Bricks vs Elementor 2026: Which Page Builder Wins for You?
Our test landing page in the free Elementor 4.3.3 editor (WordPress 7.1.2, Hello Elementor 3.5.1), October 2026.
Our verdict: Bricks is the better builder if you make websites for a living. Every plan includes every feature, the $599 lifetime license covers unlimited sites, and the official Bricks demo shipped less code without jQuery. Elementor is the better choice for beginners and most single-site owners. Its free version built our whole landing page at no cost, it works with any theme, and it has the biggest pool of add-ons, tutorials and freelancers. Pick Bricks for client work, lean code and WooCommerce on a budget. Pick Elementor if you want to start free, start easy, or keep your options open.
This comparison covers Bricks 2.4.2 and Elementor 4.3.3, the current versions as of October 2026.
Bricks vs Elementor at a Glance
Prices and features below were checked on bricksbuilder.io, elementor.com and the WordPress.org plugin listing in October 2026. Anything marked “Pro” needs a paid Elementor plan.
| Bricks | Elementor | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A theme with a built-in visual builder | A plugin that works with most themes |
| Latest version | 2.4.2 (September 28, 2026) | 4.3.3 (updated September 30, 2026) |
| Free version | No. The online playground needs an account | Yes, 10+ million active installs, 4.5 out of 5 stars from about 7,300 reviews |
| Cheapest paid plan | $79/year, 1 site, every feature | $60/year (Essential), 1 site, no popups, custom code or eCommerce |
| Plan with WooCommerce tools | Every plan | Advanced Solo, $84/year for 1 site |
| Multi-site plans | $149/year (3 sites), $249/year (unlimited) | $108/year (3 sites), $204/year (25 sites) |
| Lifetime option | $599 once, unlimited sites | No |
| Refund window | 60 days on a first purchase | 30 days |
| Elements | 118+ built-in elements | 143 widgets in the free panel, 96 of them locked to Pro |
| Templates | 67 design set and 180 wireframe templates | A much larger library, plus a big third-party market |
| jQuery on the front end | No, plain JavaScript | Yes, on our test page |
| Best for | Freelancers, agencies, developers, WooCommerce builders | Beginners, DIY site owners, anyone who wants to start free |
How We Compared Them
On a fresh WordPress 7.1.2 test install with the free Hello Elementor 3.5.1 theme, we built a simple landing page for a made-up bakery in free Elementor 4.3.3: a hero with an image, three icon boxes, a testimonial and a call-to-action band. We used Elementor’s Flexbox containers and free widgets, then measured what a browser downloads when it opens the page.
Bricks is paid only, and its playground asks you to create an account. We did not buy a license or sign up. The Bricks side is based on the vendor’s pricing, feature and changelog pages, the Bricks Academy docs, our full Bricks Builder review, and the official Bricks template demos, which the Bricks team builds and hosts with Bricks. We measured one of those demo pages the same way as our Elementor page.
So we could not build the identical page in Bricks, and the speed numbers below are a rough comparison, not a benchmark.
Bricks vs Elementor: The Core Difference
Elementor is a plugin. You install it on top of a theme (Elementor’s own lightweight theme is Hello Elementor; see our Hello Elementor review), and you can switch themes later. The free version builds pages. Paid plans add the Theme Builder for headers, footers and templates, plus popups, forms, custom code and WooCommerce tools, depending on the tier.
Bricks is a theme. You upload it under Appearance > Themes, and it controls the whole site: headers, footers, post templates, archives, popups and store pages. There is no separate theme layer, and there are no feature tiers. A $79 license gets the same tools as the $599 one.
Price
The Bricks pricing page, captured October 2026.
The Elementor pricing page, captured October 2026.
