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Framer

Innovation

A design canvas that publishes production sites, now with agents doing the first draft

Framer is a no-code website and landing page builder from Amsterdam that combines a Figma-style design canvas with a built-in CMS, hosting on a global CDN, A/B testing, analytics, localization, and a set of AI agents that generate and edit pages directly on the canvas, aimed at designers, marketers, and startup teams who want brand-quality pages without a front-end developer.

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Overview

Framer spent its first seven years as a prototyping and design-handoff tool before launching Sites in May 2022 and pivoting the whole company into web publishing. That history is the single most useful thing to know about it: the editor is a real design canvas with layers, stacks, breakpoints, components, and variants, not a block-stacking template wizard. Designers who already think in Figma terms are productive in an afternoon; marketers who have only ever used a section-based builder need a week to stop fighting it.

The product now spans the whole lifecycle of a marketing site: a CMS with collections for blogs and case studies, a WordPress importer, localization across languages, built-in forms, first-party analytics, page-level A/B testing, staging environments with branch previews on the Pro plan, and hosting Framer claims runs at 99.99% uptime with Core Web Vitals numbers it publishes on its own homepage (an LCP of 1.1 seconds and a CLS of 0.01). Perplexity, Miro, Scale AI, and Zapier are among the companies Framer names as customers.

The 2026 version of Framer leads with agents: a design agent that generates and refines layouts in place on the canvas, a CMS agent that builds and populates collections, and a code agent that turns described interactions into working code. Framer also connects to outside assistants including Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Cursor, so a copy change can be triggered from Slack or a terminal. All of that draws from a monthly AI credit allotment, which is the part of the pricing worth watching: 500 credits on Free, 1,000 a month on Basic, 3,000 a month on Pro.

Best for

Design-led startups and small marketing teams that want a genuinely custom-looking marketing site or landing page set, have someone comfortable with a design canvas, and would rather ship and iterate themselves than queue work behind an engineering sprint.

Not the right fit for

  • Performance marketers who need dozens of near-identical paid-traffic variants generated fast; Framer has A/B testing but no programmatic page generation, and building variant number thirty by hand on a canvas is miserable work.
  • Teams with no design capability at all; the agents produce a decent first draft, but the canvas rewards someone who can tell a good layout from a bad one and will punish someone who cannot.
  • Anyone who needs to own the output; Framer sites are hosted by Framer, and there is no meaningful export path to self-hosting if you later want off the platform.
  • Content-heavy publishers pushing tens of thousands of entries; published CMS item ceilings top out well below what a real editorial operation needs, even with add-ons.
  • Budget-constrained teams with many collaborators; $20 per editor per month on top of per-site plans adds up faster than the headline $10 site price suggests.

How it works

  1. 1

    You create a project in a workspace and design on an infinite canvas. Layout uses stacks and grids rather than absolute positioning, so pages reflow across the breakpoints you define (desktop, tablet, phone, plus custom ones). Reusable components with variants stand in for a template system, and effects such as scroll-linked animation and appear transitions are configured in the properties panel rather than written by hand.

  2. 2

    Dynamic content lives in CMS collections: you define fields, add items, and bind a template page to the collection so every item renders at its own URL. Framer will import an existing WordPress blog into a collection, and the CMS agent can scaffold the collection structure and fill it from a prompt or an existing source rather than making you define every field manually.

  3. 3

    Publishing is one button. Framer builds the site and serves it from its own CDN with SSL, sitemaps, and meta tags handled for you; a custom domain is connected on any paid site plan, while Free sites stay on a framer.website subdomain. From there the optimization layer takes over: built-in analytics report traffic and conversions, and A/B tests split visitors across page variants without a third-party script.

  4. 4

    Billing follows the site, not the account. Each site in a workspace carries its own Free, Basic, or Pro plan, and editor seats are billed separately at $20 per editor per month (content-editor seats with CMS-only access are $10, viewers are free). The highest-tier site plan in a workspace sets the editor limits and per-seat price for the entire workspace, which catches teams out when a single Pro site upgrades the cost of everyone else's access.

Feature breakdown

26 features in 5 modules

Design canvas

The part that separates Framer from block-based builders: an actual design tool that publishes.
Infinite canvas editor
A Figma-style workspace with layers, frames, and direct manipulation, rather than a vertical list of pre-built sections you fill in.
Stacks, grids, and breakpoints
Layout is built from flex-style stacks and grids that reflow across desktop, tablet, and phone breakpoints, with custom breakpoints available.
Components and variants
Reusable components with named variants handle navigation bars, cards, and buttons across a site; editing the component updates every instance.
Effects and interactions
Scroll-linked animation, appear transitions, and hover states are configured in the properties panel; Framer's animation heritage shows here and it is noticeably better than most competitors.
Template marketplace
A large catalog of paid and free community templates, useful as a starting structure for teams that do not want to design from nothing.
Plugins
A plugin system extends the editor with third-party utilities for icons, images, SEO checks, and data import.

