Design and ship production websites with AI — from prompt to live site without writing code.
Framer is a website builder that combines designer-grade visual control with AI assistance and production hosting — letting you design a site visually and publish it live without hand-coding. It occupies a distinct space: more design-focused and polished than typical site builders, but more accessible than coding a site from scratch. Its AI features include AI Wireframer for generating layouts and AI Workshop as a coding assistant, plus AI translation and third-party AI plugins (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini).
Framer overhauled its pricing in October 2025. The current tiers are Free (design and try, with Framer branding and a framer.website subdomain), Basic ($10/mo annually) which removes branding and adds a free custom domain and 30 site pages, Pro ($30/mo annually) with 150 pages, more CMS capacity, staging, roles, and analytics, and Scale ($100/mo) and Enterprise for larger needs. Monthly billing runs noticeably higher than annual.
Its strength is design quality with real publishing. Framer produces genuinely polished, animated, responsive sites that look custom-designed, and it handles hosting, CMS, and SEO basics so you ship a real site, not just a mockup. For designers, marketers, and founders who want a beautiful site without a developer, it hits a sweet spot.
The honest weaknesses: it has a steeper learning curve than drag-and-drop builders aimed at total beginners, the page and CMS limits on lower tiers can force an upgrade as a site grows, and it is a website tool — not an interface-design tool for app UI, where Figma is the right choice. For quick marketing graphics rather than full sites, Canva is more appropriate. Framer is best when the deliverable is a polished, published website.
Who it is for: designers, marketers, and founders who want to design and publish a beautiful, custom-feeling website without coding. Who it is not for: people who want the simplest possible drag-and-drop builder, or those designing app interfaces rather than websites (use Figma).
Framer's core: building polished, animated, responsive marketing and landing sites that look custom-coded, then publishing them live with hosting included. Designers and founders use it to ship beautiful sites without handing off to a developer.
AI Wireframer generates layout structures from prompts, giving a starting point that designers refine. Combined with AI Workshop (a coding assistant) and AI plugins, it speeds up the from-scratch phase of building a site.
Framer's built-in CMS lets teams run blogs, case-study libraries, and other structured content with design control. Higher tiers raise the CMS item and collection limits for content-heavy sites.
After its October 2025 overhaul, Framer offers Free ($0, design and try with Framer branding and a subdomain), Basic ($10/mo annually, $15 monthly — removes branding, free custom domain, 30 pages, 1 CMS collection), Pro ($30/mo annually, $45 monthly — 150 pages, 10 CMS collections, 2,500 CMS items, staging, roles, redirects, 90-day analytics), Scale ($100/mo annually, with expandable add-ons), and Enterprise (custom). The older Mini ($5) and several other tiers were removed in the overhaul. The trap: page, CMS-item, and bandwidth limits on lower tiers can force an upgrade as a site grows, and monthly billing is meaningfully more expensive than annual.
Both, in a sense — you design visually and publish a live, hosted website from the same tool. It is more design-focused than typical site builders but is specifically for building and shipping websites, not for designing app interfaces (that is Figma's domain).
Framer includes AI Wireframer for generating layouts, AI Workshop as a coding assistant, AI translation, and integrations with third-party AI (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) for content and image generation. These speed up building but the core value is still the visual design-and-publish workflow.
For trying it or building a template, yes, but a real published site generally needs Basic ($10/mo) or higher — the free tier shows Framer branding and uses a framer.website subdomain. Basic removes branding and adds a free custom domain and 30 pages.
Framer is for designing and publishing actual websites; Figma is for interface design, design systems, and developer handoff. If your deliverable is a live website, Framer; if it is app UI or a design system, Figma. They solve different problems and many teams use both.
Yes. In October 2025 Framer overhauled its pricing, removing older tiers like Mini ($5) and restructuring into Free, Basic ($10), Pro ($30), Scale ($100), and Enterprise. Annual billing is required to hit the advertised rates; monthly billing is meaningfully higher.
Full review coming soon.