Astro vs Squarespace: Which Should a Beginner Choose?

Pick Squarespace if you want a polished design with no code and you’re happy to pay each year. Pick Astro if you want a fast site that costs close to nothing and that you own. Here’s how to choose.

The main difference

Squarespace is a website builder you rent. You pick a design, then change the words and pictures right on the page. Squarespace keeps your site on its own computers. You pay every month or every year.

Astro is a free tool that makes a website as plain files. You build it on your computer. Then you put the files on a host, a company that keeps it online. Many hosts are free for small sites. Our two picks are Spacefast and Cloudflare.

Side by side

	Astro	Squarespace
Cost of the tool	Free	From $19 a month, paid yearly
Free plan	Yes, on free hosting	No, a 14-day trial
How you edit	Files on your computer	Click and type in a browser
Designs	Free themes, or make your own	Polished designs built in
Can you move your site?	Yes, take the files anywhere	Only part of it exports
Speed	Fast from the start	Depends on your design
Learning curve	Steeper at first	Gentle

Cost

We checked squarespace.com/pricing on November 8, 2026. These were the prices in US dollars, per month:

Squarespace plan	Paid yearly	Paid monthly
Basic	$19	$25
Core	$29	$39
Plus	$49	$65
Advanced	$99	$139

So the cheapest plan costs $228 a year if you pay yearly. Yearly plans come with a free domain for the first year. After that, the domain costs extra. The Basic plan also takes 2% of each sale in an online store. The other plans don’t.

An Astro site can cost $0 to run. The tool is free. Spacefast and Cloudflare both have free plans that fit a normal site. Most people pay for one thing: a domain name, at about $11 to $15 a year. See what an Astro site costs.

Ease

Squarespace wins on day one. Its designs look good with no work. You click on a word and type. You don’t need to learn anything first.

Astro asks more of you. You work with files and type commands into a terminal. It gets easy with practice. And you can get help. An AI tool like Claude can write the files and run the commands for you. Our free Claude course walks you through it.

Who owns your site

Squarespace lets you take some of your site with you, but not all. Its export guide says you can download a file with:

• Your basic pages.
• One blog, with its posts and comments.
• Text and image blocks.

It also lists many things that don’t come with you. Store pages, portfolio pages, more than one blog, video blocks, drafts and your design all stay behind. The guide says many features rely on Squarespace’s own code, so they can’t export. We read this on November 8, 2026.

With Astro, your site is a folder of files you keep. You can move it to any host in a few minutes. Nobody can lock you in.

Speed

An Astro site sends plain, ready-made pages. It adds no extra code unless you ask for it. So it starts fast.

A Squarespace page also loads Squarespace’s own code to run the design. How fast it feels depends on your design and what you add. We did not run speed tests on Squarespace sites for this guide, so we won’t give you numbers.

When Squarespace is the better pick

Squarespace is the better choice if:

• You want a beautiful site this week, and you never want to touch a file.
• You sell things, take bookings or run a members area, and you want it all in one place.
• Someone else edits the site, and they want a simple editor.
• You’re fine paying every year for that.

When Astro is the better pick

Astro is the better choice if:

• You want a site that costs close to nothing to run.
• You want to own your site and move it when you like.
• You want it fast.
• You’re happy to learn a bit, or to let an AI tool do the hard parts.

Where to go next

• How to move from Squarespace to Astro, if you already have a site there.
• Astro vs Wix, the other big builder.
• What is Astro?

Frequently asked questions

Is Squarespace cheaper than Astro?

No. Squarespace started at $19 a month, paid yearly, when we checked on November 8, 2026. It has no free plan. An Astro site can be free to host. Most people pay only for a domain, about $11 to $15 a year.

Does Squarespace have a free plan?

No. It has a 14-day free trial with no credit card. After that, you pick a paid plan.

Can I move my Squarespace site to Astro later?

Partly. Squarespace can export some pages and one blog to a file. Many other parts don't export, so you rebuild those. You can keep your domain name.

Is Squarespace easier than Astro?

Yes, at the start. You edit right on the page in your browser. Astro means working with files, or asking an AI tool like Claude to do that part for you.