Free web building sites: what you really get for $0 in 2026

The quick answer

Yes, you can build and publish a website for $0 in 2026. This page covers 14 builders with a published free plan, including Wix, WordPress.com, Webflow, Framer, Carrd, Canva and Square Online, plus Google Sites. What you can’t get for $0 on them is a site that looks like a real business.

Free is fine for testing a builder, a hobby or club site, or a one-page portfolio you share by hand. It’s a poor fit if you run a business or need to take payments. For that, the real price is the cheapest plan that connects your own domain name: from $19 a year on Carrd to $17 a month billed yearly on Wix.

The 3 catches on almost every free plan

1. Their address, not yours. Your site lives on the builder’s subdomain, like yoursite.wordpress.com. That address belongs to the builder and can’t come with you.
2. Their branding or ads. WordPress.com shows its ads to your visitors. Wix shows its branding and sometimes ads. Canva, Framer, Carrd, Strikingly and SITE123 add a badge, banner, footer or tag.
3. No payments and tight limits. Wix, Canva and Webflow can’t take payments on free. Wix gives you 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth; Webflow allows 2 static pages and up to 1,000 visits a month.

Free plans compared

The table covers the 6 builders whose own pricing pages and help centers answer at least 3 of these 4 questions. “Not stated” means the vendor’s pages we read don’t say.

The last column is the cheapest tier that uses a domain you own. Yearly prices are per month but paid upfront. Carrd bills only by the year.

Google Sites and Square Online are left out of the table because their pages skip too many of these details, but each gets a full note below. Strikingly, Jimdo, SITE123, Webnode, Zoho Sites, GoDaddy and Weebly are in the short list of other builders with a free plan at the end of the next section.

The free builders, one by one

Google Sites

Who it suits: a simple site for a class, club or event, built by someone who already works in Google Docs and Drive. You can publish to everyone or only to people you choose.

The catch: the Google pages we read don’t state a price for personal accounts, and the product page pushes paid Workspace. Site content counts toward your Drive storage, and each Google Account includes up to 15 GB shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Google allows up to five custom domains per site but doesn’t say whether that works on a personal account.

Wix

Who it suits: beginners who want to try a full drag-and-drop builder before paying. Wix’s own blog lists 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth on free.

The catch: Wix branding, a wixsite.com address and no payments. Light, at $17 a month billed yearly, connects your domain and removes Wix ads, but payments start on Core at $29 a month billed yearly. Exit score: 3/10, because Wix says sites must run on its servers and blog posts can’t be exported.

WordPress.com

Who it suits: bloggers and writers. The free plan never expires and includes 1 GB of media storage.

The catch: free sites show WordPress.com ads and can’t install plugins. Personal, at $4 a month billed yearly ($9 billed monthly), removes the ads and adds your own domain, free for the first year on annual billing. Payment buttons on Personal carry an 8% fee (10% on the Free plan). Exit score: 8/10; content exports as a standard WordPress file, without the media files.

Square Online

Who it suits: a small shop, cafe or restaurant that wants to sell online with no monthly bill. Square Free has no subscription, and websites and online ordering are in the free tier, on an address like mybusiness.square.site.

The catch: a higher card rate. Square’s plans page lists 3.3% + 30 cents per online card sale on Free, versus 2.9% + 30 cents on Square Plus ($49 a month per location). By our math, Plus pays for itself at about $12,250 a month in online card sales. Square’s pages don’t clearly say whether Free can use your own domain or whether free sites show Square branding. Exit score: 2/10. See transaction fees for how these charges add up.

Canva

Who it suits: a one-page event site or portfolio if you already design in Canva. Canva’s help center allows up to five live sites on its free domain.

The catch: a “Designed with Canva” footer you can’t remove on Free, no e-commerce, and your own domain only on Canva Pro, Teams, Business or Education. We couldn’t confirm the Pro price.

Webflow

Who it suits: designers learning Webflow or building a prototype on a webflow.io address.

The catch: Webflow’s help center lists 2 static pages, 50 CMS items and up to 1,000 monthly visits on Starter, with no store. Basic, at $15 a month billed yearly ($18 billed monthly), adds your domain, 300 static pages and 10 GB of bandwidth. Exit score: 6/10.

Framer

Who it suits: a design-led landing page or portfolio. Free gives you a framer.app address and 1 GB of bandwidth.

The catch: a “Made in Framer” banner, no built-in store, and your own domain only on a paid plan. Basic is $10 a month billed yearly, with a free domain once per site on a yearly plan. Exit score: 2/10, because Framer doesn’t offer HTML export for self-hosting.

Carrd

Who it suits: one-page sites, like a link-in-bio or simple landing page. Free accounts get up to three sites.

The catch: “Made with Carrd” branding. Carrd’s plans page lists Pro Lite at $9 a year (no branding, no custom domain) and Pro Standard at $19 a year (custom domains, forms and payment widgets on up to 10 sites). Exit score: 6/10; only Pro Plus, at $49 a year, can download the site.

Other builders with a free plan

These builders publish fewer details, so here is only what their own pages confirm.

