Disclosure, up front
We build one of the products on this page. It is listed alphabetically with everyone else, judged on the same fields, and its prices are stated in full like every other row. An earlier version of this page said ours was the one entry that did not publish what publishing costs. That was true when it went up, and we fixed it rather than softening the sentence. Read that as the standard we are holding ourselves to, and hold us to it.
Two years ago "AI website builder" described a small group of products. Now it describes all of them. Every platform on this page takes a short questionnaire about your business and returns a working site with written copy and chosen imagery, in minutes, and every one of them does it well enough.
Which makes the usual comparison useless. Ranking these on the quality of the AI is like ranking cars on whether the engine starts. The differences that will actually affect you show up on the invoice in month thirteen, and in the answer to a question almost nobody asks before signing up: if I want to leave, what can I take with me?
The short version
- Cheapest credible start. Framer Basic or 10Web AI Starter, both $10 a month. Framer if you care how it looks, 10Web if you want WordPress underneath.
- Safest mainstream pick. Squarespace Basic at $19 or Wix Core at $29.77. You are paying for the fact that every contractor, plugin and freelancer already knows them.
- Service business that wants a CRM attached. Durable, free to start, $25 a month for Launch.
- Lowest sticker price, biggest catch. Hostinger at $2.99, which needs a 48-month prepayment and renews at $10.99.
- You want to own the site and leave later. 10Web generates WordPress, which is portable. Most of the others are not.
- Trades business that wants booking and forms without a subscription. That is the narrow slot we build for. Free to build and preview, 500 tokens to publish, 250 for a custom domain, and no subscription.
01The AI is not the differentiator any more
It helps to know what these products actually do when they "generate" a site. They are not designing from nothing. They assemble a layout from templates or pre-built blocks, then write first-draft copy and select imagery based on a questionnaire about your trade, your services and your tone.
That is why the output is reliably competent and rarely distinctive. The design quality you are getting was created by human designers, in advance, in the template library. The AI is doing selection and copywriting, which is genuinely useful and saves a real afternoon, but it is not the thing you are choosing between vendors on, because they all have it.
So this comparison is built around the three things that do still vary: what the headline price commits you to, what it renews at, and what happens if you want out.
02The comparison
Everything below was read from each vendor's own pricing page on 5 September 2026. The column that usually gets left out of these round-ups is the fourth one.
| Product | What it is | Entry price | What that price requires | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Durable | AI builder with CRM and agents, aimed at service businesses | $25 per month (Launch), $22 billed yearly | Nothing. Real month-to-month pricing is published | Yes |
| Framer | Design tool turned site builder, AI credits included | $10 per month (Basic) | Nothing unusual | Yes |
| Hostinger | Budget AI builder bundled with hosting | $2.99 per month (Premium) | 48-month prepayment, then renews at $10.99 | No |
| JHomeAutomation | AI assembles trade-business sites, forms and booking built in | Free to build and preview, then 500 tokens to publish | 500 tokens to publish, 250 for a custom domain. One-time, no subscription | Yes |
| 10Web | AI that generates WordPress, hosted on Google Cloud | $10 per month (AI Starter) | Listed rate; annual billing takes 50% off | No |
| Squarespace | Design-led mainstream builder with AI generation | $19 per month (Basic) | Annual billing. Monthly costs more | No |
| Wix | Mainstream builder, largest app and template ecosystem | $17.77 per month (Light) | Yearly paid in full. Price varies by country | Yes |
Listed alphabetically, not ranked. Wix states that its displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions paid in full, include tax, and vary by location, with USD shown for reference only, so check what your own country shows. Squarespace renders prices dynamically; the figures here were read from the rendered page. Every price on this page will drift, so verify before budgeting.
03Three pricing traps, in order of how much they cost you
1. The renewal cliff
This is the big one, and it is almost entirely a Hostinger phenomenon among the products here. Their advertised rates are introductory and the renewal rates are published right next to them, to their credit:
- Premium: $2.99 renewing at $10.99. About 3.7 times the intro rate.
- Unlimited: $3.99 renewing at $16.99. About 4.3 times.
- Cloud Startup: $7.99 renewing at $25.99. About 3.3 times.
None of that is hidden and none of it is dishonest. It is simply that the number people compare against Squarespace's $19 is $2.99, when the number that should be compared is $10.99. At the renewal rate Hostinger is a normal-priced product, not a cheap one.
2. The headline price that is not a monthly price
Wix's displayed figures are for yearly subscriptions paid in full. Squarespace's are annual billing, with the page noting you save up to 36% versus paying monthly. Hostinger's cheapest rate requires committing four years at once. In every case the number presented as "per month" is what it works out to if you hand over a year or more up front.
Durable and Framer are the exceptions worth naming: both publish genuine month-to-month rates alongside a yearly discount, so the advertised number is the number.
