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Plasmic

New

The free alternative toFramer

🟡 Intermediate⏱️ ~30 min to installYou save €15/mo

Plasmic is a visual editor for building websites and web apps with the mouse, like Framer, but open source: more than 7,000 stars on GitHub, an MIT licence for its tools and AGPL for the editor itself, and a company behind the project. You place your blocks on the page, set the desktop and mobile versions side by side, add animations and interactions, and you can import a Figma mockup or paste HTML. A built in CMS, with no limit on collections or entries, handles your content: blog, product pages, testimonials. The free plan is genuinely usable, with no time limit: unlimited projects, publishing on your own domain with their hosting, 3 collaborators, and exporting your site as React code to host wherever you want. Its limits: a Plasmic badge on the sites they host, no custom favicon, 14 days of version history, no AI, and no multilingual site, which is reserved for the Scale plan at 399 dollars a month. According to their plan grid, the badge only applies to their hosting: by exporting the site to Vercel, Netlify or your own server with Dokploy, you avoid it without paying. For developers, Plasmic goes further than Framer: you drag your own React components into the editor and embed the pages in an existing app. On the other hand, the editor runs on their cloud: the code is open and a Docker setup exists for development, but no official guide helps you host it yourself in production. And Framer stays ahead for heavily animated marketing sites, as Plasmic itself admits on its comparison page.

Screenshot of Plasmic, the free open source alternative to Framer

Versus Framer: the match

  • Price

    Plasmic

    €0, with no time limit

    Framer

    €15/month (Basic)

  • Your own domain

    Plasmic

    Included, even for free

    Framer

    From Basic

  • Sites

    Plasmic

    Unlimited projects

    Framer

    One plan per site

How to install it (even from zero)

No server to install: the editor runs on Plasmic's free cloud. The prompt builds your site, publishes it on your domain and, if you want, exports the code so you host it yourself.

  1. 1

    Paste this prompt into Claude (Code or Desktop)

    It guides you through the editor, publishes your site and, for a badge free site that is fully yours, exports it and deploys it to your server:

    Aide-moi à créer mon site avec Plasmic, l'éditeur visuel open source qui remplace Framer (dépôt GitHub plasmicapp/plasmic, site plasmic.app). Je crée d'abord mon compte gratuit sur studio.plasmic.app. Ensuite, guide-moi pour partir d'un modèle ou importer ma maquette Figma, régler la version mobile et brancher le CMS pour mes contenus. Montre-moi comment publier le site sur mon nom de domaine avec l'hébergement Plasmic, et explique-moi les limites de l'offre gratuite (badge, 3 collaborateurs, 14 jours d'historique). Si je veux un site sans badge et totalement à moi, crée un projet Next.js avec l'outil officiel create-plasmic-app, relie-le à mon projet Plasmic (paquet @plasmicapp/loader-nextjs, ou génération de code avec @plasmicapp/cli), puis déploie-le sur mon serveur avec Dokploy ou sur Vercel, avec un nouveau déploiement automatique à chaque publication dans Plasmic. Explique chaque étape simplement, je débute.
    
    Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.
  2. 2

    Create your account, no credit card

    The free plan does not expire and needs no credit card. You only move to a paid plan if you want to remove the badge on their hosting.

  3. 3

    Think about languages before you start

    If your site needs several languages, built in translation is reserved for the Scale plan. Otherwise, plan one page per language from the start.

What you actually do with it

Your marketing site with no subscription

Pages, CMS and your own domain for free, where Framer asks €15 a month as soon as you want your own domain.

A site that is really yours

You export the site as React code and host it wherever you want: if Plasmic changes its prices tomorrow, your site stays put.

Claude codes, you lay it out

Claude Code creates your React components (a calculator, a form, a map), and you place them with the mouse in your pages, without touching the code.

Project health, at a glance

Before installing an open-source tool, one question matters: is the project alive? These scores are computed from public GitHub data. They are not made up.

89/100

Excellent

Very active, well-maintained project: go ahead with confidence.

Activity
100

Is the code moving? (commits in the last 30 days)

Maintenance
100

How fresh is the latest update? Fresher is better.

Community
71

Stars and contributors: people around means help and fixes.

Maturity
100

Project age. Old enough to be solid, still alive.

Momentum
75

Current pace versus its usual pace: speeding up or dozing off?

The repo in numbers

GitHub stars
7k
Forks
726
Contributors
43
Commits
7.9k
Project age
5.6 yrs
Last commit
today
Size
316.7 MB
License
MIT

Built with

  • TypeScript 88.5%
  • CSS 8.1%
  • JavaScript 2.5%

Scores computed automatically from the GitHub API (last-30-days activity, update freshness, community size, project age). Refreshed daily.

Loucash’s take

7/10

Yes, Plasmic really is open source, and its free plan is the most generous I have seen for a site builder: your own domain, an unlimited CMS and code export, without paying. Framer does not even let you connect your domain on its free plan. What I like: you are never locked in. You publish with them to move fast, then you export the site and host it on your own server the day you want to take back control. Why 7 and not more: the editor is more technical than Framer, built to work with developers, and the animations go less far. The Plasmic badge stays on the sites they host, multilingual costs 399 dollars a month, and the editor itself runs on their cloud: the code is open, but no official guide helps you host it yourself.

It’s for you if: You want a marketing site or a small web app on your own domain with no subscription, and the option to take your code one day. If your site relies mostly on spectacular animations, or you want the simplest possible tool, Framer is still the best choice.

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