Breakdance Builder Review 2026: Is the Free Plan Enough?
Our test page in the Breakdance editor, free version 3.0.0-rc.1 on WordPress 7.1.2, October 2026.
Our verdict: Breakdance is one of the best visual site builders for WordPress if you want an all-in-one tool that is easier to learn than Bricks and has more built in than Elementor’s entry plans. Pro costs $199.99 a year for unlimited sites, includes headers, popups, forms and WooCommerce templates, and renews at the price you signed up at. The free version is great for learning but not for a real site. It adds a public “Built in Breakdance” badge, and Pro elements fade out for visitors. Skip it if you want a lifetime license or the biggest add-on market.
This review covers Breakdance as of October 2026: the free version, the editor, the new AI features in Breakdance 3.0, pricing, how it relates to Oxygen, and how it compares to Elementor and Bricks.
Breakdance Quick Facts
Facts below were checked on breakdance.com, oxygenbuilder.com and the plugin files in October 2026.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| What it is | A visual site builder plugin for WordPress that replaces your theme |
| Latest stable version | 2.8.3 (September 1, 2026) |
| Latest pre-release | 3.0 RC 1 (October 1, 2026), the version the public download serves |
| First release | Breakdance 1.0, September 12, 2022 |
| Developer | Soflyy, the company behind Oxygen and WP All Import |
| Free version | Yes, unlimited sites, 80 elements, a public “Built in Breakdance” badge |
| Pro price | $99.99/year for 1 site, $199.99/year for unlimited sites |
| Renewal | Same price you paid, locked in for as long as you renew |
| Lifetime license | No (Soflyy sells lifetime licenses for Oxygen only) |
| Refund | 60 days, including renewals |
| Templates | 37 one-click websites and 1,000+ page and section templates in Pro |
| WooCommerce | Custom shop, product, cart, checkout and account pages in Pro |
| Best suited for | Freelancers, agencies and DIY site owners who want one tool for the whole site |
How We Reviewed Breakdance
Breakdance has a free version you can download from the vendor’s “Try Breakdance” page with no account. That download currently serves the 3.0 release candidate (3.0.0-rc.1), not the stable 2.8.3. We installed it on a fresh WordPress 7.1.2 test site with a few sample posts, built a test page from scratch, imported a full website from the Design Library, and checked what admins and visitors see on the free plan.
We did not buy a license, start the Pro trial, or connect an AI agent. Facts about Pro, pricing and Oxygen come from the vendor’s own pages. Because 3.0 is a release candidate, some details may change in the final release.
What Is Breakdance?
Breakdance is a drag-and-drop site builder for WordPress made by Soflyy, the company behind Oxygen and WP All Import. Version 1.0 shipped on September 12, 2022, and the vendor says more than 100,000 creators now use it.
Unlike Elementor, Breakdance does not sit on top of a theme. It is “themeless”: you build the header, footer, blog templates and every page in Breakdance. On our test install, activating the plugin also installed and switched the site to Breakdance Zero, a blank theme that exists only so WordPress has something to load.
The pitch is that one plugin replaces many. Forms, popups, mega menus, conditions, dynamic data and WooCommerce templates are all built in.
Breakdance and Oxygen: How They Relate
The two builders come from the same company and now share most of their code.
- Oxygen came first. It is Soflyy’s builder for developers, close to raw HTML and CSS. Soflyy rebuilt it from scratch as Oxygen 6, which reached its final 6.0 release in February 2026. Our Oxygen Builder review covers the rebuild and its free download.
- Breakdance is the friendlier sibling: element-based, for people who do not want to write code.
- They share an engine. In February 2025, Soflyy said both builders now run on one core builder engine, with about 80% of the code shared. The Breakdance plugin file even contains a “breakdance” or “oxygen” mode switch, and Oxygen users can add Breakdance’s elements, forms and WooCommerce tools as free add-ons.
- They are sold differently. Oxygen is a lifetime license, shown as $199.50 one-time for unlimited sites with a limited-time discount in October 2026. Breakdance is a yearly subscription.
When Breakdance launched, some Oxygen lifetime customers feared Oxygen would be left behind; Soflyy later gave them the Oxygen 6 rebuild at no extra cost. For a new buyer the choice is simpler. Pick Oxygen if you think in HTML and CSS and want to pay once. Pick Breakdance if you want ready-made elements and an easier editor.
The Editor: Building a Test Page
The editor opens on the front end of your site and took about five seconds to load on our test install. You get an Add panel on the left, your page in the middle, and a Structure panel on the right that lists every element as a tree.
