"Free" means something different on every website builder, and the gap between those definitions is where people get burned. Some free plans are genuinely usable long-term. Others are a 14-day trial wearing a free label. Knowing which is which before you build saves a rebuild later.
Three platforms actually deliver a usable free tier in 2026: Wix, WordPress.com, and Carrd. Squarespace is absent from this list on purpose, it has no permanent free tier for a live site, only a trial.
Wix Free: The Most Complete Free Tier
Wix's free plan gives you the full drag-and-drop editor, the complete 900+ template library, and most core functionality with no time limit. The catch is visible everywhere: your site lives on a Wix subdomain (yourbusiness.wixsite.com) and displays Wix branding, typically a small ad banner.
For a personal project, portfolio, or something you are testing before committing money, this is a genuinely usable setup indefinitely. Storage is limited (500 MB) and bandwidth is capped, which matters if you plan to host video or large image galleries, but for a text-and-image site, the limits rarely bind.
The real constraint isn't the free tier itself, it's what happens after. If you build extensively on Wix's free plan and later decide the branding needs to go, upgrading is straightforward ($17/month for Light). But if you decide Wix is the wrong platform entirely, your site does not export cleanly to another builder. You are choosing Wix's ecosystem, not just testing a free trial.
Best for: Personal sites, portfolios, and hobby projects where a subdomain and small ad are acceptable trade-offs for zero cost and no time limit.
WordPress.com Free: Real But Restricted
The WordPress.com free plan gives you a genuine WordPress installation on a wordpress.com subdomain, with basic blogging functionality, a selection of free themes, and 1 GB storage. Ads appear on your site (WordPress.com's, not yours) and you cannot install plugins or custom themes at this tier.
That plugin restriction is the plan's defining limitation. WordPress's entire value proposition is its plugin ecosystem, and the free tier locks that away. What you get instead is a basic blog: posts, pages, comments, and simple customization within WordPress.com's theme options.
Where this tier genuinely works: a personal blog, a simple portfolio, or testing whether you want to commit to the WordPress ecosystem before paying anything. Where it falls short: anyone wanting e-commerce, membership features, or specific functionality needs the Personal plan ($4/month) at minimum, and Business ($25/month) to unlock plugins.
If your plan is "start free, upgrade if it works out," WordPress.com is a reasonable on-ramp specifically because your content migrates cleanly to the paid tiers, and even to self-hosted WordPress.org later if you want full plugin access without the subscription.
Best for: Personal blogs and simple content sites where you want to evaluate WordPress before paying, with a clear upgrade path if you need more.
Carrd: Free for What It Actually Does
Carrd is built for one-page sites: landing pages, link-in-bio pages, portfolios, event announcements, and coming-soon pages. The free plan allows up to 3 separate sites on a carrd.co subdomain, with no ads and no time limit.
This is the most honest free tier of the three, because Carrd's paid features are genuinely optional rather than artificially withheld. The free tier includes the full page-building toolkit: forms, embeds, and responsive layouts. Custom domains, Google Analytics, and payment widgets are paywalled, but a simple one-page site works completely on the free plan.
The constraint is structural, not artificial: Carrd only builds single-page sites. No blog, no multi-page navigation, no CMS. If your need fits that shape (a landing page for a product launch, a personal link hub, a simple event page), Carrd's free tier is close to ideal. If you need more than one page of real content, Carrd is the wrong tool regardless of price.
Carrd's paid tiers are billed annually and are inexpensive by any standard: Pro Lite runs about $9/year for custom domains, Pro Standard about $19/year adds analytics and embeds, Pro Plus about $49/year adds payment widgets. Even the top tier costs less per year than one month of Squarespace.
Best for: Single-page sites of any kind. Landing pages, link-in-bio pages, portfolios, and anything that does not need multiple pages or a blog.
What About GitHub Pages?
Developers often ask about GitHub Pages as a free option, and it deserves a mention even though it is not a website builder in the same sense as the three above. GitHub Pages hosts static sites for free with no ads, no branding, and a custom domain supported at zero cost, but there is no visual editor. You write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly, or use a static site generator like Jekyll or Hugo.
For a developer comfortable with code, GitHub Pages is arguably the best free option on this entire list: no subdomain branding, full custom domain support, and no functional limitations beyond what static HTML can do. For anyone who wants a visual editor and does not want to write code, it is not a realistic option. That single requirement, coding ability, is what keeps it out of the main comparison here.
What "Free" Actually Costs You
Every free tier here trades something for zero dollars. Wix and WordPress.com both show branding you cannot remove without paying. Carrd's free tier caps you at 3 sites and a subdomain, but places no branding on the page itself. None of them support a fully custom domain on the free tier except through workarounds that mostly defeat the purpose.
The practical question is whether the branding or subdomain matters for your use case. A hobby blog or personal portfolio can absolutely live with a subdomain forever. A business site representing your company to customers generally cannot, a wixsite.com or wordpress.com URL undercuts the credibility a business needs, and upgrading to a custom domain becomes a near-mandatory next step once the site is public-facing.
Comparison Table
| Wix Free | WordPress.com Free | Carrd Free | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subdomain | yourbusiness.wixsite.com | yoursite.wordpress.com | yoursite.carrd.co |
| Branding/ads | Wix ad banner | WordPress.com ads | None |
| Pages | Multi-page | Multi-page | Single-page only |
| Plugins/apps | Limited App Market access | None | N/A |
| Storage | 500 MB | 1 GB | Not specified, generous for single pages |
| Sites allowed | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Cheapest upgrade | $17/month | $4/month | ~$9/year |
The Recommendation
For a personal or hobby site where you want the most features at zero cost and do not mind a subdomain: Wix Free. It gives you the most complete toolkit of the three.
For a blog specifically, with a real intent to grow into the WordPress ecosystem later: WordPress.com Free, because the upgrade path preserves your content and the eventual move to self-hosted WordPress.org is well-documented if you outgrow the hosted plans.
For anything that fits on one page: Carrd, without qualification. Nothing else comes close on value, and the free tier is not a crippled trial, it is the actual product at zero cost.
If your project needs more than a single page and more credibility than a free subdomain provides, the free tier on any of these is a starting point, not an ending point. The best website builders roundup covers the paid tiers across Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress in full once you are ready to commit to a custom domain. For the deeper Wix versus Squarespace decision specifically, see the head-to-head comparison.