The Short Answer
Build on Framer if the site has to go to production and stay there: a stable CMS, a plugin ecosystem, real localization, and third party templates you can start from. Build on Figma Sites if your work already lives in Figma and you want a fast, design led page without leaving the file. Figma Sites is capable now, but still beta where it counts.
We sell Framer templates, so read this knowing where we stand. We have tried to be specific about where Figma Sites is the better tool, because there are places where it is.
What Actually Changed Since 2025
Most comparisons you will find were written the week Figma Sites launched, and they describe a product that no longer exists. Three things shipped since:
A CMS. Figma Sites CMS went to public beta on 20 November 2025, with collections, dynamic CMS pages and repeating CMS lists. The old line that Figma Sites has no CMS is simply out of date.
Custom domains. You can point a real domain at a Figma Site now.
Version rollback. Publishing is no longer a one way door.
That closes most of the gap people used to point at. What it does not close is the ecosystem, and that turns out to matter more than the feature list.
Framer vs Figma Sites, Feature by Feature
Where the two tools actually differ in August 2026:
Capability | Framer | Figma Sites |
|---|---|---|
CMS | Stable, filters, sorting, relations | Public beta, filters and dynamic content restricted |
Template marketplace | Open marketplace plus independent sellers | None, community files only |
Plugins and code components | Full plugin API plus custom React components | No plugin ecosystem, custom React via code layers |
Ecommerce | Integrations and external checkout | No cart or checkout |
Localization | Built in, every language visible per page | Limited multi language support |
Custom domain | Yes | Yes, shipped late 2025 |
AI generation | On every plan including Free | Available in Figma |
Best suited to | Sites that need to run for years | Pages that need to exist this week |
Where Figma Sites Genuinely Wins
If your team already designs in Figma, Sites removes an entire handoff step. There is no export, no rebuild, no second tool to learn, and no moment where the design and the live site drift apart because they live in different files. For a launch page, an event site or a campaign microsite, that is a real advantage and Framer has no answer to it.
Collaboration is the other one. Multiplayer editing in Figma is still the best in the category, and Sites inherits it for free.
Where Framer Wins
Everything that happens after launch. The CMS handles a blog that grows to a few hundred entries without running into beta restrictions. Localization is built in rather than worked around. And because Framer exposes a plugin API and lets you drop in custom React components, you are not limited to what shipped in the box.
Framer also treats publishing as the point of the product rather than a feature bolted onto a design tool. Hosting, redirects, SEO controls and analytics are all first class.
The Gap Nobody Mentions: No Template Marketplace
Here is the difference that does not appear on any feature comparison. Figma has no template marketplace for Sites. There is no documented way to publish or sell a Figma Sites template the way you can sell a Framer one, so the paid library is whatever Figma ships. Community files exist and can be remixed, but that is a swap meet, not a marketplace.
Framer has an open marketplace plus independent sellers, which means for almost any category you can find something built for that specific job rather than a generic starting point you have to bend into shape. That is the difference between starting at zero and starting at seventy percent, and it compounds on every project.
It also means a Figma Site has no component ecosystem. If you need something the tool does not do, in Framer you install a plugin or build a component. In Figma Sites you write a code layer yourself, because there is nothing to install.
This is the part we are closest to, since the templates we build only exist because Framer allows independent sellers at all.
Which One Should You Pick?
Pick Figma Sites if: your team lives in Figma, the site is a landing page or microsite, you need it live this week, and nobody will need to maintain a growing content library on it.
Pick Framer if: the site has a blog or case studies, you need more than one language, you want to start from a template built for your industry, or anyone other than a designer will be editing it a year from now.
Figma Sites is closing the gap faster than most people expected, and in twelve months this comparison may read very differently. Today, if the site has to last, it is Framer.
