Durable Review: AI Website Builder, Free Plan & My Test Results

Durable is an AI business builder that makes a small-business website in about a minute. You answer four short questions and add a description, and its AI writes the pages, picks the design and finds photos for you.

I tested the free plan, which needs no card. It builds each site and shows it at a private preview address, but it cannot publish a site. Durable also sells a customer list, bookings, a shop, a blog writer and AI helpers, paid with AI credits.

Durable's own home page with the headline The complete AI business builder, a Start for free button and a Sign in link

Every number here comes from my own tests. Durable never saw the review first, and every website builder gets the same three briefs. I pasted each brief into Durable and ran my tools on the preview address, because the free plan cannot publish.

Durable is free to preview, then $22 a month on yearly billing for Launch, or $25 billed monthly. Prices read on 25 October 2026.

Durable's pricing page with the Free, Launch and Grow plans side by side, each with a list of features

In the app, a '40% off your first year' offer showed Launch at $15 a month beside '$255 billed yearly', and 15 times 12 is 180. I could not tell which price is charged, so I graded the 255 dollars. The pricing page also says the free plan has 300 AI credits, but the app showed 100.

Durable's Billing and usage screen reading You're on the Free plan and 100 of 100 credits used, Free credits reset tomorrow

Durable builds a whole site in about a minute. It asks four short questions: the kind of business, where it is, its name and a phone number. Then a last screen takes a description, and I pasted each brief there.

Durable's Share more details screen with a box for more about the business, a box for an existing website and a Start building button

The finished drafts were on screen after 60 seconds for the shop, 70 for the photographer and 81 for the cafe. Each has a menu, a contact form, stock photos and a footer. The cafe first showed a carpentry placeholder, which went away within a minute, so wait before you judge the draft.

Of my 60 facts, 54 were right, 4 were wrong and 2 were missing. The cafe said 'open Tuesday to Sunday', and two prices differed between pages. The AI also made up 24 customer quotes, 2 staff members and 4 products, although my briefs said not to add reviews or staff.

The form has a place for files and photos that you can add, but I used none. I did not run the one-line brief, because the free credits ran out.

Durable's drafts look polished but crowded on phones. A designer could have made them, and my checker still counted 36 faults on 21 pages.

Durable's cafe first draft on a phone with a large headline and a round Built with Durable badge over the text

Durable's photographer first draft on a phone with a dark photo and white text

Durable's shop first draft on a phone with a green headline and a Browse the collection button

The same two faults repeat: small tap targets, and the round 'Built with Durable' badge sitting over text at the bottom of every phone screen. The photographer's pages also have white text on photos that fails the contrast rule. Nothing scrolled sideways.

Switching templates works. Themes shows six options, each with your edited text already in it, and 'Undo theme' keeps the old one if you do not like them.

Durable lets you edit with clicks or sentences. Each section has a toolbar to move, restyle or edit it, and an AI Edit button that changes a section from one written line.

On the cafe, 11 of my 12 edits worked. A font took 4 clicks and a colour change 6, and a headline, a button link, a form field, a footer line and a phone-only change each took one sentence and about 20 seconds. A new FAQ page took a minute, but I had to add its menu link by hand.

Durable's AI Edit panel with the answer Raw HTML cannot be injected here: the design system has no HTML or embed primitive, so the section is left unchanged

The AI answered 'Raw HTML cannot be injected here' when I asked twice for an embed. Every AI edit uses credits, so you will run through the free 100 fast, and then Durable offers a Launch plan or credit packs 'from $5': they ran out after the three builds and about ten AI actions.

Durable pages are slow on phones. Google's speed test gave a median of 48 out of 100 across 18 phone runs, and 88 on desktop.

The slowest page was the cafe home, at 45, and the fastest the photographer home, at 56. Every page loads about 2 MB, and the long wait is for the first big picture.

Phones waited long for the main picture, 6.3 to 9.6 seconds, and pages weigh about 1.7 to 2.1 MB. I measured the free preview address and not a published site, so a live site may differ.

Durable gets most basics onto a page. Every preview page has an editable title and description, one H1, a canonical tag, structured data and social-card tags.

The dashboard's SEO and GEO screen reads 'Visibility 0/100, Not visible' and says the first step is to publish the site. Google Search Console and AI-crawler rules need a published site, so I did not run them.

Durable puts most business features behind a paid plan or credits. Publishing, a custom domain, selling, bookings, the blog writer and the lead and review helpers were all blocked for me.

Durable's Publish menu with the text Your site is ready to publish, Pick a plan to go live in seconds, four benefits and a Publish my website button, above a Not ready yet preview link

The Sell screen says 'Upgrade to start selling. Unlock checkout and start receiving orders.' The blog writer says 'Out of credits' and 'You've reached your blog generation limit.' Bookings, the lead helper and the review helper were also off.

The Sell screen lists four products I never gave, marked 'Listed' with prices, and my Customers list was empty, so I could not try a form message, an order, tax or a mailbox.

Durable shows no export for the site. The help centre's search for 'export my website' returned a customer CSV export and a sitemap article, and nothing on the site itself.

The plan page promises a full refund if you message within 30 days of your first payment, including on annual plans. A free account has no cancel button, only 'Delete account', which says it is irreversible. I did not press it.

I could not test restoring an earlier version. A theme or colour change shows an Undo note, and the AI panel can revert to an earlier message while the session stays open.

Durable's preview sends four headers of the six I check and forces https. It lacks X-Frame-Options and Permissions-Policy. The certificate is valid until 13 December 2026.

The account settings show Profile, Business details, Team, Currency and Tax, Invoices and Billing. I found no two-factor setting. The Team screen says 'Upgrade to add more team members'.

The preview shows no cookie banner and loads a visitor-analytics script. I could not test backups or a restore on a free site. Accessibility is covered in the design section: no critical problems, but the photographer's pages have serious contrast problems.

Durable gave no reply yet. I emailed four questions to its support address on 28 October 2026 and had no answer when I wrote this.

Durable's help panel with Help center, Email us at support@durable.com, Live chat and an Allow support access switch

The help centre answered 3 of my 5 searches: a domain I own, form messages and custom code. It did not answer how to change a card or how to export a site. The live chat says 'We typically reply in under 3 minutes'; I did not use it.

Trustpilot says 4.8 from 333 reviews, read on 28 October 2026. The profile is claimed and marked 'Paid Trustpilot subscription', and Durable replies to 50% of negative reviews.

Trustpilot's profile for Durable showing a score of 4.8, Excellent, from 333 reviews

Of the first 20 reviews on the page, 19 give five stars. They mostly praise named support agents and an easy builder. The one three-star review says the AI 'put a lot of things on the site that I didn't want'.

I did not count G2 or Capterra, and I did not read the star counts below five.