounts.

Do I still pay for diagnostics if the site turns out to be clean?

Yes — diagnostics is standalone work and its output has value even when the result is negative. You learn the problem lies elsewhere and avoid paying for a recovery you do not need.

Will insurance cover it?

Some corporate cyber-risk policies cover costs like these. They require documentation of the incident — another reason a written report is worth having.

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