• Strikingly: unlimited free sites, with Strikingly branding in the footer and “on Strikingly” in page titles, and no HTML embeds or custom CSS. Limited, at $8 a month billed yearly, allows your own domain but keeps the branding. Pro, at $16 a month billed yearly ($20 billed monthly), removes it.
• Jimdo: free plans have no time limit, and Creator Free includes 5 GB of storage. Paid plans include a domain free for the first contract term. Paid prices weren’t in the page text we read.
• SITE123: 250 MB of storage and 250 MB of bandwidth on a SITE123-branded subdomain, with a SITE123 floating tag. Premium removes the tag and connects your domain; its full price wasn’t in the page text.
• Webnode: free by default and yours to use as long as you like, on an address like yourproject.webnode.com. Free sites have limited bandwidth, but the figure wasn’t readable on Webnode’s pages. Your own domain needs Premium, and most Premium plans include a free first-year domain.
• Zoho Sites: Zoho’s pricing page labels its free single-page site “free for a year,” with 100 MB of storage and a 5 MB file limit, so plan for that end date. Starter adds 5 pages, your own domain and an ad-free site; its price wasn’t in the page text.
• GoDaddy: the Airo AI Builder’s free plan includes 50 AI credits, no card required. GoDaddy doesn’t say if you can publish on free, and a third-party review says you can’t. Starter is $9.99 a month billed yearly ($19.99 billed monthly) and connects your domain. Exit score: 5/10 (provisional).
• Weebly: its pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 for “basic use,” and Weebly offers a free Weebly subdomain. We couldn’t confirm whether new sign-ups can still pick it. Personal is $13 a month billed yearly ($16 billed monthly).

Builders with no free plan

• Squarespace: a 14-day free trial, which Squarespace says can be extended by 7 days, no card required. Trial content is marked for deletion after it ends.
• Shopify: 3 days free, then $1 a month for 3 months, according to its pricing page.
• Hostinger: no free tier on standard hosting plans, per its support page; it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.

Free hosting for people who code

If you can write HTML or use a static site generator, developer hosts give you more for $0. GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages even let you use your own domain.

• GitHub Pages: an address like octocat.github.io, and custom domains work. GitHub’s limits page caps a site at 1 GB, with a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month, and says Pages isn’t meant to run an online business or store.
• Cloudflare Pages: unlimited sites, static requests and bandwidth on free. Cloudflare’s docs list 500 builds a month, 20,000 files per site and up to 100 custom domains per project.
• Netlify: the free plan has 300 credits a month, as a hard limit. Netlify’s docs charge 20 credits per GB of bandwidth and 15 per production deploy, so that’s about 15 GB if you spend credits on nothing else. Run out and every project pauses until the next cycle. Pro starts at $20 a month for 3,000 credits.

AI app builders have free tiers too; see our AI builders hub. Lovable gives 5 build credits a day (up to 30 a month) on a lovable.app address. v0 gives 7 messages a day and a one-time $5 credit. Bolt gives 1 million tokens a month with a “Made in Bolt” badge. Lovable and Bolt keep custom domains for paid plans. Lovable charges credits by how complex each request is, and Bolt says larger projects use more tokens per message.

The real cost of “free”

A business site needs its own domain. At Namecheap, a .com costs $11.28 for the first year, then $18.48 a year to renew: $48.24 over 3 years.

None of the free plans we checked include a free domain. Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com and Framer include one only with a paid yearly plan, and only for the first year. Webnode (most Premium plans) and Jimdo (the first contract term) tie theirs to paid plans too. Then you pay the renewal.

Email at your domain adds more. Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 per user a month billed yearly ($8.40 billed monthly), or $252 over 3 years for one inbox.

The cheapest real paths for a business, over 3 years

How we counted: list prices billed yearly for 36 months, except WordPress.com Personal ($2.75 a month on its 3-year term) and Bluehost Starter ($3.99 a month on a 36-month term, then $9.99 a month at renewal). Where a plan includes a free first-year domain, we add two Namecheap renewals ($36.96); otherwise a Namecheap .com from day one ($48.24). Card fees and add-ons are extra.

The verdict: for a one-page site, Carrd Pro Standard with your own domain is the cheapest option here at $105.24 over 3 years. For a multi-page site or blog, WordPress.com Personal prepaid for 3 years comes to $135.96. Self-hosted WordPress on cheap web hosting costs $180.60 and you own everything, but you handle updates, backups and security. We build on WordPress every week, so weigh our bias.

Leaving a free plan later

Upgrading on the same builder is easy: you keep the site and add your domain. Moving to another platform is harder, because the design and content don’t always come along. Our exit scores, out of 10:

• WordPress.com, 8: content exports in the standard WordPress format.
• Webflow and Carrd, 6: static code exports, on paid plans only.
• GoDaddy, 5: a code download whose contents aren’t fully documented.
• Wix, 3, and Framer and Square Online, 2: the site itself can’t leave.

The free subdomain always stays behind, so don’t print it on flyers. When you go paid, buy your domain at an independent registrar so it’s yours if you switch. Our guide to leaving your website builder walks through each move.

What to do next

• Compare paid options in our best website builders list, ranked by 3-year cost and exit score.
• See every cost a site adds up to in how much a website costs.
• Plug in your own numbers in the cost calculator.
• Not sure which builder fits? Try the builder finder.