Plasmic vs Builder.io

While Builder is a headless CMS first and foremost, Plasmic is a no-code/low-code platform that allows you to build websites, storefronts, and full-stack applications.

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Plasmic vs Builder.io

Both are visual builders for high-performance headless content on websites. Both are used for headless content management and have growth/optimization features, and let you drag and drop components from your codebase. But here are some of the key differences and tradeoffs:

Builder's breadth vs. Plasmic's depth

Builder currently has broader support for more development frameworks than Plasmic. Plasmic instead optimizes for deeper/richer capabilities within its core set of frameworks—enabling deeper code component support (see how children props are handled, for instance), deeper customizability (for instance, richer context-aware sidebar controls), component-mapping Figma import, no-code interactions, and much more. This is one of the main reasons why there exist many more green checkmarks in the Plasmic column in the feature matrices below.

Focus on being a CMS

Builder is a headless CMS first and foremost. Plasmic is a more general-purpose no-/low-code platform—but one where a main use case is managing rich content and pages. Plasmic also has a structured CMS built in (with things like localization, versioning, and so on), but it is unopinionated about where your data comes from, and partners with a number of other best-of-breed headless CMSes.

Enterprise

Plasmic has its roots supporting large enterprises, so Plasmic has a deeper bench on this front. For instance: branching/approval collaboration workflow, integration with existing localization workflows, organizations with multiple sub-teams and workspaces, cross-project versioned import dependencies, deeper platform customizability, hybrid/on-premise architecture, and more.

Web design

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Basic page-building

✅

Template library

✅

Style tokens: reusable values for spacing, colors, fonts, etc.

✅

❌

Mixins: reusable bundles of styles

✅

❌

Variants: powerful foundation for making different versions of components

✅

❌

Artboards: design across multiple screen sizes at once

✅

❌

Simplified and more intuitive layout, not simply passing through raw CSS, which has many sharp corners

✅

❌

Built-in customizable design system - edit any aspect of complex components like Selects, but also simpler ones like Button, Switch, etc.

✅

❌

Free-form drawing and positioning: for those sections of your page where need to break out of the box model, or where you are just mocking up new ideas

✅

❌

Cross-project imports: for instance, a central design system project that powers other projects (even across different teams)

✅

❌

Predictable styling when publishing to production - sealed CSS, not simply inheriting and leaking styles from outer scope where your design is published

✅

❌

Default styles: define your own global styles for h1's/links/etc., and even for different breakpoints and states

✅

❌

CSS transforms and transitions

✅

❌

Built-in interactive effects and animations beyond basic reveals, like variable parallax scroll, 3D tilt, hover effects that style descendants, etc.

✅

❌

High-fidelity Figma import that can import designs from the Figma community

✅

❌

Figma importer converts instances of Figma components to Plasmic components including Figma variants and props

✅

❌

Multi-brand theming: different versions of certain styles, components, and pages (without forking everything), and easily switch between them

✅ Global variants

❌

Easy built-in hosting for quick publish and deploy

✅

❌

No-code creation

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Built-in integrations

✅

Server-side integrations and data backends—secure, full-stack data integrations with platforms like Airtable, SQL databases, Zapier, Google Sheets, and authenticated APIs

✅

❌

Built-in component store: including off-the-shelf widgets, data integrations, interactive effects, design system libraries, and more

✅

6 comp-onents

Extended built-in integrations from CMSes like Strapi/Sanity to databases like Airtable and Supabase

✅

❌

Create dynamic pages/dynamic routes (using route and query parameters) in Studio without code

✅

❌

Built-in user logins, authentication, roles and permissions

✅

❌

Free-form dynamic data

✅

❌

Integrated code editor for code-driven designs

✅

❌

Data fetching components that can themselves take dynamic inputs and be nested

✅

❌

Visual dynamic values picker

✅

❌

Create components in different variants or states

✅

❌

No-code interactions and state management

✅

❌

Style tokens as Theo files

✅

❌

Shopify app

❌

✅

Development

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Headless API

✅

Code components with custom controls

✅

Deploy to arbitrary tech stacks

✅

High-performance generated pages and assets

✅

Code component slots

✅

❌

Codegen

✅

❌

Build your own data integrations as components (isomorphic SSR/SSG data-fetching)

