For most portfolios, the right Framer plan is Basic, billed yearly: $10 a month, or $120 a year, with a custom domain free for the first year. You can build the whole site on the free plan first and only pay on the day you want it live on your own domain.

I make free Framer portfolio templates, and once you’ve picked one, the next decision is which Framer plan to pay for. Framer’s pricing page lists features for marketing teams and agencies. This guide translates it for one person with a portfolio, and adds the costs you only find out about in year two. If you haven’t picked a template yet, start with the best free Framer portfolio templates and come back.

Prices checked on framer.com on October 11, 2026, in USD, before tax. Some links here are affiliate links: if you upgrade through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

In this guide

1. How much does Framer cost in 2026?

2. Can you run your portfolio on the free plan?

3. Why Basic is the plan most portfolios need

4. When is Pro worth $30 a month?

5. Monthly or yearly, and the catch with the free domain

6. What else can you end up paying for?

7. What a Framer portfolio costs in year one vs year two

8. Students get Basic for free

9. Ready to launch your portfolio for $10 a month?

How much does Framer cost in 2026?

Framer has three plans you can buy yourself: Free, Basic and Pro. A fourth, Enterprise, has custom pricing and is built for large companies, so you can ignore it for a portfolio.

Source: Framer pricing. Framer calls Basic the plan for “creative personal sites” and Pro the one for “growing professional sites.” A portfolio is the first.

A quick word on CMS, since it shows up in every row: the CMS is where your projects live. Each project is one item, and a collection is a group of items, like “Projects” or “Blog posts”.

Can you run your portfolio on the free plan?

You can publish on the free plan, but I wouldn’t send that link to a client. The site lives on a framer.website address and shows a “Made in Framer” badge, which tells everyone you didn’t pay for your own site.

The free plan is surprisingly generous for building, though. You get 1,000 pages, 10 CMS collections and the full editor, so you can remix a template, add every project and get the site exactly right before you spend a cent. The wall is the domain, not the features.

Two limits to know about:

• 1 GB of bandwidth a month. A portfolio full of big images can use that up quickly once you start sharing it.

• Framer says the free plan is for non-commercial use. A portfolio that wins you paid work is commercial.

My advice: build on Free, upgrade on launch day. You won’t pay for the weeks you spend editing.

Why Basic is the plan most portfolios need

Basic gives you everything a one-person portfolio uses: your own domain, no Framer badge, 30 pages, 2 CMS collections with up to 1,000 items, 50 GB of bandwidth, password protection and site search.

Here’s how that maps to a real portfolio. A typical site has a home page, About, Contact, a Work page and one page per project. With the CMS, all your projects come from one template page, so 40 projects still count as one page, not 40. The 30-page limit is for pages you design by hand.

Two CMS collections cover Projects plus one more, like Categories or a Blog. Every Whoosh template, including Mike Bennet, Kai Marlow and Eden Lind, fits inside Basic’s limits, so you never need Pro just to use one of them.

What Basic doesn’t have, and when you’d notice:

• No redirects. If you move an old site that already ranks on Google, you can’t send old URLs to new ones.

• No staging or branching. You publish changes straight to the live site. For a portfolio that’s usually fine.

• 30 days of analytics. Enough to see if a launch post worked, not enough for year-over-year trends.

When is Pro worth $30 a month?

Pro is worth it when one of these is true. If none is, stay on Basic.

1. You’re moving an existing site that gets Google traffic. Pro has redirects, so old links keep working and you keep your rankings.

2. You need more than 30 hand-made pages or more than 2 CMS collections. For example, projects, a blog and a separate list of client logos, each as its own collection.

3. You run a studio with a team. You get staging to preview changes before they go live, plus 90 days of analytics and a faster global network (300+ locations instead of 20).

You can upgrade from Basic to Pro at any time, so you don’t need to buy for a future you may never reach.

Monthly or yearly, and the catch with the free domain

Pay yearly if you’re sure about Framer. Basic costs $120 a year on yearly billing and $180 a year if you pay $15 every month, so yearly saves you $60, which is a third of the price.

Yearly billing also includes a free custom domain for the first year. You claim it in your project settings under Domains, and Framer registers it for you through its partner Hover. Three things the pricing page doesn’t make obvious, from Framer’s free domain terms:

• It’s free for the first year only. After that it renews at the standard rate. A .com at Hover costs $18.99 a year as of October 2026.

• Claiming it removes your right to a refund on that subscription.

• It’s one domain per subscription.

If you already own a domain, you can connect it instead and skip the offer. If you’re not sure about Framer yet, pay monthly for the first month or two, then switch to yearly once you’ve launched.

What else can you end up paying for?

For a solo portfolio, usually nothing. These are the extras that can show up on your bill:

AI credits power Framer’s Agents and other AI features. If you use the Agent skills in Mike Bennet or Kai Marlow to add new projects, they run on these credits too.

If you go over a limit like bandwidth, Framer lets you exceed it for one month and emails you before asking you to upgrade. Your site doesn’t go down the moment you cross the line.

What a Framer portfolio costs in year one vs year two

Here’s what four common setups actually cost, before tax:

The second row is the one I recommend: $120 for the first year and about $139 a year after that, for a portfolio on your own domain with no badge. That’s less than one small freelance project.

Students get Basic for free

If you’re enrolled in a high school, college, university or certified online program, Framer gives you the Basic plan for free. Framer values it at $120 a year.

You apply on Framer’s student page with your school email and a photo of your student ID. Reviews take up to 5 working days, and you can reapply every 11 months while you’re still a student. The coupon currently works only for new Framer customers, so apply before you buy a plan.

Ready to launch your portfolio for $10 a month?

You now know the plan, the real cost and the catches. The only part left is the site itself, and that part can be free.

If you want a portfolio that’s ready to publish on Basic this week, pick one of the free Whoosh templates.