Here is what each costs as of October 2026, in US dollars before tax. Elementor’s pricing page says all its subscriptions renew at list price.
| Plan | Price | Sites | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementor Free | $0 | Any | Theme Builder, popups, forms, custom CSS, display conditions, WooCommerce widgets (all Pro) |
| Elementor Essential | $60/year | 1 | Popups, custom code and CSS, eCommerce, custom fields; forms but no stored submissions |
| Elementor Advanced Solo | $84/year | 1 | Nothing in the builder |
| Elementor Advanced | $108/year | 3 | Nothing in the builder |
| Elementor Expert | $204/year | 25 | Nothing in the builder |
| Bricks Starter | $79/year | 1 | Nothing |
| Bricks Business | $149/year | 3 | Nothing |
| Bricks Agency | $249/year | Unlimited | Nothing |
| Bricks Ultimate Lifetime | $599 once | Unlimited | Nothing |
Elementor also sells a bundle called One ($180 for the first year, then $228) that adds AI credits, image optimization, accessibility and email tools. You don’t need it to build pages.
What it costs over five years, if prices stay the same:
| You run | Elementor (full builder features) | Bricks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 site | $420 (Advanced Solo) | $395 (Starter) |
| 3 sites | $540 (Advanced) | $745 (Business), or $599 lifetime |
| 25 sites | $1,020 (Expert) | $599 lifetime |
Winner: depends on your site count. For one simple site, free Elementor costs nothing. For one site with full features, they are close. For three sites, Elementor is cheaper. Beyond that, the Bricks lifetime license wins; against Elementor’s 25-site plan it pays for itself in about three years. Bricks also has a 60-day refund window (Elementor: 30 days), and its pricing FAQ says local and staging sites don’t count against your site limit.
Ease of Use
Elementor is easier to start with. On our test install the editor opened straight onto the page, with widgets on the left and settings in the same panel when you click an element. The Structure panel shows the page as a tree, which helped once containers were nested three deep. A few rough edges:
- Defaults you didn’t choose. Our new H2 headings and the testimonial name came out in Elementor’s default light blue, and the page loaded Elementor’s default Roboto and Roboto Slab fonts from Google until we switched Google Fonts off.
- Prompts. The second time we opened the editor, a pop-up asked us to install Angie, Elementor’s AI agent, and “Upgrade Now” links stayed at the bottom of two panels.
- Two element systems. Elementor 4 lists its new Atomic Elements first, with the classic widgets below. We used the classic ones, but a beginner may wonder which to pick.
Bricks has no free version to try, so this part comes from its docs and demos. Its editor uses the same layout: elements on the left, the page in the middle, a Structure panel. Its power tools are global CSS classes, CSS variables, components and custom code. Bricks says you don’t need them, but the editor is built around them, and they make the most sense if you know some CSS.
Winner: Elementor for beginners, thanks to the free version, more templates and far more tutorials. Bricks is easier to keep tidy on big sites once you learn its class system.
Speed and Page Weight
Speed is the main reason people switch to Bricks. The vendor says Bricks sites earn top Lighthouse and GTmetrix grades out of the box. We checked what each builder sends to the browser.
The finished Elementor test page on the front end of our test install, October 2026.
On our test install, with Elementor’s default settings, the landing page made 29 requests and transferred 238 KB. Here is how that compares with the home page of Karlson, an official Bricks design-set demo.
The official Karlson design-set demo, built and hosted by the Bricks team, captured October 2026.
| What the browser loaded | Elementor 4.3.3 (our landing page) | Bricks 2.4.2 (Karlson demo home page) |
|---|---|---|
| Requests | 29 | 23 |
| Total transferred | 238 KB | 896 KB |
| Images | 1 image, 26 KB | 10 images, about 800 KB |
| HTML, CSS and JavaScript (uncompressed) | 24 files, 452 KB | 11 files, 312 KB |
| JavaScript | 11 files, 318 KB | 2 files, 193 KB |
| jQuery | Yes: jQuery, jQuery Migrate and jQuery UI Core (117 KB) | None |
| Builder’s own stylesheets | 9 files, 76 KB | 8 files, 56 KB |
| Google Fonts | Roboto and Roboto Slab, 4 requests, 75 KB | Manrope, 2 requests, 26 KB |
| HTML elements on the page | 137, including 48 div tags |
258, including 49 div tags |
Measured October 2026 with a headless Chrome browser at 1440 x 900. Code sizes are uncompressed because the two servers compress files differently.
