Every AI website builder will give you a working site today. Almost none will tell you what happens in eighteen months, when the business has grown, the agency has moved on, and you want your pages somewhere else. That is the decision that separates a tool from a subscription, and it is the one most comparison pages skip.
For these twenty-plus AI website builders, the buying question is: can you get the site out? Prices and terms are from 16 October 2026.
The only question that matters for AI website builders: can you leave?
Three kinds of AI website builders exist, and the difference is not quality: it is exit cost.
Closed builders let you rent a site forever. Wix, Squarespace, Framer, Duda, Durable, Jimdo and Shopify live here. You get hosting, a domain connection and a competent site in an afternoon. You do not get source code.
Code-emitting builders write a real codebase you can commit to a Git repository and deploy anywhere. Lovable, Bolt.new, v0 and Replit Agent live here. They cost the same order of money as a hosted plan.
WordPress builders emit an actual WordPress install. Elementor One, 10Web and Divi sit here. You can move the whole thing to any host in an afternoon, because it is just WordPress.
That third category is the underrated answer for a lot of people. “Can I get my site out?” is a much easier question to answer yes to when the answer is “it was already yours.”
Export rights, ownership and renewal costs
The comparison uses pricing pages, export documentation and terms checked on 16 October 2026. Export restrictions, content licences and renewal prices matter as much as the features used to build the site.
No sites were built for this comparison, so it does not include measured Lighthouse scores, checkout tests or migration timings. Performance claims are attributed to vendors.
Category one: closed builders, where you rent the site
A closed builder is a platform where you publish inside someone else’s runtime and cannot take the rendered site with you. That single fact drives most of what follows.
Wix: the most complete all-rounder, with no documented export
Wix’s US pricing page, which states that “USD prices displayed for reference only” and that displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions, lists Light at $17.77 per month, Core at $29.77, Business at $39.77 and Business Elite at $159.77. Every paid plan includes one free year of domain registration, and the page is explicit that the voucher “is only included with the first time purchase of a Premium plan. It is not included when you renew a plan.” So year two of your domain is a real line item.
Wix also offers a 14-day money-back guarantee on the initial upgrade to any Premium plan, which is more generous than most.
Wix’s AI layer is now split. The classic AI website builder generates a site from a single prompt; Wix Harmony is the newer vibe-coding product, pitched as “Where vibe coding meets drag and drop freedom.” Wix put a line on its own Harmony generator worth repeating: “AI can make mistakes. Always double-check the results.”
HTML or code export is not documented in the Wix sources cited here. That does not establish that the feature is unavailable. The closest documented thing is an “Advanced developer platform” listed on Business Elite at $159.77 per month.
Squarespace: honest documentation of a lossy export
Squarespace’s US pricing page lists Basic at $25 per month on monthly billing and $19 per month on annual billing, Core at $39/$29, Advanced at $65/$49, and a Commerce tier at $139/$99, with a “Pay annually to save up to 36%” note. Card rates start at 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic and 2.7% + $0.30 on Core.
The interesting number here is not the plan price. It is the AI meter. Squarespace runs a unified credit pool: 10 one-time credits on Basic, 20 per month on Core, 120 per month on Advanced, described as “total capacity for all AI features” that resets monthly. The same ladder governs AI Visibility, where one run “scans a single query on one AI model.” That is a disclosed consumption model, and more honest than a one-time credit gift.
Squarespace’s export story is the most carefully documented of any closed builder, which paradoxically makes the loss easier to measure. Its help centre, in an article updated 15 October 2026, says you can export to a WordPress-format .xml file. What comes out:
- Layout pages, one blog page with all its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post, text blocks, image blocks, and text inside embed and Instagram blocks
- Gallery pages, including York project pages on version 7.0 only
What does not come out:
- Album, cover, index, info, calendar, portfolio and store pages
- Page-specific headers, footers and sidebars
- More than one blog page
- Dropdowns, audio blocks, product blocks, video blocks and drafts
- Style settings and custom CSS
- Images and uploaded videos, which cannot be exported in bulk: one at a time from the Asset library
Read that list against a real site and you have your migration estimate. If your brand lives in your CSS and your store lives in product pages, you are rebuilding rather than exporting. The same article adds a line that should worry anyone planning a move: if you import to a self-hosted WordPress site, “the image links stop working after you cancel your Squarespace site.”
