Framer vs Figma for Designers: Which to Use for a Portfolio

Short answer: Use Figma to design and Framer to publish, unless you want to stay inside Figma and are already paying for a Full seat. Framer is a website builder with a free plan and hosting from $10 per month. Figma is a design tool whose website feature, Figma Sites, was still in beta on October 11, 2026 and needs a paid Full seat to publish.

Most designers I talk to already live in Figma. The real question is not “which is better,” it is “do I need a second tool to get my portfolio online.” Here is how I think about it.

What each tool is for

Figma is where you design. Frames, components, auto layout, prototypes and handoff. Its pricing page now lists Figma Sites among its products, so you can also turn a design into a published website.

Framer is where you build and host a website. You design on a canvas that looks familiar, but what you make is the live site, with a CMS, SEO settings, forms and hosting. Its pricing page is built around site plans, not seats.

They overlap more than they used to. They still start from opposite ends.

Side by side

	Framer	Figma Sites
Status on Oct 11, 2026	Generally available	Open beta since Config 2025
Can you publish for free?	Yes, on a Framer subdomain	No, publishing needs a paid plan
Entry cost to publish	$0, or $10 per month (Basic, yearly) with a custom domain	Professional plan Full seat, listed at $16 per month
Free address	framer.website, framer.photos, framer.media or framer.wiki	A random figma.site subdomain
Custom domain	Basic and up	Paid plans, up to 10 on Professional
Pricing unit	Per site	Per seat

Sources: Framer pricing, Figma pricing, Figma pricing FAQ, and Figma’s help article on publishing a site.

Figma Sites: what you get and what to watch

Figma’s help center says Figma Sites was released in open beta at Config 2025, and that publishing is available on all paid plans. Figma’s pricing page says the Sites beta is available on Full seats. On the Professional plan, a Full seat was listed at $16 per month on the day I checked, with 3,000 AI credits per month.

A few details from Figma’s own docs are worth knowing before you commit:

• After you publish, your site gets a random figma.site subdomain such as hut-grid-glade.figma.site. Figma’s help article notes you cannot change the assigned figma.site subdomain, though you can add a custom domain.
• The pricing FAQ says Professional plans can connect 10 custom domains, and that custom domain limits were “subject to change after 2025.”
• The Education plan includes one published site.

The big advantage is that you never leave the file. Your components, styles and type are already there. For a designer who updates their portfolio twice a year, that convenience is real.

Framer: what you get and what to watch

Framer is a full site builder. You can publish on a free subdomain today and pay only when you want your domain. The Basic plan was $10 per month on yearly billing, with 30 pages, 2 CMS collections and 50 GB of bandwidth.

What to watch:

• The free plan is described by Framer as “ideal for non-commercial use.”
• Basic’s 2 collections can be tight. Count the collections in a template before you pick it. My Framer pricing guide has a table.
• Redirects, staging and branching are on Pro, not Basic.

The advantage is everything around the design: a CMS for projects, per-page SEO titles and descriptions, forms, and a marketplace of templates you can start from.

What a year costs

Here is the simple math, using the prices listed on October 11, 2026:

Setup	Yearly cost
Framer Free, on a Framer subdomain	$0
Framer Basic, yearly billing, custom domain	$120
Figma Professional Full seat at the listed $16 per month	$192

The Figma number is not apples to apples. A Full seat also covers Figma Design, Figma Make, Dev Mode, FigJam and the rest of Figma’s products, according to its pricing page. If you already pay for that seat for your day job, publishing with Figma Sites adds nothing to your bill. If you do not, Framer is the cheaper way to get a portfolio online.

Moving a design from Figma to Framer

You do not have to choose one or the other. Framer has an official way to bring Figma work across. The Framer Academy lesson on importing describes it:

1. Install the official Figma to HTML with Framer plugin in Figma.
2. Select the layers or sections you want to move.
3. Copy them with the plugin.
4. Paste them onto the Framer canvas, where they stay editable.

The same lesson says to check fonts, image assets, spacing and responsive behavior after you paste. Two habits help, and both come up again and again in Framer community threads. Import one section at a time rather than a whole page. And apply auto layout in Figma first, because sections without it tend to arrive flattened or fixed in size.

Which one should you use for your portfolio?

My recommendation, by situation:

• You already pay for a Figma Full seat and want the simplest possible site. Try Figma Sites. You are already paying for it.
• You are on the free Figma Starter plan. Use Framer. Figma’s pricing FAQ says Sites is available on Full seats for paid plans, so you would need to upgrade just to publish.
• You want a CMS for case studies, a journal or a photo archive. Use Framer.
• You want to start from a finished, tested layout. Use a Framer template and restyle it with your own type and colors.
• You change your portfolio often and care about SEO. Use Framer for the per-page SEO settings and the CMS.

In practice, keep both. Use Figma to try ten versions of a project page, and Framer to put the one that survives online.

Three Framer templates that feel at home for Figma users

If you are coming from Figma, you will want a template with a clean token system you can recognize. These three are mine:

• Silvan Rhyner uses one typeface and two sizes, with a fixed sidebar built from the CMS. It is dark only, by design. Listing.
• Maël Blanc includes a Styleguide page that shows every colour, text style and component in one place, a lot like a Figma library page. Listing.
• Fiber uses one typeface, a black and white palette and square media, with color tokens, text styles and reusable components. Listing.

Browse more on the Portfolio templates page, or see how Framer stacks up against Webflow.

FAQ

Can Figma make a website?

Yes. Figma Sites lets you publish a website from Figma. It was in open beta on October 11, 2026, and publishing requires a paid plan and a Full seat.

Is Framer better than Figma?

They do different jobs. Figma is stronger for design exploration and handoff. Framer is stronger for building, hosting and managing a live website with a CMS.

Can I import my Figma portfolio into Framer?

Yes. Framer’s official Figma to HTML with Framer plugin copies selected layers from Figma so you can paste them into Framer as editable elements.

Is Framer free for designers?

You can build and publish on a free Framer subdomain. A custom domain needs a paid plan, starting with Basic.