The Bricks demo is a bigger page served from Bricks’ own server, and our Elementor page ran on a local test server. Still, the pattern is clear:
- Bricks shipped less code for more page. The Karlson page needed 312 KB of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Our smaller Elementor page needed 452 KB.
- jQuery is the biggest gap. Elementor’s front end loaded jQuery, jQuery Migrate and jQuery UI Core. The Bricks demo loaded no jQuery at all. Elementor’s own scripts (177 KB) were actually a little smaller than Bricks’ main script (187 KB).
- Elementor loads things you didn’t ask for. Two of its scripts handle background videos and slideshows, which our page didn’t use. The Roboto fonts came from Elementor’s default global fonts, not from any choice we made.
- Images outweigh both. Most of the Bricks demo’s weight was photos, which no builder fixes; an image optimizer plugin can.
Elementor can be trimmed. Under Elementor > Settings > Advanced we turned off Google Fonts, and the same page dropped to 25 requests and 163 KB. The Performance tab adds image loading, lazy loading and element caching options. jQuery stays, though. Bricks has similar switches, according to its docs, including ones to disable WordPress emojis, jQuery Migrate and Google Fonts.
Winner: Bricks. It starts leaner, though the gap is smaller than Elementor’s “bloated” reputation suggests, and the theme you pair with Elementor matters too. Our fastest WordPress theme tests show how much the base theme adds.
Design Tools and Features
Searching for “form” in free Elementor 4.3.3: every form widget is locked to Pro. Test install, October 2026.
On our test install, the free Elementor panel listed 143 items, and 96 of them carried a Pro lock or an “Upgrade” label. The free version covers the basics well (headings, text, images, buttons, icon boxes, testimonials, tabs, accordions, video). Forms, popups, the Theme Builder and display conditions are all Pro.
Every Bricks plan includes, according to the vendor:
- A Query Loop Builder for lists of posts, products, users or custom data, with filters and infinite scroll.
- A Popup Builder, a Menu Builder for mega menus, and Forms with actions such as sending email or adding a subscriber.
- Conditions to show or hide any element, and Interactions for click, hover and scroll effects.
- Dynamic data from custom field plugins such as ACF, Meta Box, JetEngine, Toolset and Pods.
- Custom code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP) and reusable components.
Elementor Pro covers most of the same ground (Theme Builder, popups, forms, loop grids, dynamic content), spread across tiers; the cheapest, Essential, leaves out popups, custom code and custom fields. Elementor wins on choice: more widgets, many more templates, and a far bigger add-on market.
Winner: Bricks for features per dollar. Elementor if you want ready-made designs or a specific add-on.
SEO
Neither builder decides your rankings. Content, speed and links do. Two practical differences:
- Metadata. Bricks page settings include an SEO title, meta description and social sharing fields, according to the Bricks Academy docs. You can skip an SEO plugin on a small site, though most people still use one. Free Elementor’s page settings on our test install had no SEO fields, so you’ll want a plugin like Rank Math or Yoast. See our Rank Math vs Yoast comparison.
- Markup and speed. Both output proper heading tags; our Elementor H1 sat inside a single wrapper
div. Bricks’ smaller code can help Core Web Vitals a little.
Winner: Bricks, narrowly.
WooCommerce
Bricks includes a full WooCommerce builder in every plan, for the shop, product archives, single products, cart, checkout and account pages. Bricks 2.4 added a setup wizard that creates those layouts in one place.
Free Elementor has no store design tools. On our test install, all 25 WooCommerce widgets were locked. You need Advanced Solo ($84/year) or higher for Elementor’s eCommerce features.