We built a simple hero area: a Section with a Heading, a Text element and a Button. Clicking an element in the Add panel dropped it straight into the selected section, with no dragging needed. We typed the text in the left settings panel and gave the section 220 px of top padding under Design > Spacing. What we noticed:
- It is quick to learn. Labels are plain and there are few hidden menus.
- Imported designs can get in the way. The restaurant design we had imported uses an overlay header, which covered our new section until we added padding. Selecting elements from the Structure panel was the easy fix.
- The markup is lean. Our heading came out as a
section, one containerdiv, then theh2. - Pro elements are not hidden. On the free plan you can add and style a Pro element, like the Pricing Table. It is just labeled “Pro”.
Pro labels in the Add panel of free Breakdance 3.0.0-rc.1 on our test install, October 2026.
Our Add panel listed 113 elements, and 44 of them carried a Pro label, including the Header Builder, Menu Builder, Tabs, Gallery, Google Map, Post Loop Builder and Code Block. WooCommerce elements did not show because WooCommerce was not installed.
Templates and the Design Library
The Design Library on our free test install, which listed 37 website designs, October 2026.
The Design Library holds full website designs, including a law firm, a dental clinic, a clothing shop and a gym. Our free install listed 37 of them. The pricing page says the free plan gets about 100 page and section templates and no one-click websites, while Pro gets all 37 websites and 1,000+ templates.
In practice, the free version let us import a full website. The “Citadel Restaurant” import took about ten seconds. It replaced the site’s global styles, moved existing templates to the trash (the dialog warns you first), and added four pages, a header, a footer and blog templates. It even pulled our sample posts into its “Recent Articles” section. It did not set the new home page as the front page; we did that ourselves. The catch shows up on the front end, as the next section explains.
Is There a Free Version of Breakdance?
Yes. Breakdance Free costs $0, works on unlimited sites, and is downloaded from breakdance.com, not WordPress.org. Here is how it compares with Pro, according to the vendor’s comparison table:
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Elements | 80 | 145 |
| One-click websites | No | 37+ |
| Page and section templates | About 100 | 1,000+ |
| Header builder, sticky headers, mega menus | No (build headers from sections) | Yes |
| Form builder | Yes, submissions stored in WordPress | Adds email notifications, exports, integrations and webhooks |
| Popups | Trigger on click only | Adds load, scroll, inactivity and exit triggers |
| WooCommerce | Default styles | Custom shop, product, cart, checkout and account pages |
| Dynamic data | Basic | Post Loop Builder, ACF and Meta Box, repeaters |
| Custom code | Limited CSS | CSS, PHP and HTML |
| Support | Lower priority | Premium support |
Note that a free contact form stores entries in WordPress but cannot email them to you. The table also leaves out how the free plan behaves on a live site. On our test install:
The imported Citadel Restaurant design viewed by a logged-in admin on free Breakdance 3.0.0-rc.1, October 2026.
- Admins see a warning bar. The restaurant design uses the Pro Header Builder and Menu Builder, so every page told logged-in admins “This page uses pro-only features”.
- Visitors see Pro elements fade away. For logged-out visitors, the header and menus faded to a pale grey within seconds. The plugin’s CSS fades Pro elements to 10% opacity and full grayscale over eight seconds.
- Every page gets a badge. A dark “Built in Breakdance” button sits in the lower right corner of every page, for every visitor, and links to breakdance.com. The plugin code says a Pro license removes it.
The header and menu faded for a logged-out visitor on the free plan, our test install, October 2026.
Upsells inside wp-admin were mild: no nag notices on the dashboard, an “Upgrade to Pro” button on the Breakdance home screen, a “Try Breakdance Pro” button in the editor, and the Pro labels. The editor button offers a 14-day free trial of Pro that turns into a paid subscription unless you cancel. We did not start it.
The free version is an unlimited way to learn Breakdance. For a client or business site, the badge alone means you will want Pro.
What’s New in Breakdance 3.0
Breakdance 3.0, which the vendor calls “The AI Update”, went through public betas over the summer of 2026, and the release candidate came out on October 1, 2026. The main changes, according to the announcement:
The Agents and MCP settings in free Breakdance 3.0.0-rc.1 on our test install, October 2026.
- Build with your AI agent. AI agents such as Claude, Codex or Cursor can drive Breakdance through MCP (Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI tools to control other software). You install the Agent Connector plugin from Breakdance > Settings > Agents & MCP, connect your agent, and ask it to build pages, headers, templates, forms or a WooCommerce store. The agent writes HTML and CSS, and Breakdance turns it into normal elements you can keep editing by hand. You bring your own AI subscription.