Framer: the documentation contradicts itself
Framer’s help centre contains two articles that cannot both be right. “Porting your data from Framer”, marked Updated 4 weeks ago on 16 October 2026, says:
Every Framer site is published as standard HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and static assets. You can download these files at any time and move them to any hosting provider.
It cites the EU Data Act, effective September 2025, as the reason: SaaS providers must make customer data portable, and Framer says it already complies.
Then there is “Can I export my website to HTML and self-host it?”, which says the opposite: “Framer does not offer HTML export for self-hosting,” that published sites “are not fully static and cannot be exported as standalone HTML files,” and lists the reasons: page pre-rendering, dynamic image resizing, font subsetting, server-side rendering, CDN and caching. It closes with: “If you require complete control over hosting infrastructure or need to export source code, Framer may not be the right solution for that workflow.”
Which article reflects the current export policy remains unclear. Both agree that CMS data is portable: content exports through plugins into CSV or JSON.
If your fear is losing your content, that fear is answered. If your fear is losing your runtime, it is not. Several third-party sites selling Framer export tools still published “Framer doesn’t let you export” claims in 2026, which is at minimum a sign the tooling around this is unsettled.
Duda, Durable and Jimdo
Duda is priced for agencies and separates features from sites. Basic is $19 per month annually ($25 monthly), Team $29/$39, Agency $52/$69 with four sites included, White Label $149/$199, plus Custom. Additional published projects are $19 per month on Basic and $17 on Team and above. Every paid plan gets 150 AI credits a month, which refreshes monthly and can be topped up.
Two things to flag. Duda’s pricing page claims “industry-leading Core Web Vital scores” and says Duda “sits at the forefront of emerging technologies like LLMs.txt.” Both are vendor claims, and the second contradicts Google’s published position that llms.txt files “will neither harm nor help your site’s visibility or rankings.” The pricing table does list code access and code export as features, but their per-tier availability is not confirmed here. Check the export entitlement for your chosen plan.
Durable is the simplest: free with 300 AI credits, $25 per month ($22 annual) with 1,000 credits, $49 per month ($41 annual) with 5,000 credits. Jimdo is the cheapest paid hosted route in this comparison: Free, Start at $11 per month, Grow at $17, Unlimited at $49.50 on a 12-month contract, with the Dolphin AI builder on top.
Category two: builders that emit a codebase you can keep
A code-emitting builder produces a project you can commit, branch and deploy without the vendor’s permission. This is the category where lock-in largely dissolves.
Lovable: the clearest ownership story
Lovable’s documentation is unusually direct: “Everything Lovable builds is real, standard code.” You can browse the file tree, search across files, download individual files, and on paid plans edit and save with version history.
The part that matters for ownership is the Git tab, which connects a project to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket with two-way sync: “Lovable pushes every change it makes to the repository, and commits you push to the synced branch flow back into Lovable. That gives you a full copy of your code outside Lovable.”
Pricing: Free with five lovable.app subdomains, Pro at $25 per month, Business at $50 per month, Enterprise on a platform fee with volume pricing. Both Pro and Business include 100 credits a month. Custom domains and badge removal are Pro features.
Lovable publishes its credit economics, which is more than any competitor does. A single message can cost 0.50 credits (“Make the button gray”), 0.90 (“Remove the footer”), 1.20 (“Add authentication with sign up and login”) or 1.70 (“Build me a landing page, use images”). One constraint: credits on monthly plans “expire two (2) months after they’re issued,” and code editing is a paid-plan feature: on Free the editor is read-only. Downloading is still available to anyone with project access.
Bolt.new: GitHub is the product
Bolt.new, from StackBlitz, prices by tokens. Free gives 300K tokens daily and 1M per month with Bolt branding on your site.
Pro is $25 per month with no daily limit, from 10M tokens a month, no branding, custom domains and SEO boosting. Teams is $30 per member per month. Yearly billing saves up to 28%.
