Someone asks me this question at least twice a month: “I’ve narrowed it down to Webflow, Squarespace, or Wix. Which one should I actually use?”
This year, the answer got more complicated, because all three moved their pricing around. Squarespace rolled out a brand-new four-plan lineup in early 2026. Webflow restructured its site plans in May. Wix kept its familiar tier names but quietly adjusted what’s included. A comparison written last year is already stale, so I rebuilt this one from the current pricing pages and help docs.
Key Takeaways
- Squarespace’s new plans run $16 to $99 per month on annual billing. The entry Basic plan has real limits now, including no custom code injection and a 2% fee on physical sales.
- Webflow merged its old CMS and Business site plans into one Premium plan at $25 per month, billed yearly. More CMS room, but less included bandwidth for some existing customers.
- Wix starts at $17 per month (Light, annual) and still offers a genuinely free plan, though app add-ons and payment processing costs pile up faster than people expect.
- The learning curve is the biggest hidden cost. Wix is the easiest, Squarespace is close behind, and Webflow will eat a weekend (or three) before you feel comfortable.
- If you’re building a serious online store, none of these should be your first pick. That’s Shopify territory.
The 2026 Pricing Picture
Here’s where the money lands as of September 2026, pulled from each company’s own pricing pages. Annual billing saves real money on all three, so that’s the column worth comparing.
| Webflow | Squarespace | Wix | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan (billed annually) | $15/mo (Basic) | $16/mo (Basic) | $17/mo (Light) |
| Entry plan (billed monthly) | $25/mo | $25/mo | $24/mo |
| The plan most people should buy | Premium, $25/mo annual | Core, $23/mo annual | Core, $29/mo annual |
| Top business plan | Premium, $39/mo monthly | Advanced, $99/mo annual | Business Elite, $159/mo annual |
| Free tier | Build-only starter (Webflow branding) | 14-day trial only | Yes, with ads |
| Ecommerce available from | Higher-priced tiers | Basic (with fees) | Core |
Three notes on that table. Webflow’s numbers reflect the May 2026 restructure, when it folded the old CMS and Business site plans into a single Premium plan. Squarespace’s reflect the four-plan model it began rolling out in early 2026, replacing the old Personal, Business, and Commerce lineup. And “custom code” is the row most comparisons bury, because it’s the difference between installing a Meta pixel, running an A/B testing script, or embedding a booking widget when you need one.
One small detail worth flagging before the deep dives: Squarespace and Wix both include a free custom domain for the first year on paid plans. Webflow doesn’t, so budget for that separately.
Webflow: Power, Priced in Patience
Webflow is what designers reach for when they want pixel-level control without managing a hosting panel. You get real CSS control, clean semantic output, interactions, and a CMS that behaves like a structured database. It’s the closest thing to hand-coding a site, minus the deployment headaches.
The May 2026 update reshuffled the deck. The old CMS plan ($23/mo) and Business plan ($39/mo) merged into one Premium site plan at $25/mo billed yearly, or $39 billed monthly, with room for 20,000 CMS items across 40 collections. Basic moved to $15/mo on annual billing and now allows 300 static pages, double the old limit. Webflow also launched a Team plan at a reported $2,500/mo on an annual contract, aimed at organizations that need governance, localization, and around ten seats.
Two gotchas worth knowing. Existing Business plan customers saw included bandwidth drop from 100GB to 50GB under the new packaging, so heavy-media sites should check their actual usage before renewing. And while AI credits now ship with Workspace plans, enforcement of the limits only started mid-year, so it’s worth checking what your current allowance actually buys you.
Here’s the honest part: the learning curve is real, and it’s why people bounce off Webflow. If you’ve never thought about box models or breakpoints, the interface feels like being handed a cockpit. Wix and Squarespace let you launch the same afternoon. Webflow rewards a couple of weekends of patience with a faster, cleaner site afterwards. Pick it for control, not for speed.
Check Webflow’s current plans here.
Squarespace: The Polished Middle Path
Squarespace is the recommendation a lot of people land on, and I get why. The templates are genuinely well designed, the editor stays out of your way, and the whole product feels considered in a way the other two sometimes don’t. When “looks professional with minimal fuss” is the goal, this is the pick.
The new plan structure deserves a closer look, because the entry tier changed in ways that trip people up. Four plans now: Basic ($16/mo annual), Core ($23), Plus ($39), and Advanced ($99). Annual billing saves somewhere between 28% and 36% versus monthly. A free custom domain comes with the first year on all of them.
The catch sits on Basic. It’s meant for brochure sites and light blogs, and it shows. You can’t inject custom code, which means no Meta or TikTok pixels, no Google Tag Manager, no custom CSS or JavaScript. If you plan to run any kind of marketing stack, skip it and look at Core instead.