Content and CMS

Dynamic content for blogs, case studies, changelogs, and programmatic-ish page sets.
CMS collections
Typed collections bind to template pages so every entry renders at its own URL; Free includes 10 collections, Basic 2, Pro 10, with up to 40 available via add-ons.
CMS item limits
Published ceilings are 1,000 items on Free and Basic and 2,500 on Pro, extendable to 40,000 with paid add-ons, which is the practical ceiling for content-heavy sites.
WordPress import
An importer pulls an existing WordPress blog into a Framer CMS collection, the most common migration path onto the platform.
Localization
Multi-language sites are managed inside the same project with per-locale content, rather than duplicating the whole site per language.
Forms
Native form elements capture submissions without an embedded third-party widget, with routing to email and connected tools.

AI agents

The 2026 headline feature, and the reason credits now appear on every plan.
Design agent on canvas
Generates and refines layouts, components, and sections directly in the project; Framer's pitch is that every generated change stays visible and editable rather than arriving as a black box.
CMS agent
Sets up collection structure, populates entries, and wires the collection to canvas templates so content and design stay in sync.
Code agent
Turns described interactions and effects into working code components that deploy to the live site.
External assistant connections
Framer connects to Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Cursor, so page edits can be triggered from a terminal, a Slack message, or a GitHub pull request.
Credit metering
AI work draws from a monthly credit pool: 500 credits to try on Free, 1,000 per month on Basic, 3,000 per month on Pro. Heavy agent use is a second cost line, not a free feature.

Hosting, performance, and SEO

What happens after publish, which is where hosted builders usually get judged.
Managed CDN hosting
Sites are built and served from Framer's own infrastructure with SSL included; the vendor advertises 99.99% uptime.
Core Web Vitals posture
Framer publishes its own field numbers on the homepage (LCP 1.1s, CLS 0.01) and treats page speed as a selling point against WordPress stacks.
Built-in SEO controls
Per-page meta tags, sitemap generation, and redirects are handled in-product without a plugin.
Bandwidth tiers
1 GB on Free, 50 GB on Basic, 100 GB on Pro, up to 2 TB with add-ons; bandwidth is the limit most growing sites hit first.
Page limits
30 pages on Free, 150 on Basic, and up to 700 on Pro with add-ons, which matters for anyone planning a large location or use-case page set.

Optimization and collaboration

Testing, measurement, and how a team actually works in the same project.
A/B testing
Split traffic across page variants natively, with results reported in Framer rather than requiring an external experimentation tool.
Built-in analytics
First-party traffic and conversion reporting inside the project, enough for basic performance reads without adding a separate analytics script.
Real-time multiplayer editing
Multiple editors work in the same project simultaneously with live cursors, the same collaboration model designers expect from Figma.
Staging and branching
Pro plans add a staging environment and branches with shareable previews, so a redesign can be reviewed before it replaces the live site.
Editor and content-editor seats
Full editors cost $20 per month each; content-editor seats with CMS access and a simplified toolset are $10; viewers are free.

Use cases

4 documented

Seed-stage founder replacing a template site before a launch

The current site is a generic theme, the fundraise announcement is in three weeks, and there is no designer or front-end engineer on payroll.

A community template plus the design agent produces a credible first draft in a day, and the founder refines it on the canvas without waiting on an agency; a $10 Basic site plan and a custom domain get it live.

Design lead at a Series A SaaS company

Marketing wants to ship pages weekly, but every change currently goes through an engineering ticket against a Next.js marketing repo.

The marketing site moves to Framer on a Pro plan with staging and branch previews, and the design team ships directly while engineering keeps the product app; the tradeoff is that the site now lives on Framer's hosting.

Content marketer migrating a WordPress blog

A WordPress install with a few hundred posts is slow, plugin-fragile, and a security chore nobody wants to own.

The WordPress importer moves posts into a CMS collection bound to a Framer template, killing the plugin surface entirely; the constraint is the CMS item ceiling, which needs checking against the archive size before committing.

Solo consultant selling design services

Needs a portfolio and a handful of service landing pages that look better than a template, and does not want to pay for a page-per-month platform.

One Basic site plan at $10 a month covers 150 pages and 50 GB of bandwidth with no per-visitor metering, which is dramatically cheaper than any conversion-focused landing page tool at comparable traffic.