The ownership story is framed around version control rather than export. Bolt’s documentation says connecting GitHub “automatically back up your Bolt project with a full history of changes that lives outside Bolt,” and (importantly) “since your code lives in GitHub, you can publish your site using Bolt hosting, the Netlify integration, or another service you choose.” That is the sentence a locked-in owner needs to hear.
v0 and Replit Agent: the developer end of the market
v0, Vercel’s tool, prices per user. Free gives $5 of one-time credits, deploys to Vercel, Design Mode, GitHub sync and a 7 message/day limit. Plus is $30 per user per month (the page shows it struck through at $90) including $30 of monthly credits plus $2 of free daily credits. Business is $100 per user per month and turns on training opt-out by default; Enterprise states “Your data is never used for training” and adds SAML SSO and RBAC.
v0 also publishes its own model pricing. Per million tokens: v0 Mini $0.20 input / $1.20 output, v0 Pro $2 / $10, v0 Max $5 / $25, v0 Max Fast $10 / $50.
Replit Agent is Core at $20 per month ($18 on annual billing) or Pro at $100 per month ($90 annually). Core includes plan mode, unlimited workspaces and $20 toward more powerful models; Pro adds 10 parallel agents, premium support, up to 15 collaborators and $100 in credits.
Hostinger: the price that is not the price
Hostinger’s AI Website Builder is the most advertised product in this category, and the least honest headline. On its own website builder page, checked 16 October 2026:
- Premium: $11.99 per month listed, $2.99 per month on a 48-month prepay ($143.52 total against a $575.52 regular price), renewing at $10.99 per month
- Business: $18.99 listed, $3.99 per month on 48 months, renewing at $16.99 per month
- Cloud Startup: $27.99 listed, $7.99 per month on 48 months, renewing at $25.99 per month
So the $2.99 headline is a 3.7-fold discount that expires. Three years at the renewal rate for Premium alone is $395.64, against $107.64 at the promotional rate, and the latter requires a four-year commitment to get.
The AI credits deserve a separate warning. Hostinger’s page says the credits are “a one-time welcome gift - they don’t renew monthly.” Premium gets 5 and Business and Cloud Startup get 15. If you rebuild your site in year two, you are paying per credit with no allowance. The free domain is also conditional: register within 12 months of buying the plan “or it will be cancelled.”
Separately, horizons.hostinger.com now redirects to the Hostinger AI Builder login, so the standalone Horizons product appears to have been folded into the AI builder.
Category three: WordPress builders, where the site is already yours
A WordPress builder generates a site you can host anywhere, because the output is a WordPress install rather than a proprietary page format. This is the cheapest route to real ownership.
Elementor leads with a bundle called Elementor One at $19 per month billed annually ($228/year), carrying 25,000 monthly One credits; the Agency tier is $45 per month ($540/year) with 350,000 credits. Standalone Elementor Pro remains at $5, $7, $9 and $17 per month on annual billing. Elementor’s homepage claims 22 million-plus websites built and 13% of sites worldwide: a vendor claim, but a consistent one.
10Web is cheaper still and explicitly WordPress-based. Business is $10 per month ($240/year) with 100 credits a month; Agency and White Label tiers scale from $15 per month for two sites down to “as low as $2.50 per website” at Agency Pro.
Divi ships Divi 5 with a Divi AI and a Divi AI Agent. Divi’s current rates are not confirmed here. Relume is a spec tool rather than a builder: Free forever, Pro from $14 per month ($168/year), hosting free with 6,000 page views or $12 per site per month.