Winner: Bricks. It is slightly cheaper for one store ($79 vs $84 a year) and includes everything else too.
Ownership and Lock-in
Every visual builder locks you in to some degree. The difference is how much you lose when you leave.
On our test install, we deactivated Elementor to check. The page still showed its headings, text, button link and image as plain, unstyled HTML, because Elementor saves a basic copy of the content in the normal WordPress editor field. You can also switch themes while keeping Elementor.
Bricks is the theme, so moving to another theme means rebuilding your pages. If you cancel a yearly Bricks plan after at least one full, non-refunded year, the vendor says your sites keep working and you can still edit them. You lose updates, support and community templates. A lifetime license avoids that question, as long as Bricks remains in active development.
Going from Elementor to Bricks means rebuilding pages by hand, since there is no converter. Do it on a staging copy (see our WordPress staging plugin guide); Bricks says staging sites don’t count against your license.
Winner: Elementor.
AI Tools
Bricks 2.4 lets you connect an AI client you already use (the vendor names Codex, Claude and Copilot) to create pages and manage your design system. Elementor sells built-in AI on its One plans, with 25,000 monthly credits, and promotes its Angie agent inside the free editor. Winner: tie. It depends on whether you already pay for an AI tool.
Support and Community
Bricks offers email and forum support while your license is active, detailed Academy docs, and a community Facebook group. Elementor’s support page lists live chat and email support for paying customers. Standard support runs during business hours, with 24/7 priority support on higher tiers. Elementor’s real advantage is scale. Its pricing page says it powers over 22 million sites, so tutorials are easy to find, and so are freelancers who know it.
Winner: Elementor, for the size of its community.
Who Should Pick Which
- Beginners and DIY site owners: Elementor. Start free and upgrade only if you need popups, forms or the Theme Builder.
- A small business with one simple site: Elementor (free). Our whole landing page needed no paid features.
- Freelancers and agencies building many sites: Bricks. The $599 lifetime license covers unlimited sites, and every client gets every feature.
- Developers and speed fans: Bricks. Less code, no jQuery, real CSS classes and variables.
- WooCommerce stores on a budget: Bricks. Store design is included in the cheapest plan.
- Anyone who needs a specific add-on, a big template library, or easy hiring: Elementor.
- Want something in between? Breakdance has a free version and is easier than Bricks, and Divi offers a $249 lifetime plan with many more ready-made layouts.
For the full field, including Beaver Builder and block-based options, see our guide to the best page builder for WordPress.
FAQ
Is Bricks better than Elementor?
For developers, agencies and WooCommerce builders, yes: every feature in every plan, a $599 lifetime license, and less code in our comparison. For beginners and most single-site owners, Elementor is better thanks to its free version, more templates and bigger community.
Is Bricks faster than Elementor?
It starts leaner. The official Bricks demo we measured loaded no jQuery and 312 KB of code. Our simpler Elementor test page loaded jQuery and 452 KB of code with default settings. Turning off Elementor’s Google Fonts cut our page from 238 KB to 163 KB. Images, hosting and caching often matter more than the builder.
Is there a free version of Bricks?
No. Bricks is paid only, from $79 a year for one site. You can try it at the online playground after creating an account, and first purchases come with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Can I use Elementor for free?
Yes. Free Elementor 4.3.3 built our entire landing page: hero, icon boxes, testimonial and call to action. The Theme Builder and forms start with the $60-a-year Essential plan. Popups, custom CSS and WooCommerce widgets need Advanced Solo ($84 a year) or higher.
Which is cheaper, Bricks or Elementor?
For one simple site, free Elementor. For one site with every feature, they are close: $79 a year for Bricks vs $84 for Elementor Advanced Solo. For three sites, Elementor’s $108 plan beats Bricks’ $149. For many sites, the $599 Bricks lifetime license is cheapest within about three years.