Pricing

from $10/mo (Basic, per site)

Per-site subscription (each site in a workspace carries its own plan) plus separately billed editor seats, with monthly AI credit allotments per tier and add-ons for bandwidth, pages, and CMS capacity.

PlanPriceIncludes
Free$0
per site
  • 1 GB bandwidth
  • 30 pages, 1,000 CMS items
  • 500 AI credits (one-time trial allotment)
  • framer.website subdomain only

A genuinely usable free tier for a personal or pre-launch page, but the 1 GB bandwidth cap is thin and there is no custom domain.

Basic$10
per site, per month
  • Custom domain
  • 50 GB bandwidth
  • 150 pages, 2 CMS collections, 1,000 CMS items
  • 1,000 AI credits per month
  • Built-in SEO

The right plan for most single marketing sites; the CMS drops to 2 collections here, which is a real constraint if you want a blog plus case studies plus a changelog.

Pro$30
per site, per month
  • 100 GB bandwidth
  • 10 CMS collections, 2,500 CMS items
  • 3,000 AI credits per month
  • Staging environment and branches with previews

Add-ons extend Pro to 700 pages, 40 CMS collections, 40,000 CMS items, and 2 TB bandwidth at additional cost.

EnterpriseCustom
quoted annually
  • Custom limits
  • Unlimited editors
  • Enterprise-grade security controls

Quote-only; not required for anything a small team is likely to need.

Add-ons

  • Editor seat ($20 per editor per month): Billed separately from site plans; the highest-tier site plan in a workspace sets the per-seat price and editor limits for the whole workspace.
  • Content editor seat ($10 per seat per month): Full CMS access with a simplified toolset, for writers who should not be moving layout.
  • Capacity add-ons (Priced per increment): Extra bandwidth, pages, CMS collections, and CMS items on Pro, up to 2 TB, 700 pages, 40 collections, and 40,000 items.

Billing notes

  • Pricing is per site, not per account: a workspace with three separate marketing sites pays three plans, which surprises agencies and multi-brand teams.
  • Editor seats are the hidden cost. A four-person marketing team on one Pro site is $30 for the site plus $60 to $80 in seats, not $30.
  • The highest-tier site plan in a workspace determines editor pricing and limits for every site in it, so upgrading one site raises the cost of collaborating on all of them.
  • Bandwidth overage is handled leniently at first: Framer allows an overage for one month with an email and an in-product banner, prompts an upgrade if it continues into a second month, and may auto-upgrade the site or charge an overage fee on sustained overages.
  • AI credits reset monthly on paid plans (1,000 on Basic, 3,000 on Pro); the Free tier's 500 credits are a trial allotment rather than a monthly refill.
  • Yearly billing is offered at a discount to the monthly rates shown, and Framer advertises a free custom domain with paid site plans.

Value assessment: Framer is the best capability-per-dollar buy in this group for a design-capable team. $10 a month for a custom domain, 150 pages, 50 GB of bandwidth, and no visitor metering is an order of magnitude cheaper than any conversion-optimization platform at the same traffic, and the design ceiling is far higher than Carrd or Umso can reach. The cost model punishes two things specifically: many sites, because plans are per site, and many collaborators, because seats are $20 each. Price a realistic team before comparing the headline number to anything else.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

  • The best design ceiling of any no-code builder at this price; teams that care how a page looks are not fighting the tool to get there.
  • Animation and interaction quality is a genuine differentiator, inherited from Framer's years as a prototyping tool rather than bolted on.
  • Bandwidth-based pricing rather than visitor-based pricing means a page that suddenly gets traffic does not trigger a plan jump or a bill shock the way conversion-platform metering does.
  • The full stack is in one product: CMS, localization, forms, analytics, A/B testing, staging, and hosting, with no plugin ecosystem to maintain.
  • Agents produce editable output on the canvas rather than opaque generated pages, which keeps the human in control of the result.
  • Real-time multiplayer editing and branch previews make it workable for a team, not just a solo builder.

Limitations

  • Per-site pricing plus $20 editor seats makes multi-site or multi-collaborator setups much more expensive than the $10 headline implies.
  • CMS ceilings (1,000 items on Basic, 2,500 on Pro before add-ons) rule Framer out for real publishing operations.
  • No export to self-hosting: the site lives on Framer's infrastructure permanently, and leaving means rebuilding.
  • The learning curve is real for non-designers. A marketer used to section-based builders will be slower in Framer for the first week, not faster.
  • No programmatic page generation, so paid-search teams needing large sets of near-identical variants will find it manual compared with Landingi or Unbounce.
  • AI credits are a metered second bill that is easy to underestimate if agents become part of the daily workflow.