Comparison table: what you can actually take with you
| Builder | Starting price (16 Oct 2026) | HTML/code export | Documented data export | On cancel | Who owns the content |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | Light $17.77/mo yearly | None documented | Not found | Not documented | Not verified from primary source |
| Squarespace | Basic $25/mo monthly, $19/mo annual | No | WordPress .xml, products and contacts .csv | Site shows “Website expired”; domain keeps auto-renewing | You own it; perpetual irrevocable sublicensable licence granted |
| Framer | Free tier; paid plans credit-based | Docs conflict | CMS to CSV/JSON via plugins | Not documented | Not verified from primary source |
| Webflow | Starter free, Basic $15/mo yearly | Yes: Workspace plans only (Team $2,500/mo) | CMS and ecommerce collections to CSV | Not documented | Not verified from primary source |
| Shopify | Basic $39/mo monthly, $29/mo yearly | No | Products to CSV | Not documented | Shopify’s terms apply |
| Elementor One | $19/mo annually | Yes: WordPress install | Full WordPress | Site survives on your host | Yours |
| 10Web | $10/mo | Yes: WordPress install | Full WordPress | Site survives on your host | Yours |
| Lovable | Free; Pro $25/mo | Yes: Git sync, file download | Source code | Not documented | Real standard code |
| Bolt.new | Free; Pro $25/mo | Yes: GitHub | Source code | Not documented | Real standard code |
| v0 | Free; Plus $30/user/mo | Yes: GitHub sync | Source code | Not documented | Real standard code |
| Replit Agent | Core $20/mo | Yes | Source code | Not documented | Real standard code |
| Hostinger AI Builder | $2.99/mo on 48 months, renews $10.99 | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented | Not verified from primary source |
“Not documented” means the cited vendor pages do not explain what happens after cancellation.
Two rows carry most of the weight. Webflow is the clearest case of a product people love that is structurally hard to leave: its help centre says code export “is only available on Workspace plans: that is, Site plans do not include the ability to export your site’s code,” and the lowest Workspace plan listed today is Team at $2,500 per month on an annual contract.
Code export is only available on Workspace plans: that is, Site plans do not include the ability to export your site’s code. : Webflow Help Centre, “How do I export my Webflow site code?”
Even then, the export excludes CMS content, User Accounts, ecommerce databases, site search, form processing, password protection, localized content and code components. You would be taking the presentation layer and rebuilding the application. Squarespace is the opposite case: a smaller loss, documented honestly and in public.
What three years actually costs
All figures below use the vendor’s own published prices checked 16 October 2026, annual billing where the vendor offers it, and exclude tax.
| Three-year cost | Wix Business | Squarespace Core | Webflow Basic + Workspace | Hostinger Premium | Elementor One + hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan (per month) | $39.77 | $29 | $15 | $10.99 (renewal) | $19 |
| Year 1 domain | Free (1 yr voucher) | Free (1 yr, then standard rate) | Buy separately | Free (12 months to register) | Buy separately |
| Plan total, 3 years | $1,431 | $1,044 | $540 + $90,000 | $395.64 | $684 |
| AI allowance | Included, undisclosed | 20 credits/mo | Included | 5 credits, one-time only | 25,000 credits/mo |
| Comments | 100 GB storage | 0% store fee; 5% on memberships | Code export needs +$2,500/mo | 48-month prepay to get $2.99 | Plus hosting |
Three numbers deserve emphasis. Hostinger’s renewal: the advertised $2.99 requires a 48-month prepay, then it is $10.99, and the free domain must be registered within 12 months or “it will be cancelled.” Webflow’s code export at $2,500 per month on an annual contract is a $90,000 commitment over three years, to take possession of files you generated. Squarespace’s commerce fees stack: on Core the store fee is 0% but Digital Content and Memberships is still 5%, on top of card processing at 2.7% + $0.30.
A note on domains generally: every “free domain for one year” offer in this category is a first-year discount. Wix says the voucher “is not included when you renew a plan,” Squarespace says promotional domains “will renew at our standard rate, plus applicable taxes, after the first year,” and Hostinger requires registration within 12 months. Model the renewal, not the offer.
A six-step workflow that survives contact with reality
How I would run this decision, in order.
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Write down the exit test before you pick anything. Decide what “getting out” has to mean: exporting content, exporting HTML, or keeping a Git repository. These are three different requirements, and each maps to a different tool category.
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Run a real prompt through every candidate before you pay. Use your actual business description, not “a coffee shop.” Vendor demos all look good on the demo prompt.
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Check the export documentation in the vendor’s own help centre, before the sales page. Search their help centre for “export” or “code.” If the answer appears only on a marketing page, assume there is no export.
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Read the AI credit terms and look for the word “renew.” Hostinger’s credits are a one-time gift. Squarespace’s are monthly and reset. Lovable’s expire two months after issue on monthly plans. Three different cost models, all presented as “AI included.”
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Price the renewal and the domain, then compare against hosting it yourself. A $19-per-month WordPress builder plus your own hosting beats most closed platforms over three years, and it is entirely portable.
