Why do quotes vary so much?

A text-only agenda takes minutes to fix; a form with dozens of fields, a complex financial table or an infographic can take an hour or more. Vendors price by complexity tier, and some only quote after seeing the files.

Is automated remediation good enough?

For text documents exported from Word or Excel, often yes, with a quick human check. For forms, designed newsletters and complex tables, plan on human review or manual remediation.

What does it cost to do it ourselves?

An Adobe Acrobat Pro license plus staff time. Trained staff can fix a simple short document quickly; long or complex documents take much longer.

Guides › Cost

How much does PDF remediation cost per page?

Short answer: Manual PDF remediation services publish prices from about $4 per page for simple documents to $11.50 or more for complex ones, and some estimates run $30 to $80 per page for complex layouts and forms. Automated services with published prices charge roughly $0.45 to $2 per page. Complexity (tables, forms, images, scans) drives the price more than page count.

Published prices, November 2026

Provider type	Example	Price per page
Manual service, simple documents	Accessible.org	$4.00 to $7.50
Manual service, advanced documents	Accessible.org	$7.50 to $11.50
Manual service, complex documents	Accessible.org	$11.50 and up
Manual service, estimate by complexity	508 Blueprint (simple / medium / complex)	about $30 / $50 / $80
Automated, structural fixes only	Fruition Basic	$0.50 (10 pages/month free)
Automated, with AI alt text and semantics	Fruition Full AI	$2.00
Automated, with alt text, headings and report	PDFAccessly	$0.45 to $0.78 (5 pages/month free)

Prices are as published on each provider’s site when we checked. Many enterprise vendors do not publish prices and quote per project.

What drives the price

Document type. Agendas, minutes and memos are cheap. Forms, financial tables, maps and infographics are expensive.
Source quality. A PDF exported from a well-structured Word file needs little work. A scan needs OCR first. A designed brochure needs its reading order rebuilt.
Volume. Most vendors discount large batches.
Turnaround and guarantees. Rush jobs, human QA and compliance attestations cost more.

A realistic budget

For a small government with a few hundred active PDFs, a common split is:

Text documents (the majority): automated remediation, spot-checked by staff.
Forms and complex documents (a minority): manual remediation by a vendor or a trained staff member.
Old reference documents: moved to an archive area instead of remediated. See do old PDFs need to be accessible.

Example: 300 active documents averaging 6 pages is 1,800 pages. At $0.45 per page that is about $810 for automated remediation. If 10% of pages need manual work at $10 per page, add $1,800.

How to reduce cost

Archive what is only kept for reference.
Replace PDFs with web pages where you can; HTML is easier to make accessible.
Fix new documents at the source in Word before exporting.
Check files for free first to see which ones actually fail.

Frequently asked questions

Why do quotes vary so much?: A text-only agenda takes minutes to fix; a form with dozens of fields, a complex financial table or an infographic can take an hour or more. Vendors price by complexity tier, and some only quote after seeing the files.
Is automated remediation good enough?: For text documents exported from Word or Excel, often yes, with a quick human check. For forms, designed newsletters and complex tables, plan on human review or manual remediation.
What does it cost to do it ourselves?: An Adobe Acrobat Pro license plus staff time. Trained staff can fix a simple short document quickly; long or complex documents take much longer.