Framer Free Plan: What's Included (and What's Not)

Framer's free plan gets you the full visual editor, unlimited building and learning, and a live published site — but only on a `framer.website` subdomain, with a "Made in Framer" badge displayed, and no custom domain support. It's a genuinely capable sandbox for exploring the platform or prototyping a design, not a production tier for a real business site. The moment you need your own domain — which is most businesses — you're looking at the Basic plan starting at $10/month, per Framer's official pricing page.

Here's exactly what each tier includes, who each one is actually for, and how to decide when it's time to pay.

What's included in the free plan

Based on Framer's pricing page and its guide to best use cases for each plan, the free tier gives you:

• Full editor access. Every design tool, component system, animation feature, and layout control available on higher tiers is available for free — Framer doesn't gate the actual building experience behind a paywall.
• A live, published site. You're not limited to draft/preview mode — you can genuinely publish and share a working site with anyone.
• A framer.website subdomain. Your site is reachable at something like `yourproject.framer.website` rather than your own domain.
• A "Made in Framer" badge. Displayed on the published site, clearly signaling it's a free-tier project.
• A capped AI credit allowance. If you use Framer Agents or other AI-assisted features, free accounts get a limited, periodically-resetting credit pool.
• CMS and page limits. The free tier caps how many CMS collection items and pages you can have live at once — enough for a small project, tight for anything content-heavy.

This is a substantial amount of real capability for zero dollars. You can fully build, test, and preview a production-quality site before ever entering a payment method — which is exactly the point.

What the free plan does not include

The gap between free and paid is narrow but decisive for anyone building a real business site:

• No custom domain. This is the single biggest reason people upgrade. A `framer.website` subdomain undermines brand credibility and, as covered in [our Framer SEO guide](/blog/is-framer-good-for-seo), affects how link equity and brand search accrue to your actual domain rather than a third-party one.
• The "Made in Framer" badge stays visible. For a portfolio or personal experiment, this is a non-issue. For a company site, it reads as unfinished or unprofessional to most visitors.
• Limited CMS capacity. If you're running a blog, case studies, or any recurring content type at real volume, the free tier's item cap becomes a real constraint quickly.
• Limited AI credits. Heavy use of Framer Agents to generate or iterate on a site will exhaust the free allowance faster than casual exploration would.
• No advanced settings like password-protected pages or certain advanced SEO controls that ship on higher tiers.

Who the free plan is actually right for

Be honest about your use case rather than defaulting to "free is always better until forced otherwise." The free plan is a strong fit if:

• You're learning Framer and want to explore the editor without any commitment.
• You're prototyping a design for internal review or client sign-off before committing to a paid plan and a domain.
• You're building a personal project — a portfolio, an experiment, a one-off page — where a `framer.website` URL and a small badge genuinely don't matter.
• You want to fully test the platform — build a real multi-page site, try the CMS, test animations — before deciding whether Framer fits your workflow at all.

This last point matters: because the free tier includes full editor access, you can make a real, informed decision about Framer before spending anything. That's a meaningfully different value proposition than platforms that gate core building features behind a paywall from day one.

When you need Basic ($10/month tier)

Upgrade to Basic the moment any of these apply:

• You need your own custom domain — which is true for almost any real business, freelancer, or agency site
• You want the "Made in Framer" badge removed for a professional appearance
• Your CMS or page needs slightly exceed the free tier's caps but don't yet require the higher limits of Pro or above

Basic is the tier where a Framer site stops being a prototype and starts being a real, presentable business asset. Nearly every site in our gallery of real Framer websites — companies like Razorpay, Flighty, and MyHubble Money — runs on a custom domain, which by definition means at least Basic or higher.

When you need Pro or higher

Beyond Basic, Framer's plan use-cases guide breaks down higher tiers by need rather than by size alone. Consider moving up when you need:

• Higher CMS limits for a content-heavy site — a blog publishing regularly, a large case-study library, or a resource center
• More pages than the mid-tier caps allow, common for sites with deep product or documentation sections
• Team collaboration — multiple editors working in the same project with proper permissions
• Higher form submission limits, relevant if lead capture is a core function of your site
• Larger AI credit allowances if Framer Agents are a core part of how you build and iterate
• Advanced settings like password protection for staging pages, or more granular SEO and redirect controls at scale — see [Framer's guide to setting up your site for scale](https://www.framer.com/help/articles/setting-up-your-framer-site-for-scale/) if you're operating at this level

Enterprise-scale operations with dozens of team members or hundreds of pages should read that scale guide closely before assuming a mid-tier plan will hold up.