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Before you publish, export once and check what arrived. On Squarespace that export will not include your CSS; on Webflow at the Basic tier you cannot export at all. Finding out at month eighteen is expensive.
What breaks: failure modes and gotchas
The image link cliff. Squarespace’s documentation notes that a self-hosted WordPress import can reference rather than copy Squarespace’s images, so “the image links stop working after you cancel your Squarespace site.” If you migrate, migrate the media.
The free-domain cliff. Three separate vendors document a registration deadline. Miss it and you lose the domain, not just the discount.
The credit cliff. If your builder’s AI allowance is a one-time gift, the cost of your second year is not in the headline price. Hostinger is explicit that its credits “don’t renew monthly.”
The template trap. Squarespace’s export excludes store, portfolio, calendar, index and cover pages. If your site runs on section-type layouts, more of it is excluded than the marketing implies.
The half-export trap. Webflow’s export gives you pages, styles, scripts and images, and takes the CMS, forms, search and ecommerce with it. A beautiful static site with no working contact form.
The fast-site trap. Framer’s explanation of why it does not offer self-hostable HTML is a list of performance services: pre-rendering, image resizing, font subsetting, SSR, CDN caching. Whatever you migrate to, you are leaving those behind unless you rebuild them.
The AI fact-check trap. Wix’s Harmony interface warns that “AI can make mistakes.” Google’s guidance is blunter: generative models “don’t retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words,” so “it is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content”, including titles, meta descriptions, structured data and alt text.
What Google actually says about AI-built sites
This is widely misreported, so here is the exact wording from Search Central. Google’s spam policies documentation defines scaled content abuse like this:
Scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. This abusive practice is typically focused on creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, no matter how it’s created.
Note what is not in that sentence. It is not “AI content.” It is pages generated at scale to manipulate rankings, regardless of the tool. Google lists “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users” as an example.
On whether AI content is fine, Google’s guidance on using generative AI content, last updated 1 October 2026, opens by saying generative AI “can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content.” It then points quality raters at two specific sections of the Search Quality Raters Guidelines: 4.6.5 for scaled content abuse and 4.6.6 for main content with little effort, originality or value.
That same page carries a requirement that matters if you sell online. For ecommerce, Google states that “AI-generated images must contain metadata using the IPTC DigitalSourceType TrainedAlgorithmicMedia metadata,” and that AI-generated product titles and descriptions “must be specified separately and labeled as AI-generated.”
On the AEO and GEO labels, Google’s generative AI optimisation guide, last updated 10 July 2026, is unusually direct: “From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” It then myth-busts the tactics. You do not need “new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search,” and creating llms.txt files “will neither harm nor help your site’s visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.” Same for chunking content and rewriting for AI systems. The guide also warns: “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.”
One more policy to know about, because it is new: Google added a site reputation policy to the same spam policy set, with changes applicable in the European Economic Area announced in August 2026. Outside the EEA, pages on a site found out of line may face a manual action; inside the EEA, affected pages may be “categorized as separate from the main domain” but shielded from manual actions.
Does the generated markup perform?
The thresholds below are from web.dev’s Core Web Vitals documentation, last updated in October 2024. They are targets for testing your site, not measured scores for these builders:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should occur within 2.5 seconds of first load
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) should be 200 milliseconds or less
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) should be 0.1 or less
Measure at the 75th percentile, split by mobile and desktop, and consider a page passing only if it meets all three there. None of those numbers cares who wrote your copy. LCP is your hero image and your font loading; INP is your JavaScript; CLS is your images and embeds having explicit dimensions. A slow AI-generated page is slow because of the layout the generator chose.
Where vendors make claims, treat them as claims. Duda says its sites ship with “industry-leading Core Web Vital scores.” Framer lists “Lighthouse optimization” among its hosted benefits. Webflow says its infrastructure handles “millions of page views a day with less than 100ms response time.” All three may well be true. None of them measures your site.
The bottom line
If you want the site to be yours in the sense that matters (files on your server, deployable by you) pick a WordPress builder or a code-emitting tool. Elementor One at $19 per month annually and 10Web at $10 are cheaper than most hosted plans and completely portable. Lovable, Bolt.new and v0 put a real repository in your hands.