- A new Selectors system. Classes now output without the automatic
.breakdancewrapper, socardis just.card. Older selectors keep working. - Global CSS variables, with different values per breakpoint.
- Interactions for click, hover, keyboard and scroll behavior.
- A faster builder, according to the vendor.
The Try page says the AI tooling is included in the free version. On our fresh install, “Allow agents to access this site over MCP” was already ticked, though nothing can connect until the Agent Connector plugin is installed. The separate AI content writer is a paid extra, not part of Pro.
Is Breakdance Fast?
The vendor says Breakdance is fast by default, with clean markup, built-in CSS caching and a “Bloat Eliminator” that can switch off WordPress extras such as the emoji script and block editor CSS. These options are in the free version, but all of them were off on our fresh install, so the emoji script still loaded on our test page.
We have not benchmarked a Breakdance site, so we won’t quote load times. Here is what our test page sent to the browser:
| What we looked at | Result on our test page |
|---|---|
| CSS for our own section | Under 1 KB |
| jQuery | Not loaded |
| Heading markup | section > one container div > h2 |
| Imported header menu (CSS and JavaScript) | About 112 KB |
| Imported newsletter form (CSS and JavaScript) | About 46 KB |
| Global styles from the imported design | About 39 KB |
Sizes are before compression. Measured in October 2026.
Breakdance loads code only for the elements a page uses, and simple elements are very light. Rich elements like the mega menu and form builder bring their own files, so a lean site comes from choosing elements with care.
WooCommerce, Forms and Popups
WooCommerce design is one of Breakdance’s strengths, and it is all in Pro: visual templates for the shop, product, cart, checkout and My Account pages, plus search and filters and one global panel for store styles. The form builder handles multi-step forms, conditional fields and file uploads on both plans; Pro adds email notifications, integrations and webhooks. The popup builder is on both plans, but free popups can only open on click.
Breakdance Pricing
The Breakdance pricing page in October 2026.
Prices as of October 2026, in US dollars:
| Plan | Price | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited |
| Pro | $99.99/year | 1 |
| Pro | $199.99/year | Unlimited |
Both Pro plans include the same features. What to know before you buy:
- Intro price equals renewal price. The vendor locks your price for as long as you keep renewing, with no first-year discount that doubles later.
- The unlimited plan is marked “Soon to be $399.99”, so buying early keeps the current $199.99.
- No lifetime license, unlike Bricks ($599 once) or Soflyy’s own Oxygen.
- 60-day refund on every payment, renewals included, according to the terms.
- Sites keep working if you stop paying. The vendor says Pro features stay active; you lose updates, support and the Design Library.
- Client sites are allowed, and local, staging and development installs do not count against the single-site plan. WordPress Multisite needs the unlimited plan.
For one site, Pro costs about $500 over five years. If you build two or more sites, the unlimited plan is the obvious pick.
Security and Updates
In August 2026, Breakdance 2.8.2 fixed a security issue in three Design Library import endpoints that, according to the vendor, could be reached without logging in. Soflyy says it found the problem in an internal audit and told everyone to update immediately. Version 2.8.3 followed on September 1 to fix a theme bug from 2.8.2.
Keep your license active, update promptly, and test big releases like 3.0 on a staging site first. Our guide to WordPress staging plugins covers free ways to set one up.
Breakdance vs Elementor
“Breakdance vs Elementor” is the comparison most people search for. Elementor prices below are from its pricing page in October 2026.
| Breakdance | Elementor | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Plugin that replaces your theme | Plugin that works with most themes |
| Free version | Yes, unlimited sites, with a public badge | Yes, 10+ million active installs on WordPress.org |
| Cheapest paid plan | $99.99/year, 1 site, all features | $60/year (Essential), 1 site, no popups or eCommerce |
| Plan with WooCommerce templates | Every Pro plan | Advanced Solo, $84/year for 1 site |
| Many sites | $199.99/year, unlimited sites | $204/year (Expert), 25 sites |
| Renewal | Same price you paid | Same as list price |
| Refund window | 60 days | 30 days, annual plans only |
| Templates | 37 websites, 1,000+ templates | Much larger library, plus a big third-party market |
| Add-ons and hiring pool | Smaller | Largest in WordPress |
| AI | Bring your own agent over MCP | Built-in AI tools, with credits in its Elementor One plans |
For one site, Elementor is cheaper, and its Advanced plan ($108 a year for 3 sites) still beats Breakdance for a handful of sites. Past that, Breakdance wins: $199.99 covers unlimited sites, against $204 for Elementor’s 25-site plan, and it includes the header builder, popups, forms and store templates. Elementor has a much bigger add-on market, more tutorials and more freelancers. On speed, Breakdance loads only what each page uses and replaces your theme, while Elementor runs on top of a theme. On lock-in, Elementor lets you switch themes and keep your pages; leaving Breakdance means rebuilding.
