No, Squarespace is not free. It has no free plan. You get a 14-day free trial with no credit card, but a trial site is private and cannot accept payments. To publish a site and sell, you need a paid plan, which starts at $19 a month when you pay for a year, or $25 when you pay month to month.
Disclosure: Runner AI publishes this guide. All Squarespace details come from Squarespace’s own pricing page and help center, retrieved on November 12, 2026. Prices and fees can change, so check the live pages before you buy.
Key Takeaways
- There is no free plan. Squarespace’s pricing page says so directly. Every site starts with a 14-day free trial, and you can extend it by 7 days.
- The trial cannot sell. A trial site is private, search engines do not index it, and it cannot accept payments.
- Plans cost $19 to $99 a month paid annually, or $25 to $139 paid monthly.
- Basic takes 2% of each store sale on top of card processing. Core, Plus, and Advanced take 0%.
- A $100 card sale costs $5.20 on Basic with Squarespace Payments, and $3.20 on Core.
Can I Use Squarespace Without Paying?
Only during the trial. Squarespace offers a 14-day free website trial, and you do not need to enter a credit card to start it. You can pick a template, build pages, add products, and try the editor.
The trial has hard limits:
- Your site is private. Visitors cannot see it unless you set a password and share it. Search engines do not index trial sites.
- You cannot accept payments. Commerce and donation payments are off, and you cannot create subscription products.
- You cannot verify the site with Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools until you upgrade.
If you need more time, you can extend the trial by 7 days. If you let the trial expire, Squarespace marks all content for permanent deletion. You may still be able to upgrade and keep your work, depending on how much time has passed, but the help page does not say how long Squarespace keeps it. If you built something you want to keep, upgrade before the trial ends.
So the trial is a test drive. It is not a way to run a store for free.
How Much Does Squarespace Cost?
Squarespace has four website plans. Each plan shows two prices. The lower price is what you pay per month when you pay for a full year up front. The higher price is month to month.
| Plan | Paid annually | Paid monthly | Store transaction fee | Digital products fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $19/mo | $25/mo | 2% | 7% |
| Core | $29/mo | $39/mo | 0% | 5% |
| Plus | $49/mo | $65/mo | 0% | 1% |
| Advanced | $99/mo | $139/mo | 0% | 0% |
Annual plans include one year of free domain registration on available domains. After the first year, the domain renews at the standard rate. You can cancel or change plans at any time, and your service continues through the period you already paid for.
What Is the Cheapest Squarespace Plan That Can Sell?
Basic. It is the cheapest plan, and it can sell. Squarespace’s help center says Basic can sell unlimited products, plus content and memberships, subscription products, invoices, and donations.
What Basic leaves out matters for a store. These features start on Core:
- Shipping labels and carrier-calculated shipping
- Automatic discounts and promotional pop-ups
- Google Shopping
- Commerce and purchase funnel analytics
- Product waitlists
- Third-party commerce integrations and the Mailchimp integration
If you ship physical products, the missing shipping tools are the gap you will notice first. Core is the plan Squarespace built for a real online store.
Does Squarespace Take a Percentage of Sales?
On Basic, yes. Squarespace charges a 2% transaction fee on each completed store sale. On Core, Plus, and Advanced, the store transaction fee is 0%.
Digital products such as courses, video pages and member sites have their own fee: 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus, and 0% on Advanced. Downloadable files are not in this group. Squarespace counts downloads with physical products and services, so they pay the store transaction fee instead: 2% on Basic and 0% on the higher plans. If you sell courses or memberships, the digital products fee can matter more than the plan price.
If you refund an order, Squarespace refunds its transaction fee. The card processing fee is not refunded.
Does Squarespace Charge Transaction Fees on Top of Card Fees?
Yes. The transaction fee and the card processing fee are two separate charges.
With Squarespace Payments in the US, standard card rates depend on your plan:
| Plan | Standard card rate | Premium cards (for example Amex) | ACH direct debit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 2.9% + $0.30 | 3.2% + $0.30 | 1.5% |
| Core | 2.9% + $0.30 | 3.2% + $0.30 | 1% |
| Plus | 2.7% + $0.30 | 3.2% + $0.30 | 1% |
| Advanced | 2.5% + $0.30 | 3.2% + $0.30 | 1% ($10 max) |
International cards add 1.5%, and currency conversion adds 1%. If you use Stripe, PayPal, or Square instead, you pay that provider’s processing fee directly to them. The Squarespace transaction fee on Basic still applies.
Here is what a $100 sale on a standard US card through Squarespace Payments costs on each plan:
| Plan | Transaction fee | Card fee | Total fees | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $2.00 | $3.20 | $5.20 | $94.80 |
| Core | $0 | $3.20 | $3.20 | $96.80 |
| Plus | $0 | $3.00 | $3.00 | $97.00 |
| Advanced | $0 | $2.80 | $2.80 | $97.20 |
The monthly plan price is not in this table. Add it to see your full cost.