If you want the fastest credible result and accept renting, Wix at $17.77 per month is the broadest product I tested prices for, with commerce, bookings and a real support desk behind it. Jimdo starts lower, at $11 per month, on a 12-month contract. Either way, price the renewal, the domain, and the fact that nobody has documented how you leave.
Two traps deserve one last mention. Webflow’s only documented code export is behind a $2,500 per month annual-contract plan. And Framer’s help centre currently contains two articles that contradict each other on whether you can export HTML at all: ask Framer to confirm in writing which is true before you commit.
Finally, if you sell anything, check your platform’s transaction fees against your volume before you build on it. Squarespace charges 7% for Digital Content and Memberships on Basic and 5% on Core. Shopify still charges third-party transaction fees of 2%, 1%, 0.6% and 0.2% by plan. Those percentages dwarf any AI credit you will ever burn, and at scale they are a financial decision, so get your accountant’s view first.
FAQ
Can I get my website code out of Wix or Squarespace?
Not as usable source code. Squarespace publishes a documented export that produces a WordPress-format .xml file of page content, and its own help centre says style settings and custom CSS do not export. The cited Wix pages do not document an HTML or code export path; the closest documented thing is an “Advanced developer platform” on Business Elite at $159.77 per month. Framer’s help centre contains two articles that contradict each other on this point.
Which AI website builder lets me keep the code?
The code-emitting tools do. Lovable, Bolt.new, v0 and Replit Agent all produce real application code, and on paid plans they sync to GitHub. Lovable’s documentation states that two-way Git sync “gives you a full copy of your code outside Lovable,” and Bolt’s says connecting GitHub “automatically back up your Bolt project with a full history of changes that lives outside Bolt.” Webflow also exports code, but only on Workspace plans.
What happens to my domain if I cancel Squarespace?
You keep it. Squarespace’s help centre states that a domain registered through Squarespace “won’t automatically expire when you cancel your website subscription” and will keep auto-renewing on its renewal date until you move, forward, point or transfer it. Your site is different: visitors see a “Website expired” message, and store products and customer subscriptions are canceled.
Is Framer exportable as HTML?
Framer’s own documentation gives two answers. “Porting your data from Framer,” marked updated four weeks before 16 October 2026, says every site is published as standard HTML, CSS, JavaScript and static assets you can download and host anywhere, citing the EU Data Act effective September 2025. “Can I export my website to HTML and self-host it?” says Framer “does not offer HTML export for self-hosting,” because published sites depend on server-side rendering, image resizing, font subsetting and CDN caching. CMS data is portable either way.
How much does a website cost over three years?
For a small business site on a hosted builder, budget the plan plus the domain plus any paid AI credits. Wix Business is $39.77 per month on yearly billing, so $1,431 over three years, before a domain that is free only in year one. Squarespace Core is $29 per month on annual billing, so $1,044. Hostinger’s advertised $2.99 per month requires a 48-month prepay and renews at $10.99. Elementor One is $19 per month annually, so $684 plus your own hosting.
Does Google penalise AI-generated websites?
Not for using AI. Google’s guidance, last updated 1 October 2026, says generative AI “can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content.” The penalty risk is volume without value: scaled content abuse is defined as generating many pages “for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings,” with no value to users “no matter how it’s created.” A five-page site for a real business is not that.
Do I need llms.txt or special AI markup to rank in AI search?
No, and Google has said so in writing. Its generative AI optimisation guide, last updated 10 July 2026, states you do not need “new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown” to appear in Google Search, and that creating llms.txt files “will neither harm nor help your site’s visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.” Some builders market llms.txt support anyway, which is worth noting when you weigh vendor claims.
What are AI credits and why do they matter for cost?
AI credits are the metered unit builders use to charge for AI generation, and they are not standardised. Lovable charges 0.50 credits for “Make the button gray” and 1.70 credits for “Build me a landing page, use images,” with credits expiring two months after issue on monthly plans. Duda gives every paid plan 150 credits a month. Hostinger gives 5 or 15 credits as a one-time gift that never renews, which means the second year you rebuild a page you pay full price.
Will AI-generated pages hit Core Web Vitals?
