Best for
Best for agencies and freelancers who build WordPress sites for clients who will edit the pages themselves.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
Website Builders Comparison
Beaver Builder vs. WordPress.com
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for publishers, bloggers and agencies who want managed WordPress with a path to self-hosting.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Beaver Builder | WordPress.com |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free Lite version; paid plans from $89 / year Starter plan for 1 site, billed annually. Plus $179 for 3 sites, Professional $299 for 50 sites, Unlimited $546. Staging sites do not count toward the limit. | lower value Free; paid plans from $4 / month Personal plan billed yearly; $9 billed monthly, less on 2- and 3-year terms. Premium $8, Business $25 and Commerce $45 per month billed yearly; Enterprise through WordPress VIP. Prices in USD. |
| Free trial | Free Lite version on WordPress.org; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans | Free plan with no expiration date on a WordPress.com subdomain |
| Output | WordPress pages, theme layouts and WooCommerce page designs | Hosted WordPress sites, blogs and WooCommerce stores |
| What it makes | WordPress pages and layouts built with drag-and-drop modules and a live preview, plus headers, footers and templates through Beaver Themer | Hosted WordPress websites, blogs and online stores, built in the block editor or generated by an AI site builder |
| Styling and layout control | Global Styles for text, headings, links and buttons and a site-wide color palette exposed as CSS variables, a site-wide custom CSS tab, and adjustable Large, Medium and Small breakpoints plus an Extra Large one | WordPress block editor with themes, custom CSS from the Personal plan, a selection of premium themes on Personal and all premium themes from Premium upwards |
| CMS and dynamic content | Beaver Themer builds header, footer, archive, single post and 404 layouts and pulls custom field content from ACF, Pods and Meta Box into them | The WordPress content model: posts, pages, categories, tags and comments, extended with plugins, which can be installed on every paid plan |
| Hosting and domains | Runs as a plugin on the customer's own WordPress site; hosting and domains come from that host | Managed WordPress hosting on every plan, from 1 GB storage on Free to 50 GB on Business and Commerce. Paid plans include a custom domain for the first year; the free plan uses a WordPress.com subdomain |
| SEO controls | Handled by a WordPress SEO plugin rather than the builder: the docs list integrations with Yoast SEO and Rank Math, and Yoast analyses a published layout from the WordPress edit screen while the changes are made in the builder | Built-in SEO tools on Premium, Business and Commerce, alongside SEO plugins that can be installed on any paid plan |
| E-commerce | Beaver Themer restyles the WooCommerce Shop, Cart, Checkout and My Account pages, and the builder adds payment forms and product layouts | Payment buttons for PayPal and Stripe from Premium, and WooCommerce with unlimited products, inventory management and 0% transaction fees on Commerce |
| Publishing and code export | Sites are ordinary WordPress sites and move with WordPress. Saved templates, rows, columns and modules export through the WordPress exporter, without images and icon sets, and global settings have their own import and export | Content exports as an XML file with posts, pages, comments, categories, tags and links to media, for import into another WordPress.com site, a self-hosted WordPress install or other platforms. Themes, design customisations and plugins move with a migration plugin instead. SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and GitHub deployments on Business and Commerce |
| AI features | Beaver Builder AI turns a prompt into an editable WordPress layout made of regular modules that clients keep editing in the normal editor. Included from the Plus plan, with free AI credits | An AI website builder generates pages, layouts, images and copy from a prompt on all paid plans, and the WordPress Agent drafts pages, rewrites copy, generates images and refines the design after launch. Ecommerce is not part of the AI workflow |
| API | No hosted API. A documented PHP custom module API with setting, responsive and repeater field references, plus a hook and filter reference for changing modules, rows, columns, queries and rendering | REST API with OAuth2, WP-CLI, GitHub deployments and an official MCP server, available on all paid plans, that connects AI agents to the account and its sites |
| MCP-ready | No | stated Yes |
| Deployment | On-premise | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk, Community forum | Not stated |
| Onboarding | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Video tutorials | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | WordPress, WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, Pods, Meta Box | Not stated |
Add a tool
Adds a column to the table, from the tools in this category.
Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Beaver Builder Free Lite version; paid plans from $89 / year WordPress.com Free; paid plans from $4 / month
- Free trial Beaver Builder Free Lite version on WordPress.org; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans WordPress.com Free plan with no expiration date on a WordPress.com subdomain
- Deployment Beaver Builder On-premise WordPress.com Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
- Company size Beaver Builder Freelancers, Small and mid-sized WordPress.com Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- MCP-ready Beaver Builder No WordPress.com Yes
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Beaver Builder
Strengths
- Free Lite version on WordPress.org
- Works alongside an existing theme rather than replacing it
- AI layouts are built from regular modules that stay editable
- Staging sites do not count toward the plan's site limit
Limitations
- Beaver Builder AI is not included in the Starter plan
- White labeling is limited to the Unlimited plan
- Exported templates leave out images and icon sets
- Hosting and a domain have to be arranged separately
WordPress.com
Strengths
- Content moves to any self-hosted WordPress install, so the platform is not a dead end
- Plugins can be installed on every paid plan, not only the top tiers
- Permanent free plan, and low entry price on longer terms
- Developer access through SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and GitHub deployments on Business and Commerce
Limitations
- The free plan has no custom domain and no plugins
- Native store features require the Commerce plan
- Developer tools and full backups start at the Business plan
- The standard export leaves design, themes and plugins behind
Plans
Pricing
Beaver Builder
- Starter $89 / year 1 site. Beaver Builder, Beaver Themer and the Beaver Builder theme. No AI.
- Plus $179 / year 3 sites. Adds Beaver Builder AI.
- Professional $299 / year 50 sites. Adds multisite support.
- Unlimited $546 / year Unlimited sites. Adds white labeling, priority support and 6 months of Assistant Pro cloud storage.
WordPress.com
- Free $0 No expiration date. 1 GB storage, WordPress.com subdomain, basic stats, no custom domain or plugins.
- Personal $4 Per month, billed yearly ($9 monthly). 6 GB storage, free domain for one year, plugin installation, no ads for visitors.
- Premium $8 Per month, billed yearly ($18 monthly). 13 GB storage, all premium themes, payment buttons, video hosting, SEO tools, premium analytics.
- Business $25 Per month, billed yearly ($40 monthly). 50 GB storage, 24/7 priority support, backups and restores, SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and GitHub deployments.
- Commerce $45 Per month, billed yearly ($70 monthly). WooCommerce, unlimited products, inventory management, 0% transaction fees, all store themes.
- Enterprise Custom Through WordPress VIP.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Beaver Builder
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
WordPress.com
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Reviews are not published yet. The form on a tool's page works and reaches us, but nothing from it appears on this site, so no score here is based on a review. The rules below are the ones that will apply once reviews go live.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. We require a working email address and use it to come back to the author, so a review has a reachable sender rather than being anonymous. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on what they tell us, plus the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot have a review removed, cannot buy one, and cannot have one changed. Paid placement and a paid listing have no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Beaver Builder https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com · checked against the official source on 2026-10-15
WordPress.com https://wordpress.com · checked against the official source on 2026-10-05
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.