Who wins
- Beginners building one site on a budget: Elementor.
- Freelancers and agencies building many sites: Breakdance.
- WooCommerce stores: Breakdance, since store templates are in every Pro plan.
- Anyone who needs specific add-ons or easy-to-hire help: Elementor.
Breakdance vs Bricks
Bricks is a theme with a built-in builder for developers who like CSS classes and variables. It has no free version and costs $79 to $249 a year, or $599 once for unlimited sites (see our Bricks Builder review). Breakdance is easier for non-coders, has a free version to learn on, and has no lifetime option. If you want to pay once and write CSS, pick Bricks (and see how it stacks up in our Bricks vs Elementor comparison). If you want something a client could edit without help, pick Breakdance.
Breakdance Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free version for unlimited sites, downloadable without an account.
- Pro includes headers, popups, forms, conditions, dynamic data and WooCommerce templates.
- $199.99/year for unlimited sites, with renewals locked at the price you paid.
- 60-day refund on every payment, including renewals.
- Lean markup, and only the code each page needs.
- Breakdance 3.0 lets AI agents build and edit real, editable pages.
Cons
- The free plan adds a public “Built in Breakdance” badge, and Pro elements fade for visitors.
- No lifetime license.
- Free forms cannot email you submissions.
- Smaller add-on market and fewer freelancers than Elementor.
- It controls the whole site, so leaving means rebuilding.
- The public download is currently a release candidate, not the stable version.
Breakdance Alternatives
- Elementor. The safest choice if you want a free start, the biggest ecosystem, and a plugin that works with any theme.
- Bricks. Developer-focused, fast, and the best lifetime deal at $599 for unlimited sites.
- Divi. A theme and builder in one with a lifetime plan and a large layout library.
- Beaver Builder. A stable, simple builder with a free Lite version, popular with agencies.
- Block editor themes. GeneratePress or Kadence if you would rather stay with the WordPress block editor.
For the full field, see our roundup of the best page builders for WordPress.
Verdict: Is Breakdance Worth It?
Yes, for most people who build more than one site. Breakdance Pro covers what you would otherwise buy as separate plugins, the unlimited plan costs less than Elementor’s 25-site plan, and the price lock and 60-day refund remove much of the risk. If you already pay for Claude, Codex or Cursor, 3.0 lets that agent build pages you can still edit by hand.
Try the free version first, since it is unlimited and never expires. Just treat it as a trial, not a way to run a business site. If you only need one simple site and want the largest support community, Elementor is still the safer pick. Still comparing? Our page builder roundup lines them all up.
FAQ
Is Breakdance free?
Yes. Breakdance Free costs $0, works on unlimited sites and never expires. It includes 80 elements and about 100 templates, but adds a “Built in Breakdance” badge to every page, and Pro elements fade out for visitors. You download it from breakdance.com, not WordPress.org.
How much does Breakdance Pro cost?
As of October 2026, $99.99 a year for one site or $199.99 a year for unlimited sites. Your renewal price stays the same while you keep renewing, and every payment has a 60-day refund window. There is no lifetime license.
What is the difference between Breakdance and Oxygen?
Both are made by Soflyy and share the same core builder engine. Oxygen is for developers who build with HTML and CSS classes and is sold as a lifetime license (see our Oxygen review). Breakdance is element-based, easier for non-coders, and sold as a yearly subscription.
Is Breakdance better than Elementor?
For agencies, freelancers and WooCommerce stores, often yes, because one $199.99 plan covers unlimited sites and includes the header builder, popups, forms and store templates. Elementor is better for the cheapest single-site plan, the biggest add-on market, or the freedom to switch themes.
What is new in Breakdance 3.0?
AI agents such as Claude, Codex and Cursor can build and edit Breakdance sites over MCP. It also adds a new selectors system, global CSS variables, interactions and a faster builder. The release candidate came out on October 1, 2026.
Will my site break if I stop paying for Breakdance Pro?
No. The vendor says your sites keep working, Pro features included. You lose updates, support and the Design Library.