The metric is about your code and hosting, not about who typed the copy. Google defines the thresholds as Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile. Whether you hit them depends on your images, fonts, scripts and hosting, so test your real pages rather than trusting a builder’s marketing claim.
Which AI website builder is best for a small business on a budget?
Wix is the cheapest credible route to a live site with hosting, commerce and a real support desk: Light is $17.77 per month and Core is $29.77 per month on yearly billing, with the first year including a free domain. Squarespace costs more but produces more polished design and documents its export path honestly. If you already run WordPress, Elementor One at $19 per month annually or 10Web at $10 per month keep the codebase on your own server.
Sources
- Wix Pricing Information: plan names, USD yearly-billing prices, free-domain terms, 14-day money-back guarantee
- Wix Harmony: Harmony as Wix’s vibe-coding product; Wix’s own “AI can make mistakes” warning
- Wix press release on the Base44 acquisition: acquisition announced 18 June 2025
- Squarespace Pricing Plans & Features: Basic/Core/Advanced/Commerce USD prices, AI credit allowances, transaction fees, card rates
- Squarespace: Export your site content: what does and does not export; updated 15 October 2026
- Squarespace: Import to and export from your site: no cross-platform sync; no bulk image export; updated 15 September 2026
- Squarespace: Cancel your website subscription: “Website expired” behaviour and what remains accessible; updated 15 October 2026
- Squarespace: What to do with your domain if you cancel your website: domains keep auto-renewing after cancellation; updated 6 October 2026
- Squarespace Terms of Service: section 2 on content ownership and the licence granted to Squarespace
- Webflow Pricing: Starter, Basic $15/mo, Premium $25/mo, Team $2,500/mo annual contract
- Webflow: How do I export my Webflow site code?: Workspace-only export and the excluded features
- Webflow hosting overview: Webflow as non-registrar, IONOS route, Cloudflare delivery
- Shopify Pricing: plan prices, card rates, third-party transaction fees, Sidekick inclusion
- Shopify: Exporting products: documented CSV product export
- Lovable Pricing: Free, Pro $25, Business $50, credit examples and expiry rules
- Lovable: View and edit your project’s code: code editor, file download, read-only on Free
- Lovable: Project settings: two-way Git sync to GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket
- Bolt.new Pricing: token allowances, Pro $25, Teams $30 per member, branding and custom domain
- Bolt: GitHub for version control: code living outside Bolt and publishing elsewhere
- v0 Pricing: Free message limit, Plus $30, Business $100, per-model token rates, training opt-out
- v0: GitHub: branch model and publish flow
- Replit Pricing and Plans: Core $20/$18, Pro $100/$90, Enterprise
- Duda Plans & Pricing: plan prices, 150 monthly AI credits, hosting claims, code access and code export rows
- Base44 Plans & Pricing: Free, Starter $16, Builder $40, Pro $80, Elite $160
- Hostinger Website Builder: 48-month promotional pricing, renewal rates, one-time AI credits, domain terms
- Elementor Pricing: Elementor Pro tiers and Elementor One credit allowances
- Framer: Porting your data from Framer: download and self-host claim; EU Data Act reference; CMS export to CSV/JSON
- Framer: Can I export my website to HTML and self-host it?: the contradicting statement and its stated reasons
- Framer Pricing: credits model, Free plan limits, add-ons, EU refund terms
- Durable Pricing: plan prices and AI credit allowances
- Jimdo Pricing: Free, Start $11, Grow $17, Unlimited $49.50 on a 12-month contract
- 10Web Pricing: per-site pricing and WordPress CMS inclusion
- Relume Pricing: Free and Pro tiers, hosting tiers
- Google Search Central: Spam policies: Scaled content abuse: the policy definition quoted above
- Google Search Central: Guidance on using generative AI content on your website: hallucination warning, metadata review, IPTC requirements; last updated 1 October 2026
- Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features: “still SEO”, llms.txt mythbusting; last updated 10 July 2026
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: last updated 5 October 2026
- Google Search Blog: update to the site reputation policy: EEA-specific changes announced August 2026
- web.dev: Core Web Vitals: LCP 2.5s, INP 200ms, CLS 0.1 at the 75th percentile (page last updated October 2024)
