Laarpi vs Squarespace
Squarespace is a hosted website platform with polished design, Blueprint AI, commerce, courses and invoicing. Laarpi is a coding agent that designs each site from scratch, with real-time 3D, plain code you can read and edit, and a backend on your accounts.
Short answer. Choose Squarespace if you want a polished, dependable site quickly and plan to sell products, courses or memberships, send invoices or take payments in person, all from one hosted account. Choose Laarpi if you want a site designed from scratch around your idea, with real-time 3D and motion that carry the story, plain code you can read and edit, and sign-in, data and payments on your own Supabase and Polar accounts.
Squarespace has long been the builder people pick for good taste out of the box. Laarpi is for when good taste out of the box is no longer enough, because the site has to be yours alone.
| Compared | Laarpi | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A coding agent that designs and builds each site from your description | A hosted website platform with templates, Blueprint AI, commerce and invoicing |
| How you work | Describe the site, answer a few questions, steer in chat or by clicking any element | Describe your business to Blueprint AI or choose a template, then edit by drag and drop |
| Starting point | A plan written for your idea: concept, palette, type, sections and motion | A generated multi-page site or a designer-made template |
| Motion and 3D | Motion and three.js scenes written for each concept, with a still version for reduced motion | Template and section styling; custom code from the Core plan |
| The code | Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript you can read and edit in the studio; download is planned | Limited export to a WordPress-format file; styles and custom CSS don't export |
| Selling | Polar on your account, for software and digital goods | Products, courses, memberships, invoices and point of sale, with fees by plan |
| Sign-in and data | Supabase on your account: sign-in, profiles, tables, row-level security | Customer accounts and member areas, managed by Squarespace |
| Hosting and domains | A laarpi.site address on publish; custom domains from Pro | Squarespace hosting; free custom domain for a year on annual plans |
| Pricing | Pro from $25 a month, or $20 billed yearly; lower prices in India | Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced; prices vary by country |
Facts about Squarespace come from its own pricing page, AI website builder page and help center, checked in October 2026. Squarespace shows prices in local currency, so this page describes its plans rather than quoting a number that may not match yours.
What Squarespace is
Squarespace is a hosted website platform known for well-designed templates and a drag-and-drop editor that keeps layouts tidy on desktop and mobile. Its AI website builder, Blueprint AI, turns a description of your business into a personalised multi-page starting site with copy, imagery and styling, which you then edit by hand or with an AI assistant. It can also generate images and custom sections such as comparisons or pricing displays.
Every plan lets you sell: unlimited products, content and memberships, subscription products, invoices and proposals, customer accounts and point of sale. Higher plans lower the fees and add custom code, unlimited contributors and more video storage.
What Laarpi is
Laarpi is a coding agent for websites. You describe the site, and it asks only the questions that change the result, as cards in the chat with concrete options: palette swatches, font specimens, different structures for the same idea. It writes the plan, covering the concept, palette, type, sections and motion, and you can edit any line.
It builds the site as real code, live, and then reviews its own work: screenshots at desktop and phone sizes, a layout check at six widths, and a separate art-director pass that scores the site on eight things, from concept clarity to reduced motion. On a Finish, it revises at least twice. You steer in plain words, or by clicking a heading, an image or a section and saying what's wrong. How it works walks through it.
Design: a polished starting point, or a site with a point of view
Squarespace's strength is that it is hard to make an ugly site with it. Templates are designed by professionals, Blueprint AI builds on that design system, and the editor keeps spacing and alignment in check.
That safety has a cost. A site that starts from a template shares its structure with every other site built on the same one, and a generated starting point is built on the same design system.
Laarpi aims somewhere else. The agent develops several concepts privately and keeps the strongest. It chooses typefaces for the idea, sets a palette at readable contrast, and composes each viewport around one focal point on a real grid. It treats any section that could be swapped into another site unchanged as a failure and reworks it.
A record label's LP as a slab of obsidian: light it, turn it, break it into its eight hours. A portfolio of releases that you play with, rather than scroll past.
For portfolios in particular, see how Laarpi approaches portfolio websites and photography portfolios, and our guide to a portfolio that gets you hired.
Motion and real-time 3D
Squarespace sites move with their templates and section styles, and from the Core plan you can add custom code through code blocks and code injection. Anything beyond that, such as a real-time 3D scene, means writing and maintaining that code yourself inside the platform.