3. Transaction fees, if you sell anything
If the site takes payments, the plan price stops being the main cost. Payment processing runs on percentages, and on lower tiers the platform often adds its own cut on top of the card fee. For a shop turning over real money, moving up a tier to remove a transaction fee can cost less than staying on the cheap plan. Work that out with your actual monthly volume before choosing a tier, because the answer inverts somewhere around a few thousand dollars a month.
04The products, one at a time
Durable
durable.comThe closest thing here to a business-in-a-box rather than a website tool. Alongside the site it bundles a CRM, invoicing and a set of background agents, and its free tier is genuinely usable for testing an idea, including a logo and a small customer list.
- Price
- Free tier at $0. Launch $25 per month, or $22 billed yearly. Grow $49 per month, or $41 yearly, with unlimited users and ten times the AI usage.
- Good if
- You are a one-person or small service business and the website is only part of what you need. Buying a site, a CRM and invoicing separately costs more than $25.
- Not for you if
- You already run a CRM you like. You would be paying for the half you do not need, and the site half alone is not better than a $10 Framer plan.
Framer
framer.comCame out of a design tool rather than a hosting company, and it shows. Sites built here tend to look the least like a template, which matters if your competitors are all on the same three Wix layouts. The free tier includes 500 AI credits and a Framer subdomain.
- Price
- Free at $0. Basic $10 per month with a free custom domain and 50 GB bandwidth. Pro $30 per month, adding staging and branching.
- Good if
- The site is a shop window and you want it to look better than your competitors'. Cheapest route here to something that does not look generated.
- Not for you if
- You want a large plugin ecosystem, or someone non-technical will be maintaining it. It rewards a bit of design confidence.
Hostinger
hostinger.comThe cheapest advertised entry point by a wide margin, with 300+ templates, an AI logo maker, content writer and SEO assistant bundled in. The catch is the term and the renewal, both of which they publish plainly.
- Price
- Premium $2.99 per month on a 48-month plan, renewing at $10.99. Unlimited $3.99 renewing at $16.99. Cloud Startup $7.99 renewing at $25.99. All carry a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Good if
- You are certain you want a site for the next four years and you would rather pay once and forget it. Prepaid, it is the cheapest real hosting here.
- Not for you if
- You are testing whether you need a site at all. Compare it at $10.99, not $2.99, and it stops being the obvious budget choice.
10Web
10web.ioThe one meaningful structural difference on this page. What it generates is a WordPress site, hosted on Google Cloud, which means the output is portable to any WordPress host in a way that nothing else here is. It also has agents that redesign an existing page, clone a page from a URL, or convert a design file into a page.
- Price
- AI Starter $10 per month, AI Premium $15, AI Ultimate $22.50, Agency plans from $42.50. Annual billing takes 50% off those rates.
- Good if
- You want the speed of AI generation without the lock-in, or you already have a WordPress site that needs modernising rather than replacing.
- Not for you if
- You do not want WordPress. You inherit its update and plugin maintenance, which is the tax that comes with the portability.
Squarespace
squarespace.comThe safe answer, and its templates still set the standard the others are measured against. No free plan, but every site starts with a 14-day trial and no card is required to begin.
- Price
- Basic $19 per month, Core $29, Plus $49, Advanced $99. Those are annual-billing rates; the pricing page notes paying annually saves up to 36%.
- Good if
- You want it to look good with little effort, and you would rather pay slightly more than think about hosting again.
- Not for you if
- Budget is genuinely tight, or you might want to move the site later. Nothing here exports as a working site.
Wix
wix.comThe biggest template and app library of anything here, plus a genuine free plan, which no other mainstream builder on this page offers. The trade is that its free tier puts you on a Wix subdomain.
- Price
- Free at $0. Light $17.77 per month, Core $29.77, Business $39.77, Business Elite $159.77. Wix states these are yearly subscriptions paid in full, include tax, and vary by location, with USD shown for reference only.
- Good if
- You want the widest choice of add-ons, or you want to build the whole thing free before deciding whether to pay for a domain.
- Not for you if
- You want a site that does not look like the other sites in your trade. The ubiquity that makes it safe also makes it recognisable.
JHomeAutomation AI Website Builder
website-builder.jhomeautomation.comBuilt narrowly for trades and service businesses rather than for everyone. A three-step wizard collects your services and story, the AI assembles a site from pre-coded blocks across eight themes, and you edit it in a drag-and-drop studio. Contact forms and booking are built in rather than bolted on, and there is no monthly subscription and no cap on how many sites you build.
- Price
- Free to build and preview, with 250 credits and no card required. Then 500 tokens to publish a site and 250 tokens to connect a custom domain, both one-time. There is no monthly subscription and no cap on how many sites you build, so a site you publish once and leave alone costs nothing further to keep online.
- Good if
- You run a trade, you want booking and forms working out of the box, and a recurring subscription for a five-page site annoys you. You can build the whole thing and see it before paying anything.