Head-to-head comparisons

4 alternatives

Framer vs Carrd

from $9/year (Pro Lite)

Carrd is $19 a year for ten sites and does one thing: fast, simple, single-page sites. Framer is $10 a month per site and gives you a full design canvas, a CMS, and A/B testing. If the page is a link-in-bio, a waitlist, or a one-screen pitch, Carrd wins on cost and speed by a wide margin; the moment you need a blog, breakpoint control, or a real brand look, Framer is the one that scales with you.

Full Framer vs Carrd comparison

Framer vs Umso

from $7/mo (Basic, billed annually) or $14/mo billed monthly

Umso deliberately removes options so a non-designer cannot make an ugly site, and it charges $7 to $20 a month per site with unlimited users. Framer gives you every option and charges $20 per editor on top of the site plan. Pick Umso when nobody on the team is a designer and the site just needs to look professional; pick Framer when someone can design and the site is a brand asset you want control over.

Full Framer vs Umso comparison

Framer vs Landingi

from $24/mo (Build, billed annually)

Landingi is a landing page operations system with programmatic page generation, server-side A/B/X testing, and 170-plus integrations, priced from $24 a month against a 2,000-visitor cap. Framer has far better design output and no visitor metering at all. Choose Landingi when you need to produce and test many campaign pages against a CRM; choose Framer when the design quality of a smaller number of pages matters more than the volume.

Full Framer vs Landingi comparison

Framer vs Unbounce

from $22/mo (Starter, billed annually) or $29/mo billed monthly

These solve different problems that look the same. Unbounce meters visitors, routes them with Smart Traffic, and exists to lift paid-campaign conversion rates. Framer meters bandwidth and exists to build a site. A performance marketer running six-figure ad spend gets more from Unbounce's optimization layer; everyone building a marketing site rather than a campaign funnel gets far more for the money from Framer.

Full Framer vs Unbounce comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time
A template-based site can be live on a custom domain the same day. A custom-designed marketing site is typically one to three weeks of design work, which is the real cost and has nothing to do with the tool's setup.
Learning curve
Low for designers already fluent in Figma; moderate to steep for marketers who have only used section-based builders, because stacks, breakpoints, and components require a mental model those tools hide.
Onboarding
Fully self-serve. Extensive official documentation, an academy with structured courses, and a large community of template creators; no assigned onboarding on standard plans.
Migration notes
The WordPress importer handles blog content into a CMS collection; everything else is a rebuild. Leaving Framer later is the harder direction, since there is no export to self-hostable code, so treat the platform choice as sticky.

Platform, API & security

Platforms
Web appmacOS and Windows desktop appsPublished sites served from Framer's CDN
API
No general public REST API for site management on standard plans; automation is instead exposed through agent connections to external AI tools including Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Cursor, plus a plugin API for extending the editor.
Compliance
GDPR-aligned processesEnterprise-grade security controls on the Enterprise tier (specifics quoted, not published)
Data residency
Not publicly specified for standard plans.
SSO
Available on Enterprise; not published as part of Basic or Pro.
Security notes
Sites are hosted and served entirely by Framer with SSL provisioned automatically; customers do not manage servers, and correspondingly do not control where the site is served from or hold an exportable copy of it.

Support & resources

Channels
Email supportIn-app support for paid plansPriority support on Enterprise
Documentation
Thorough official documentation plus Framer Academy courses and a large library of published tutorials.
Community
Very active community of template designers and plugin developers, with an official community forum and a large third-party ecosystem on YouTube and social platforms.

Company

Founded
2015
Headquarters
Amsterdam, Netherlands (with teams in San Francisco, New York, and Barcelona)
Ownership
Venture-backed, privately held
Founders
Koen Bok, Jorn van Dijk
Employees
Not officially disclosed; third-party trackers estimated roughly 740 as of mid-2026, up sharply after the 2025 Series D
Funding
Approximately $163M raised across five rounds; last valued at $2B in the August 2025 Series D.

Funding history

RoundAmountYearNotes
Series C$27M2023Led by Meritech Capital; brought total raised to $87M at the time.
Series D$100M2025Led by Meritech and Atomico with WiL and HV participating, at a $2B valuation.