Laarpi writes motion and 3D as part of the design. Every movement answers a scroll, a click or the cursor. When the idea calls for 3D, the agent writes a three.js scene for it, lights it with open-source HDR environments, uses real open-source models for real objects, and credits every asset in the site. The scene is kept light on phones and paused off screen, and every site has a composed still version for visitors who turn motion off. More in animated websites and the 3D website builder.
Owning your site
Squarespace's help center describes its export as partial. It writes a WordPress-format XML file containing layout pages, one blog with its posts, text and image blocks, and gallery pages. Other page types, store pages, product and video blocks, style settings and custom CSS do not export, because many features rely on Squarespace's own code. You can also export products and orders as CSV.
A Laarpi site is plain files from the first build: semantic HTML with all the copy in the page, CSS, and JavaScript modules, with libraries from a pinned import map. You can read and change the code beside the preview on every plan, every edit is kept as a version. Downloading the whole site is planned and not available yet, so today a Laarpi site is hosted by Laarpi.
Selling, members and data
Squarespace is broader here, and that matters for many businesses.
Squarespace lets you sell physical and digital products, courses and memberships, send invoices and proposals, recover abandoned checkouts and take payments in person. Fees depend on the plan. Its help center lists a 2% commerce transaction fee on Basic and none on Core and above, digital product fees of 7%, 5%, 1% and 0% from Basic to Advanced, and Squarespace Payments card rates such as 2.9% + $0.30 on US domestic cards for Basic and Core, falling to 2.5% + $0.30 on Advanced.
Laarpi wires a backend into your site, on accounts you own:
- Supabase for sign-in, profiles, member areas and the tables your site needs, with row-level security on.
- Polar for products, checkout links and a customer portal. Polar is built for software and digital goods, like downloads, memberships and subscriptions. It is not designed for physical stock.
Laarpi takes no cut of your sales. Polar charges its own fees on your account, and your customers and revenue stay with you. See website payments.
Pricing
Squarespace has four website plans: Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced. Annual billing is cheaper than monthly and includes a free custom domain for the first year. Basic suits smaller sites with one or two contributors; Core adds unlimited contributors and custom code; Plus and Advanced lower the fees and add video storage. Check Squarespace's pricing page for the price in your currency.
Laarpi's prices:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 30 credits a month, up to 3 projects, laarpi.site address with a small “Made with Laarpi” mark |
| Pro | $25 a month, or $20 billed yearly | 250 credits a month, 3 custom domains, no mark; code download is planned |
| Max | $100 or $200 a month ($80 or $160 billed yearly) | 1,200 or 2,800 credits a month, 10 custom domains |
| Business | $50 a seat a month ($40 billed yearly) | 600 pooled credits per seat, 25 custom domains |
Credits pay for the agent's work, metered by what each turn really costs. Prices are lower in India and shown automatically on the pricing page. If you would rather hand it over, Build with experts is our team building your site with Laarpi.
Where Squarespace is the better choice
- You sell physical products, courses or services and want checkout, invoicing and point of sale in one place.
- You want a safe, polished result quickly, and a template-shaped site is fine for your audience.
- You want one company to host, support and bill everything, with 24/7 support.
- Several people will edit the site through a familiar visual editor.
Where Laarpi is the better choice
- The site needs to be unmistakably yours, with a concept, not a theme.
- Motion or 3D would tell your story better than another grid of images.
- You want to see the code as plain files you can read and edit, with download planned.
- You need members or digital sales on accounts you control.
Browse the community for published sites, and remix one to start from something real.
A quick way to decide
- Picture the first five seconds. If a clean header, a strong photo and a clear menu are enough, Squarespace will get you there. If you want the visitor to do something they remember, like turn an object, light a scene or watch a page assemble itself, that is Laarpi's territory.
- List what you sell. Boxes that ship, courses, invoices and in-person payments point to Squarespace. Memberships, downloads and subscriptions fit Laarpi with Polar.
- Decide who keeps the site. If you need every file on your own server today, neither fits yet: Squarespace exports only part of a site, and Laarpi's code download is planned.
Moving from Squarespace to Laarpi
- Export what Squarespace allows: the WordPress-format file for pages and posts, and CSVs for products and orders if you have them.
- Start a project in Laarpi and describe the site. Paste the copy you want to keep and attach your best images.
- Answer the agent's questions, edit the plan, and steer the build until it is right.
- Publish, then point your domain at the records Laarpi shows you. It checks them until they resolve.
Comparing with Wix as well? Read Laarpi vs Wix.
Sources
Checked October 2026. Plans and features change; the linked pages are the authority.