- Not for you if
- You want a large plugin ecosystem, an online shop with deep inventory, or a design that breaks out of our themes. Wix has more add-ons and Framer looks better. And if a published price before signup is what you need to decide, we currently do not give you one.
05The question people ask last and regret first
If you want to leave in three years, what can you take?
For most of this page, the honest answer is: your content, if you copy it out by hand, and nothing else. Sites built on hosted platforms are not portable. There is no export that produces a working site you can upload elsewhere. Leaving means rebuilding, and after three years of accumulated pages, photos and search rankings, that cost is high enough that most people simply stay. That is not an accident of the technology; it is the business model.
Two exceptions are worth knowing about. 10Web generates WordPress, which any WordPress host on earth will accept, so leaving is a migration rather than a rebuild. And anything that publishes plain static files, including ours, produces a site that exists as ordinary web pages rather than as rows in somebody's database.
None of this means you should avoid hosted builders. It means you should know the trade you are making, and price it in while you still have the choice. If the site is a credential customers glance at before phoning you, lock-in genuinely does not matter much. If it is your main sales channel and will carry years of content, it matters more than the monthly price you are comparing so carefully.
06When a builder is the wrong answer
- Nobody will maintain it. A subscription nobody logs into becomes a site with last year's prices and a service you stopped offering. That is worse than no site, because customers believe it.
- The site has to talk to your other systems. Once it needs to write into your scheduling or accounting software, you have left the territory these products cover well.
- Differentiation is the actual goal. If you compete on being visibly better than the other firms in your trade, a template that a thousand other businesses also chose works against you. That is a designer's job.
- You only need one page. A single page with your services, your number and your area does not need a subscription at all.
07Common questions
What is the best AI website builder for a small business in 2026?
There is no single best one, because they differ less in the AI than in what you pay in year two. Framer and 10Web are the cheapest credible starting points at $10 per month. Squarespace and Wix cost roughly $19 to $30 per month and are the safest mainstream choices. Durable suits service businesses that want a CRM attached. Hostinger has the lowest advertised price and the largest renewal jump. Pick on the total cost and the exit terms, not on the demo.
How much does an AI website builder cost per month?
Published entry prices in 2026 run from free to about $30 per month for a small business site. Framer Basic and 10Web AI Starter are $10, Squarespace Basic is $19, Durable Launch is $25, Wix Core is $29.77 and Squarespace Core is $29. Hostinger advertises $2.99 but that requires a 48-month prepayment and renews at $10.99. Almost every headline figure assumes annual or multi-year billing, so the true monthly cost is higher if you pay month to month.
Is the cheapest plan actually the cheapest?
Often not. The lowest advertised prices are introductory rates tied to long prepayments. Hostinger's $2.99 per month Premium plan is quoted on a 48-month term and renews at $10.99, roughly 3.7 times the introductory rate. Its Unlimited plan goes from $3.99 to $16.99, about 4.3 times. Compare the renewal price and the required term, not the number on the pricing page.
Can I move my site to another host later?
It depends entirely on the platform, and it is the question people ask last and regret first. Sites built on hosted platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Durable and Framer generally cannot be exported as a working site and would need rebuilding elsewhere. 10Web generates WordPress, which is portable to any WordPress host. Ask about export before you build, not after you have three years of content in it.
Do AI website builders still need a designer?
For a standard small business site of five to ten pages, usually not. Every builder here produces a competent first draft in minutes, and the templates underneath them were designed by people. Hire a designer when the site has to do something specific that a template cannot express, when brand differentiation is the actual goal, or when the site is the main sales channel rather than a credential people check before calling you.
Is a free plan good enough for a business?
Rarely, because free plans usually withhold the custom domain. A site at yourbusiness.platform.com reads as provisional to customers and is the one limitation that actually costs you work. Free tiers are genuinely useful for building and previewing before you commit money. Treat them as a trial rather than a destination.
What does an AI website builder actually generate?
In practice it assembles a layout from templates or pre-built blocks and writes first-draft copy and imagery from a short questionnaire about your business. It is not designing from nothing. That is why the output is reliably decent and rarely distinctive, and why the AI itself is no longer what separates these products from each other.
When is a website builder the wrong choice?
When the site needs to integrate deeply with systems you already run, when a specific regulated or contractual requirement applies, or when nobody in the business will maintain it. A builder subscription nobody logs into becomes a stale site with last year's prices on it, which is worse for you than no site at all.
Want to see what ours produces before paying anything?
Building and previewing a full site is free, with no card. If it is not better than what Wix gives you for the same effort, you have lost an afternoon and nothing else.
Build one freeSources: each vendor's own pricing page, read 5 September 2026. Wix and Squarespace figures are as displayed to us and both vary by billing choice and location, Wix explicitly so. Outbound links are unpaid and carry no affiliate tracking; we make no commission on anything recommended here. Prices change without notice, so verify before you budget. Related: Best AI Automation Agencies for Small Business (2026).