Commerce fees also differ sharply between the two. On Basic, Squarespace takes 2% of physical product sales and 7% on digital downloads. Core drops that to 0% on physical goods and services, with 5% on digital products. That gap alone pushes most stores to Core, and I’ll do the math in a section below.
See Squarespace’s current pricing.
Wix: The Widest Feature Net
Wix’s pitch is breadth. It has the most features of the three, the biggest template library, a free plan you can stay on indefinitely, and an app market that can bolt on almost anything. The AI site builder is included from the free tier up, and it’s legitimately one of the better ones out there right now.
The plan ladder runs Light ($17/mo annual), Core ($29), Business ($39), and Business Elite ($159). Core is the interesting one, since it’s where ecommerce opens up, along with booking tools, dropshipping, and site analytics. If you want to sell anything, start there. Business Elite is the only tier with unlimited storage, and at $159/mo it’s priced for companies with genuinely complex needs.
Two honest tradeoffs. The free plan shows Wix ads and locks you to a wixsite.com subdomain, so treat it as a workshop, not a storefront. And the sticker price understates the total: payment processing runs 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, and marketplace apps typically add $3 to $20 a month each. People pick Wix for the low entry price, then watch the monthly total quietly double.
There’s also a usability paradox worth naming. Wix is the easiest builder to make something, and one of the easier ones to get lost in. Its sheer number of options makes it easy to burn an afternoon template-shopping and font-agonizing. Squarespace doesn’t have that problem, mostly because it doesn’t give you that many choices.
The Ecommerce Fee Math, In Plain Numbers
This is the part most comparisons skip, and it’s where real money hides. Say you sell $500 a month of physical products.
- On Squarespace Basic, the 2% platform fee costs you $10 a month, or $120 a year. Core costs $7 a month more than Basic on annual billing, so the upgrade pays for itself and then some.
- On Wix Core, there’s no platform fee, but payment processing takes 2.9% + $0.30, which runs about $15 on that same $500. Standard across most platforms, but budget for it.
- Squarespace Core’s 0% fee on physical goods is one of the better deals in the builder world. Webflow’s ecommerce plans have historically sat at a higher price point, so verify current rates before committing there.
One independent analysis I read put the Squarespace Basic-to-Core break-even at roughly $4,200 a year in physical sales. That tracks with my own reading of the fee schedules. If you’re doing meaningful volume, skip Basic entirely.
One More Thing: The AI Features
All three now want to build your site for you. Wix’s AI builder remains the most push-a-button option; you answer a few questions and get a working draft, and it’s available even on the free plan. Squarespace leans on AI for layout and copy suggestions. Webflow’s play is different: AI credits across its plans, an MCP server so AI coding agents can work on your site, and tooling aimed at getting your pages cited by AI search engines.
My take, after a year of covering which AI builders actually ship a site you keep: these tools get you a decent first draft, not a finished site. The winner is whichever builder you can actually maintain six months from now. Don’t pick a platform for its AI demo.
Which One Should You Actually Pick?
After running the numbers, here’s how I’d sort it.
- Pick Wix if you want the fastest start, the most built-in features, or a free plan to experiment on. Good fit for local businesses and anyone who wants AI to do the heavy lifting.
- Pick Squarespace if design polish matters more than raw power. Portfolios, restaurants, clinics, and most “I just need a nice website” cases live here. Start at Core, not Basic, if you’ll ever sell anything.
- Pick Webflow if your site is a real marketing asset with a content engine behind it, or if a designer is building it for you. The Premium plan’s CMS room makes sense for blogs, resource hubs, and programmatic pages.
- Pick Shopify instead if ecommerce is the main event. All three of these can sell. None of them out-shop Shopify at scale.
For what it’s worth, this site runs on WordPress, which says something about where I landed for my own work. But I recommend all three builders regularly, because “best” depends almost entirely on who’s building and what for. The longer version of my testing background is on the About page.
How This Comparison Was Put Together
Quick honesty note: I didn’t hand-build three identical sites and time myself, and I’d raise an eyebrow at anyone claiming they did it in a weekend. This piece is built from each vendor’s current pricing and help documentation (Webflow’s May 2026 pricing announcement in particular), plus a tall stack of independent reviews and user discussions. Pricing on all three has changed more than once since 2025, so treat these numbers as accurate for September 2026 and double-check before you buy.
That said, the structural differences between these three haven’t changed much: Wix optimizes for breadth, Squarespace for polish, Webflow for control. Those positioning choices survive every price change.
Ready to Build?
All three offer a free way in, whether that’s Wix’s free plan, Squarespace’s 14-day trial, or Webflow’s build-only starter tier. My suggestion: spend one hour, not one weekend, building your actual homepage on your top two choices. The right builder is usually obvious after ninety minutes of real work, and it’s a lot cheaper to find out now than after a year of subscriptions.