Timeline

  1. 2015Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk found Framer in Amsterdam after their previous studio, Sofa, was acquired by Facebook; the first product is a design, prototyping, and developer-handoff tool.
  2. 2022Framer Sites launches in May, turning a prototyping tool into a website builder and beginning the company's full pivot to web publishing.
  3. 2023$27M Series C led by Meritech Capital, with the company reporting more than 20% month-on-month growth since the Sites launch.
  4. 2025$100M Series D led by Meritech and Atomico at a $2B valuation, funding US expansion and AI development.
  5. 2026AI agents ship natively on the canvas (design, CMS, and code), credit-metered plans replace the older pricing, and Framer opens connections to external assistants including Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Cursor.

Integrations

  • WordPress (blog import)
  • Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Cursor (agent connections)
  • Google Analytics and third-party analytics scripts via custom code
  • Form submission routing to email and connected tools
  • Framer plugin ecosystem (icons, images, SEO, data import)
  • Custom code embeds for any script-based tool

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

Is Framer free?

Yes, there is a permanent free plan: 1 GB of bandwidth, up to 30 pages, 1,000 CMS items, and 500 AI credits, published on a framer.website subdomain with Framer branding. Connecting a custom domain requires the Basic plan at $10 per site per month.

How much does Framer actually cost for a team?

More than the headline. Site plans are $10 (Basic) or $30 (Pro) per site per month, and editor seats are billed separately at $20 each per month ($10 for content-editor seats). A four-person team on one Pro site is roughly $90 to $110 a month, not $30.

Is Framer priced per site or per account?

Per site. Every site in a workspace carries its own Free, Basic, or Pro plan, so running three separate marketing sites means paying three plans. Editor seats, by contrast, are workspace-level, and the highest-tier site plan in the workspace sets the seat price for everyone.

What happens if a Framer site exceeds its bandwidth limit?

Framer allows the overage for one month and notifies you by email and with an in-product banner. If it continues into a second month you are prompted to upgrade, and on sustained overages Framer may automatically upgrade the site plan or apply an overage charge. It does not take the site down on the first breach.

Can you export a Framer site and host it yourself?

No. Framer sites are built and served from Framer's own CDN, and there is no export path to self-hostable code on standard plans. That is the main lock-in to weigh before committing a marketing site to the platform.

Does Framer have a CMS, and how big can it get?

Yes. CMS collections bind to template pages so each entry gets its own URL, and there is a WordPress importer. Capacity is the constraint: 1,000 items on Free and Basic, 2,500 on Pro, extendable to 40,000 with paid add-ons. That is fine for a startup blog and too small for a real publisher.

What are Framer AI credits and do they run out?

Credits meter the AI agents that generate designs, build CMS collections, and write code components. Free includes a one-time 500-credit allotment, Basic refills 1,000 a month, and Pro refills 3,000 a month. Heavy daily agent use will exhaust a Basic allotment, so budget agents as a metered cost rather than a free feature.

Is Framer good for SEO?

It is competent: per-page meta tags, sitemaps, redirects, and localization are built in, and Framer publishes strong Core Web Vitals numbers (an LCP of 1.1 seconds and a CLS of 0.01 on its own homepage). It is not a substitute for content strategy, and the CMS ceilings limit how large a programmatic SEO play you can run on it.

Framer or Webflow?

Webflow gives more control over the underlying markup, a deeper CMS, and a bigger enterprise footprint; Framer is faster to design in, better at animation, and cheaper at the entry point. For a startup marketing site with a design-minded owner, Framer usually wins on time to launch; for a large content operation or a team that needs precise CSS control, Webflow still has the edge.

Who owns Framer and is it financially stable?

Framer is an independent, venture-backed Dutch company founded in 2015 by Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk. It has raised roughly $163M across five rounds, most recently a $100M Series D in August 2025 led by Meritech and Atomico at a $2B valuation, so funding risk is not a near-term concern.

Editorial verdict

Framer is the strongest all-round pick in this category for a startup that has anyone with design taste on the team. It replaced a genuinely hard problem (custom-looking, fast, CMS-backed marketing sites without engineers) with a $10 a month site plan, and the animation and layout quality are better than anything else at the price. Two caveats matter before you commit: the per-site plans plus $20 editor seats mean a real team pays several times the headline number, and there is no export, so the site lives on Framer's infrastructure for as long as it lives. If those are acceptable, it is the default choice; if you need campaign-page volume, visitor-level optimization, or CRM-native testing, buy a conversion platform instead.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.

Awards & badges

1 held

Framer holds 1 award from the SaaSTracker editorial program. Badges may be displayed by the vendor; each embed links back to this profile.

SAASTRACKER AWARDS SUMMER 2026 Innovation FRAMER

Innovation · Landing Page Builders

“A design canvas that publishes production sites, with agents now doing the first draft.”

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