Bricks vs Elementor: Which WordPress Page Builder Is Better in 2026?

Ask ten WordPress developers which page builder they’d choose for a new project in 2026, and you’ll get a surprisingly even split between two names: Elementor and Bricks. That wasn’t true even two years ago. Elementor used to win by default because there wasn’t a serious alternative built around clean, lightweight output. Bricks changed that conversation, and it did it fast, mostly through word of mouth in developer Slack channels and Facebook groups rather than a big marketing push.

I’ve built client sites in both. Not one or two test projects, real production sites that had to survive Core Web Vitals audits, client hand-offs, and years of content additions. This comparison is written from that experience, not from reading changelogs. If you want the full landscape of every drag-and-drop tool on the market, we already covered that ground in our roundup of 35+ WordPress page builder plugins. This post skips the survey and goes deep on one specific matchup: Bricks vs Elementor, head to head, with real 2026 pricing and real performance behavior.

Quick answer, if you’re in a hurry: choose Bricks if you care about lean code and Core Web Vitals more than convenience, and you don’t mind a few weeks of adjusting to how it thinks about layout. Choose Elementor if you want to open the editor and start building today, you want the biggest template and add-on ecosystem in WordPress, or you’re not the one who has to optimize page speed later. Now here’s why.

What Bricks and Elementor Actually Are

Elementor is the WordPress page builder most people have already used, even if only briefly. Launched in 2016, it now sits on more than 10 million active WordPress installs according to the plugin repository, with Elementor’s own marketing counting over 21 million sites built with it across its lifetime. It ships a free version through WordPress.org and a paid Pro tier that unlocks the Theme Builder, Popup Builder, and WooCommerce design tools. We’ve covered Elementor’s full feature set, pricing tiers, and pros and cons in a dedicated Elementor review if you want the complete picture beyond this comparison.

Bricks is younger, first released in 2021, and it took a different bet entirely. Instead of widgets you drop onto a canvas, Bricks is built around nested elements, a structural, parent-child approach closer to how you’d actually write HTML and CSS by hand. There’s no free version and no listing on WordPress.org; you buy a license and install it as a theme-slash-builder hybrid. In exchange, Bricks generates dramatically lighter front-end code and has become the go-to pick for developers and agencies chasing perfect PageSpeed scores.

Learning Curve and Interface

This is the section where the two tools diverge the hardest, and it’s the one most “vs” articles gloss over.

Elementor’s editor is built for instant productivity. You drag a widget onto the canvas, it appears, you click it, a settings panel opens on the left, you type or upload, and you’re done. There’s no separate concept of “structure” to learn first. Padding, margin, typography, and background all live in tabs you already understand from using any visual tool. A total beginner can build a usable landing page inside an hour, and there are thousands of YouTube tutorials ready to walk them through it. That approachability is arguably Elementor’s single biggest competitive advantage, and it’s the reason agencies still hand it to junior team members and clients who want to make their own edits after launch.

Bricks asks more of you up front. Every page is a tree of nested elements, containers inside sections inside containers, and you build layouts the way you’d nest divs in raw HTML. Styling happens through a structure panel and class-based CSS controls rather than purely visual dragging, which means you genuinely benefit from already understanding flexbox, grid, and the CSS box model. The front-end, real-time editing is genuinely excellent once it clicks, but “once it clicks” is doing real work in that sentence. Most developers I know describe a rough first week with Bricks, followed by a moment where the structural approach suddenly feels faster than Elementor ever did, because you’re not fighting the tool’s assumptions about layout anymore.

If you’re a solo blogger or a small business owner who wants to edit your own site without calling a developer, Elementor’s interface is the safer bet. If you’re a developer or an agency building the same components repeatedly, Bricks rewards the investment.

Performance and Code Output

This is where Bricks built its reputation, and the gap is real, not marketing spin.

Bricks uses what its team calls Smart Loading: if a page doesn’t use a slider, the slider’s JavaScript never loads on that page. Nothing loads by default that the page doesn’t actually use. Combined with native CSS Grid and Flexbox support and markup that stays close to semantic HTML, independent benchmarks and agency audits have repeatedly found Bricks-built pages shipping dramatically less CSS and JavaScript than an equivalent Elementor page, with some comparisons putting the difference at close to an order of magnitude on the front-end payload for the same layout.

Elementor has made real progress here. The move to Flexbox Containers replaced the old Section-and-Column structure that used to wrap everything in extra div layers (the “divception” problem long-time Elementor users will remember), and it’s a genuine improvement in markup cleanliness. But Elementor’s editor still loads a broad set of foundational scripts, things like its dialog and slider libraries, and a global stylesheet sized for every widget you might use, not just the ones actually on the page. On a simple landing page that only needs headings, text, and a button, you’re still paying some of the weight of the full widget library.