When does Core pay for itself?
Core costs $10 more per month than Basic when you pay annually ($29 versus $19), and $14 more when you pay monthly ($39 versus $25). It removes the 2% store fee. The 2% fee equals $10 at $500 in monthly sales, and $14 at $700.
So if your store sells more than about $500 a month on an annual plan, or about $700 a month on a monthly plan, Core costs less than Basic. You also get the shipping and discount tools.
Is Squarespace Worth It?
It depends on what you sell and how much.
It is likely worth it if:
- You want a polished site with a store attached, not a store with a site attached.
- You sell a modest number of physical products and want shipping tools in one place (Core or higher).
- You sell digital content or memberships at volume and can justify Plus or Advanced for the lower digital fees.
It is likely not worth it if:
- You want to sell for free. There is no free plan, and the trial cannot take payments.
- You sell courses or memberships on Basic. A 7% fee plus card processing takes a large share of each sale.
- You need shipping labels or Google Shopping but want to stay on the cheapest plan. Those start on Core.
Is Squarespace Good for Ecommerce?
For small stores, it covers the basics. Every plan can sell unlimited products. Core adds the store tools most sellers expect, such as calculated shipping, labels, discounts, and analytics, with no store transaction fee. Plus and Advanced lower the card rate and the digital products fee.
The trade-off is cost at the low end. The cheapest plan that feels like a full store is Core, at $29 a month paid annually. If you want a deeper comparison with a store-first platform, read Shopify vs Squarespace. If you are already looking at other options, our Squarespace alternatives guide compares several of them.
Where Runner AI Fits
Runner AI is an AI-native e-commerce platform. You describe the store in chat, and the AI builds the storefront, product pages, and checkout. You keep editing by chat or with visual tools.
Runner has a $0 plan. On it you can build the store and see a live visual preview. You get 150 welcome credits plus quest rewards, one project, and you can clone a website as a starting point. The $0 plan can also publish the store to a free runnerai.dev address, with a Runner watermark. Your own domain, no watermark and an always-on store start with Plus at $25 a month.
| Runner plan | Monthly price | Runner fee per sale | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5% | Build, preview and publish to a free runnerai.dev address, with a watermark |
| Plus | $25 | 2% | 1 published store, custom domain, no watermark, 1,000 credits |
| Pro | $49 | 1.5% | Full AI toolkit, 2,500 credits |
| Max | $159 | 1% | Up to 3 stores, 10,000 credits |
Annual billing is 20% lower on every paid plan. Your payment provider’s own processing fee, such as Stripe’s card fee, is separate and applies on every plan. See Runner pricing for current details.
To be fair about the numbers: Runner Plus charges a 2% fee per sale, the same rate as Squarespace Basic. Squarespace Core charges 0%. If you sell a steady volume and only need a standard store, Squarespace Core can cost less per sale.
Runner fits you if you want to build a store by describing it, test the idea for free with a live preview, and use AI for product sourcing, dropshipping, and store edits. It does not fit you if you want your own domain without a paid plan, or if a design-first portfolio with a small shop is your main goal. For a side-by-side, read Runner AI vs Squarespace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Squarespace free to build a website?
You can build for free during the 14-day trial, with no credit card. You cannot publish the site publicly or take payments until you choose a paid plan.
How long is the Squarespace free trial?
14 days. You can extend it by 7 days. When it expires, Squarespace marks your content for permanent deletion.
What is the cheapest Squarespace plan?
Basic, at $19 a month paid annually or $25 a month paid monthly. It can sell, but it adds a 2% fee on store sales and 7% on digital products such as courses.
Does Squarespace take a cut of sales on Core?
No store transaction fee on Core, Plus, or Advanced. You still pay card processing, and Core charges 5% on courses, video pages and member sites.
Is there a free website builder that can sell?
Some builders have free plans. Before you choose one, check two things: whether the free plan can publish on the public web, and whether it can take payments. Most charge for at least one of these. Runner’s $0 plan builds a store and publishes it to a free runnerai.dev address, with a Runner watermark. Your own domain needs Plus.
Sources
- Squarespace Pricing — no free plan, 14-day free trial, plan prices for annual and monthly billing, free domain for one year on annual plans, cancel at any time. Retrieved 2026-11-12.
- Squarespace Help: Start a Squarespace trial site — 14-day trial, no credit card, private trial sites, no payments during the trial, 7-day extension, content marked for deletion on expiry. Retrieved 2026-11-12.
- Squarespace Help: Transaction fees and payment processing rates — store and digital products transaction fees by plan, Squarespace Payments US card, ACH, international, and currency conversion rates, third-party processor fees, refund of transaction fees. Retrieved 2026-11-12.
- Squarespace Help: Selling on the Basic, Core, Plus, and Advanced plans — what each plan can sell and the commerce features that start on Core. Retrieved 2026-11-12.
- Runner AI Pricing — Runner plans, prices, credits, and fees per sale (from Runner’s own product details). Retrieved 2026-11-12.