A simple decision framework

1. Start free, always. There's no reason to pay before you've confirmed the editor and workflow fit how you like to build.
2. Upgrade to Basic the day you're ready to launch publicly with a real domain — treat this as a launch-readiness gate, not an optional nice-to-have.
3. Move to Pro or higher only when you hit a concrete limit — CMS items, pages, form submissions, or team seats — rather than upgrading speculatively "just in case."
4. Re-check pricing before committing, since Framer periodically adjusts tiers and limits; the [official pricing page](https://www.framer.com/pricing/) is always the source of truth over any third-party summary, including this one.

How Framer's free tier compares to other builders

Context helps here, without turning this into a takedown of any competitor. Many website builders offer some form of free tier, but the shape of the trade-off differs:

• Some platforms restrict free-tier users to a limited subset of design features, unlocking the full editor only on a paid plan. Framer's approach — full editor access for free, with the domain and badge as the paid unlock — tends to be more generous for the actual building and evaluation phase.
• Others cap free-tier publishing entirely, letting you design but not truly publish a live, shareable site without paying first. Framer lets you publish and share a real working URL for free, which is genuinely useful for early client review or portfolio sharing even before you've decided to pay for anything.
• The common thread across most builders, Framer included, is that a custom domain is almost universally a paid feature. This isn't a Framer-specific limitation — it reflects that domain connection, DNS management, and SSL provisioning cost the platform real ongoing resources per site.

The upshot: if you're comparing builders specifically on "how much can I do before paying," Framer's free tier is competitive precisely because the core building experience isn't gated.

A deeper look at Framer credits

Framer credits deserve a slightly longer explanation since they're a newer concept than the domain/badge distinction. Credits are consumed by AI-assisted actions — primarily Framer Agents generating or substantially modifying site structure and content from a prompt. Manually building a site in the visual editor, without invoking AI generation features, does not consume credits at all, on any plan.

This means the free plan's credit cap mostly affects one specific workflow: repeatedly regenerating large sections of a site via AI prompts. If you're using Framer Agents heavily to draft and redraft a site from scratch, you'll notice the cap. If you're using Framer primarily as a hands-on visual builder — dragging, styling, and arranging things yourself — credits are largely a non-issue, and you can build an entire multi-page site on the free plan without ever hitting a credit-related wall.

Budgeting for a real launch

If you're planning a real company site rather than a personal experiment, it's worth budgeting for at least the Basic tier from the start rather than treating the free plan as a long-term home. A simple way to think about it: the free plan is your design and evaluation phase, and the moment you're scheduling a launch date, that's your cue to upgrade — ideally a few days before launch, so you have time to test the custom domain, confirm DNS propagation, and verify SSL is active before announcing the site publicly.

Key takeaways

• Framer's free plan includes the full editor and a live, published site — the catch is a `framer.website` subdomain and a visible "Made in Framer" badge, with no custom domain support.
• Basic, at roughly $10/month, is the tier where most real businesses need to land: custom domain, no badge, still lean CMS and page limits.
• Higher tiers scale CMS capacity, page counts, team seats, form limits, and AI credits — upgrade based on a concrete limit you've actually hit, not speculatively.
• You can fully build and test a site for free before ever upgrading, which makes Framer's free tier a legitimately useful evaluation period rather than a crippled demo.
• Nearly every production business site in our [gallery](/websites) runs on at least a Basic-tier custom domain — that's the practical baseline for a real launch.

Curious what a paid-tier Framer site looks like in production? Browse the gallery of real Framer websites, filtered by category like SaaS, or check premium listing options if you want your own site featured with extra visibility. Already live and ready to be discovered? Submit your site. Want a second opinion on which plan fits your build? Our Framer services team can help you scope that before you pay for more than you need.