In practice, this shows up most clearly on Core Web Vitals audits. Bricks sites tend to start from a stronger baseline on Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift simply because there’s less to download and render before the browser can settle. Elementor sites can absolutely hit strong Core Web Vitals scores too, plenty do, but it usually takes more deliberate optimization work: trimming unused widgets, leaning on a caching plugin, and being disciplined about which Pro features you actually enable. If performance is the single metric you’re optimizing for and you’re willing to do the work either way, Bricks gives you a head start that Elementor makes you earn.

Design Flexibility and Templates

Design freedom and design speed aren’t the same thing, and this is where the two tools trade places.

Elementor’s template library is enormous. Between the built-in library, Elementor Kits, and a third-party marketplace stretching across sites like Envato and dozens of independent template sellers, you can find a starting point for almost any niche and import a full page in minutes. If your priority is launching fast with something that already looks professional, Elementor’s ecosystem does that heavy lifting for you. The trade-off is that a lot of Elementor sites end up looking similar, because everyone is pulling from the same handful of popular kits.

Bricks ships closer to a blank canvas. There’s a smaller built-in template selection, and the philosophy assumes you’ll either build custom or lean on the framework ecosystem that’s grown up around it. Automatic.css (often shortened to ACSS) has become close to a standard companion for Bricks builds, handling fluid typography, responsive spacing, and a full color-scale system through utility classes and CSS clamp values, so you get design consistency without hand-rolling every value. Layer on tools like Advanced Themer for workflow speed or Bricksforge for animations and advanced forms, and Bricks becomes less “page builder” and more “design system you assemble yourself.” That’s a genuinely more flexible end result, but it’s also more setup before you’re productive.

If you want to move fast with a proven look, Elementor’s library wins. If you want a site that doesn’t look like it came from a template pack, and you’re willing to build the design system rather than buy one off the shelf, Bricks gives you more room to actually be original.

Pricing and Licensing

Both tools are premium products once you’re past the basics, but the licensing shape is different enough to matter for your budget.

Elementor is free to install from WordPress.org with a genuinely usable core editor. Elementor Pro is sold on annual subscriptions: Essential runs about $59 a year for one site with 57 Pro widgets, Advanced Solo is around $84 a year for one site with the full 86-widget set, Advanced sits near $99 a year for three sites, Expert is roughly $199 a year for 25 sites, and Agency runs about $399 a year for up to 1,000 sites. The Theme Builder, Popup Builder, and Form Builder are gated behind the Advanced tier and above. Elementor also now sells a separate add-on bundle called Elementor One, covering AI generation, image optimization, and accessibility tooling, for roughly $228 a year on top of Pro.

Bricks has no free tier at all, though you can test-drive the full editor for free through a sandbox at try.bricksbuilder.io before buying anything. Every paid plan includes the entire feature set, there’s no widget-gating by tier: Starter is $79 a year for one site, Business is $149 a year for three sites, and Agency is $249 a year for unlimited sites. Bricks also sells an Ultimate Lifetime license for $599 as a single one-time payment covering unlimited sites and updates for as long as you own it, backed by a 60-day money-back guarantee across every plan.

Run the math on a multi-site agency workload and Bricks’ lifetime option can undercut years of Elementor renewals, but only if you’re confident you’ll still be using Bricks in three or four years. For a single client site, Elementor’s Essential plan and Bricks’ Starter plan land close enough in price that the decision should come down to the tool, not the invoice.

Category	Bricks	Elementor
Free version	No (sandbox demo only)	Yes, on WordPress.org
Entry price	$79/year, 1 site	Free, or $59/year Pro for 1 site
Lifetime option	$599 one-time, unlimited sites	Not offered
Code output	Lightweight, conditional asset loading	Heavier, improved with Flexbox Containers
Learning curve	Steeper, CSS knowledge helps a lot	Minimal, visual and immediate
Templates	Smaller library, framework-driven	Massive built-in and third-party library
WooCommerce	Native builder, checkout tools still maturing	Full WooCommerce Builder in Pro
Community size	Smaller, fast-growing, developer-heavy	Massive, beginner-friendly, oldest ecosystem

Ecosystem and Community Size

Elementor has a decade’s head start, and it shows everywhere you look. The plugin’s own Facebook community, YouTube tutorials from dozens of independent creators, and a third-party add-on market that includes long-running players like Essential Addons, HappyAddons, and Crocoblock’s JetPlugins give you an answer to almost any “how do I do X in Elementor” question within a Google search. If you get stuck at 11pm the night before launch, someone has already solved your exact problem and posted about it.

Bricks is smaller by scale but not by intensity. Its Facebook community sits in the tens of thousands of members, considerably smaller than Elementor’s, but the people in it skew heavily toward developers and agency owners who are actively building and sharing real solutions rather than asking beginner questions. The add-on ecosystem has matured fast: Automatic.css, Advanced Themer, and Bricksforge are consistently ranked as the top companion tools in 2026, and template marketplaces built specifically for Bricks have emerged to fill the gap Elementor’s library still dominates. It’s a community built by people who chose Bricks deliberately, which tends to produce higher-quality shared knowledge even at a smaller scale.