✅

❌

Components with dynamic props, such as a dropdown that lists the current products available from a chosen store

✅

❌

Custom data fetching components with pre-render-time fetch support

✅

❌

Multi-environment deployments—e.g. dev to staging to production—through tagged publishing

✅

❌

Component override API that allows full developer flexibility

✅

❌

Use your components directly without needing to wrap them

✅

❌

Tokens as CSS custom properties

✅

❌

GitHub integration

✅

❌

Global context components that provide project-wide dependency injection

✅

❌

Codegen syncing that allows concurrent code changes and visual changes

✅

❌

Support for Svelte and other frameworks (though still not with code components)

❌

✅

Content and growth

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Content creator mode

✅

Headless CMS

✅

A/B testing, custom targeting, scheduled content

Dynamic variants

Basic hard copies

Multiple overlapping tests/targets/schedules on the same content

✅

Dynamic variants over pages or components

✅

❌

Co-vary any set of pages/components together

✅

❌

Dynamic variants that record specific overrides, rather than hard copies

✅

❌

A/B testing has first-class integration with optimization platforms like Google Optimize and Optimizely

✅

❌

A/B testing and optimization features have first-class integration with analytics platforms like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, etc.

✅

❌

Basic localization

✅

Localization framework integration

✅

❌

Localization support with variants

✅

❌

Integrated headless CMS with localization

✅

❌

RTL support

✅

❌

Editable zones within pages

❌

✅

Organization and collaboration at scale

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Multiplayer

✅

Version history

✅

Hierarchical organizational model (Plasmic uniquely supports arbitrary teams and sub-groups of projects with varying ACLs, with customizable roles and permissions)

✅

Branching

✅

❌

Components that lock down edits/overrides

✅

❌

Cross-project imports and dependencies, including across permission boundaries and teams

✅

❌

Multi-project integration into a codebase

✅

❌

In-production previews

✅

❌

Unlimited version history, across both visual designs and CMS content

✅

❌

Find/replace all components and objects

✅

❌

Integrated headless CMS with localization

✅

❌

Git version control with codegen

✅

❌

Enterprise requirements

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

SSO

✅

Custom roles/permissions

✅

Partner agency network

✅

SOC 2 compliance

✅

❌

On-premise offering available

✅

❌

Managed isolated cloud deployment available

✅

❌

Support ejection with full source code for user projects

✅

❌

Domain capture SSO

✅

❌

the wall of love

Our customers

us

It’s already been a huge increase in efficiency for me, personally. I’m really looking forward to a huge drop in scope for our tests that require new components (most of them).

James Armenta

Software Engineer Intuit

Really excited about this UI to React components platform. Definitely see a bright future!

Herminio Garcia

Software Engineer Sidecar Health

fellow UI engineers and designers, you should pay attention to what the folks over at @plasmicapp are doing. I've been using the beta and it is pretty excellent—this is certainly the future of component development.

@voidwarren

“I had the opportunity to test out an early version of Plasmic and it’s awesome! Excited for the future of this design tool”

Cole Bemis

Design Systems Engineer @GitHub

I was pleasantly surprised and at times, blown away, with the Plasmic approach to solving the problem. The whole concept of variants, interactive variants, and slots feels natural and intuitive.

Justin Wilkerson

Software Developer APS Physics

We're totally blown away many times a day because of plasmic. You're doing god's work.

Nitin Aggarwal

Founder Supersorted.app

By far one of the most empowering tools to come out in a while. If you’re a designer/no coder/visual developer who wants to make world class applications, or a design or development studio looking for a way to serve your clients better and faster—check out Plasmic.

Collin Thompson

CEO Intrepid Ventures

Plasmic is the most important app to be released in the last five years.

Tony Key

Senior UX Designer Coupa Software

After using this for about an hour, I'm convinced it's the future.

Max Gustofson

Design Director Outdoorsy

Watching @yaaang demo quickly creating #react components with ease using his app @plasmicapp for the second time tonight at a @_collab_lab exclusive presentation. AND I’m just as blown away as I was last time! Check out this app, y’all!

Stacy Taylor

Front-End Engineer Zapier

I'm super surprised more folks aren't talking about Plasmic — I just got a demo and it's awesome. It's like Figma and Webflow had a baby that outputs React code.

Matt Varughese

Partner 8020