Best Free Website Builders 2026: 6 Options Compared

A free website builder is a trade between time and presence. The free plans here let you publish a real site without paying, but they put the vendor's name in your address and often show an advertisement or badge, and the features that make a site look professional, mainly a custom domain, sit behind the first paid tier. That is fine for a class project, a hobby page or a test of an idea. It is a weak choice for a business card that customers will find through search, because you will probably upgrade within a year. Choose by the kind of site. Carrd is built for one-page links and landing pages. Wix and Jimdo suit small multi-page sites with a drag-and-drop editor. Framer is stronger on design and animation. WordPress.com is the pick if you plan to blog, since the content moves to self-hosted WordPress later. Webstudio is open source and can be self-hosted, which removes the vendor subdomain problem if you can run it. Before you invest hours in any of them, look at how you would export your pages, because moving a site between builders is usually a rebuild, not a copy. Compare the first paid plan, not only the free one, because that is where most sites end up.

Wix

A drag-and-drop builder with a free plan at $0 and no card required. Paid plans start at $17.77 a month on a yearly term, and custom domains need one of them.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0, no credit card required (Wix-branded domain and ads not checked)); paid from $17.77 per month, Light plan, yearly subscription paid in full at purchase (Wix pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary.

Best for: Small business and portfolio sites.

Compare: Wix alternatives

WordPress.com

The free plan has 1 GB storage, a WordPress.com subdomain, no plugin installation and ads. It is a hosted route into WordPress, with Personal at $2.75 a month on a three-year term.

Price: Free (Free plan: 1 GB storage, WordPress.com subdomain only, no plugin installation, WordPress.com ads shown); paid from $2.75 per month, billed every 3 years (Personal) (WordPress.com pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary hosted service.

Best for: Bloggers who may move to WordPress later.

Worth knowing: The free plan has no custom domain.

Framer

Free plan includes 500 AI credits, 1 GB bandwidth, a free Framer domain, 10 CMS collections and up to three editors. Custom domains need Basic at $10 a month.

Price: Free (Free plan at $0: 500 AI credits to try, 1 GB bandwidth, a free Framer domain, 10 CMS collections, 1,000 pages, up to three editors; custom domains need a paid plan); paid from $10 per per month, billed monthly or yearly (Basic) (Framer pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary.

Best for: Designers who want polished animated pages.

Compare: Framer alternatives

Carrd

One-page site builder with a free plan; the Pro Lite plan is $9 a year for up to 3 sites. Check the pricing page for free-plan limits.

Price: Free (Free plan available; see the pricing page for Pro limits); paid from $9 per year, billed yearly (Pro Lite, 3 sites) (Carrd pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web browser. Proprietary SaaS.

Best for: Link-in-bio and single landing pages.

Worth knowing: Pro Standard (10 sites) is $19 per year and adds custom domains and forms. A 7-day Pro trial is available.

Compare: Carrd alternatives

Webstudio

Open-source visual builder that you can self-host, so you are not tied to a vendor subdomain. Check the pricing page for hosted plans.

Price: Free (Core is open source and self-hostable; hosted-plan pricing was not readable) (Webstudio pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, Self-hosted. AGPL-3.0-or-later (core); sdk-components-animation is proprietary (open source).

Project activity: 9.1k GitHub stars · latest release 0.308.0 (Oct 26, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: Designers comfortable with self-hosting.

Jimdo

Offers a Free plan according to its pricing FAQ, with paid plans billed monthly or over 12 or 24 months. Check the plan page for storage, page and domain limits before you commit.

Price: Free (A Free plan exists per the pricing page FAQ; its storage, page and domain limits were not shown in our fetch) (Jimdo pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: Web browser. Proprietary.

Best for: Beginners who want a simple editor.

Which one to pick

• You need a one-page link site: Carrd
• You want a visual design with animations: Framer
• You plan to blog: WordPress.com
• You want to avoid vendor lock-in: Webstudio
• You want a small business site with many templates: Wix