If community size and sheer volume of tutorials matter to how comfortable you feel troubleshooting alone, Elementor is still the safer choice. If you’d rather get fewer, higher-signal answers from people solving the same production problems you are, Bricks’ community punches above its size.

WooCommerce Support

Both builders take WooCommerce seriously, but they arrived at it from different directions.

Elementor Pro’s WooCommerce Builder, available from the Advanced plan upward, lets you visually design product pages, shop archives, cart pages, and checkout flows using the same widget-based editor you already know. It’s mature, well-documented, and it’s been battle-tested across years of live stores, which matters if you’re building something revenue-critical and can’t afford surprises.

Bricks includes a native WooCommerce Builder as well, unlocked automatically once WooCommerce is active, with 30-plus dedicated store elements covering product grids, variation swatches, and shop layouts, all rendered with the same lightweight code philosophy as the rest of Bricks. Where it currently falls behind is on conversion-focused checkout features: modular, multi-step checkout, order bumps, and one-click upsells are either still in progress or require pairing Bricks with a dedicated funnel plugin like FunnelKit to get the same depth WooCommerce power-users expect. For a straightforward product catalog and checkout, Bricks handles it cleanly. For an aggressive conversion-optimization setup, Elementor’s ecosystem currently has more ready-made tooling.

Bricks vs Elementor: The Verdict

Neither tool is objectively better, they’re optimized for different priorities, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

Choose Bricks if you’re performance-obsessed, you or your team already understand CSS layout concepts, and you’re building sites where every Core Web Vitals point matters, agency portfolios, SaaS marketing sites, anything where page speed is a competitive differentiator. Accept the steeper first few weeks as the cost of leaner output and a more original design language.

Choose Elementor if you want to open the editor and start shipping pages today, you’re handing the site off to a client or team member who isn’t a developer, or you need the reassurance of the largest template library and support community in WordPress page building. It’s still an excellent tool, and “not as lightweight as Bricks” doesn’t mean slow, it means it takes more deliberate optimization to get there.

My honest take after building with both: I reach for Bricks when performance is the brief and the client’s team is technical enough to maintain it. I reach for Elementor when speed to launch and ease of future editing matter more than shaving the last few kilobytes off the page. Most agencies I know end up keeping both licenses active for exactly that reason.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Bricks faster than Elementor?

Generally yes. Bricks uses conditional asset loading, so scripts and styles for elements you’re not using never load, and its markup avoids the extra wrapper divs that older Elementor layouts were known for. Elementor has closed part of the gap with Flexbox Containers, but Bricks still tends to ship a noticeably smaller front-end payload for an equivalent page.

2. Does Bricks have a free version like Elementor?

No. Bricks is a paid-only product with no listing on WordPress.org, though you can try the full editor for free through its online sandbox at try.bricksbuilder.io before buying a license. Elementor offers a genuinely usable free version through the WordPress plugin repository.

3. Which is harder to learn, Bricks or Elementor?

Bricks has a steeper learning curve because it’s built around nested, structural elements similar to hand-coded HTML and CSS, so familiarity with flexbox and grid concepts helps a lot. Elementor’s widget-based, drag-and-drop editor is more immediately intuitive for beginners with no CSS background.

4. Can I switch from Elementor to Bricks without rebuilding my site?

Not cleanly. Elementor and Bricks store page data in completely different formats, so there’s no reliable one-click migration between them. Switching typically means rebuilding pages in Bricks from scratch, which is worth planning for as a redesign project rather than a simple swap.

5. Is Bricks or Elementor better for WooCommerce stores?

Elementor Pro’s WooCommerce Builder is more mature and better suited to advanced conversion features like multi-step checkout and upsells. Bricks’ native WooCommerce Builder handles product pages and shop layouts cleanly with lighter code, but its checkout-side conversion tooling is still catching up as of 2026.

6. Is Bricks cheaper than Elementor in the long run?

It can be. Bricks’ $599 Ultimate Lifetime license covers unlimited sites forever with no renewals, which can undercut years of Elementor Pro subscriptions for agencies managing many sites. For a single site, entry-level pricing on both tools is close enough that cost shouldn’t be the deciding factor.

7. Does Bricks work with page builder add-ons the way Elementor does?

Yes, though the ecosystem is smaller and newer. Automatic.css, Advanced Themer, and Bricksforge are the most established Bricks companion tools in 2026, covering design systems, workflow speed, and animations and forms respectively. Elementor’s third-party add-on market is larger and older, with more options for any given feature.

8. Which page builder should a beginner choose in 2026?

Elementor. Its visual, drag-and-drop interface requires no CSS knowledge, its template library gets a first site live quickly, and its documentation and tutorial ecosystem are the largest in WordPress page building. Bricks is better suited to developers and agencies who already understand CSS layout and want to trade a learning curve for lighter output.

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