4 WordPress Page Builders in 2026: LiveCanvas, Oxygen, Bricks and Elementor Compared

When I first wrote this comparison in May 2023, I ended it by saying I loved all four of these builders and was in the middle of moving from Oxygen to Bricks.

Both of those things are out of date now. I finished the move to Bricks and rebuilt this agency site on it in early 2024. A while later I stopped building on WordPress altogether. I wrote the whole story in why I stopped using WordPress. Short version: it was the governance mess and the update treadmill, not the page builders.

I'm updating this comparison anyway. WordPress still runs over 40% of the web, people still land on this post looking for an answer, and the 2023 version was handing them stale prices and stale facts. All four builders changed a lot since then. One of them was rewritten from scratch.

Here is where LiveCanvas, Oxygen, Bricks and Elementor stand in October 2026, what I used them for back then, and which one I'd pick if a client forced me back into WordPress tomorrow.

What I'm basing this on (and what I'm not)

I used Elementor for years, and it was one of my favorites. In 2018 I moved to Oxygen because I cared more about clean code and performance than about how fast I could drag a box onto a page. Around 2022 I started moving projects to Bricks, and in March 2024 the Wunderlandmedia site itself went from Oxygen to Bricks. LiveCanvas I tested and reviewed, and I liked it a lot for developers who think in HTML.

What I have not done is build a real project on Oxygen 6, Elementor 4 or the newest Bricks release. Everything below about those versions comes from the changelogs, the vendors' own pages and their pricing pages, checked this week. Where I'm talking from hands-on use, I'll say so. Where I'm reading release notes, I'll say that too.

LiveCanvas: still the leanest output of the four

The thing that made me like LiveCanvas in 2023 is still true: it writes plain Bootstrap 5 HTML and ships no extra JavaScript unless you turn animations on. No jQuery dependency, no wrapper soup. You can copy a section from any HTML/CSS site, paste it in, and keep working. Built-in SCSS was a big deal for me back then and still is.

It pairs with picostrap, a lightweight Bootstrap 5 starter theme, and the current version (4.9.x) added things I didn't have when I tested it: an AI assistant that works with Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek or Mistral, a "Loops and Logic" syntax for dynamic data, dynamic templating with ACF support, WooCommerce templates and a static HTML export.

My two complaints from 2023 were slow updates and a thin template library. The library grew (they now advertise 120+ HTML templates), so that one is less of an issue. LiveCanvas is still a tool for people who are happy to read and edit markup. If the word "class" makes you nervous, this isn't your builder.

I went into much more detail in my LiveCanvas review.

Pricing now: $79 per year (listed as a discount from $99) or $299 once for lifetime. Both cover unlimited sites. In 2023 it was 99 € single and 199 € unlimited.

Oxygen: the rebuild that broke backwards compatibility

This is the builder where the 2023 version of this post is most wrong.

Back then Oxygen was a mature, theme-less builder with a steep learning curve, popular with demanding web designers, and this site ran on it. Then Soflyy, the company behind it, released Breakdance, and Oxygen updates slowed down. When I added an update to my Oxygen Builder review in March 2024, there hadn't been a release since early January, and helper plugins like OxyExtras and OxyNinja had stopped development. That was a big part of why I moved this site to Bricks.

Then Soflyy rewrote Oxygen from scratch. Oxygen 6 shipped in 2025 and now runs on the same core engine as Breakdance (Soflyy says roughly 80% of the code is shared). It brought native CSS variables, components, interactions, nested selectors and a completely new UI. But Oxygen 6 is not backwards compatible with Oxygen Classic. Your 4.x sites don't just upgrade. Soflyy says Classic still gets bug fixes and security updates, and lifetime license holders got Oxygen 6 for free.

The newest thing on their homepage is Oxygen 6.2, billed as the "MCP Edition", currently at release candidate. The pitch is that you build a WordPress site by talking to an AI assistant like Claude, and the result stays editable in Oxygen's visual editor. I haven't tried it.

If I still had client sites on Oxygen Classic, this would be the part that hurts. "Rewrite your sites or stay on a version that only gets maintenance" is a real cost, and nobody prices it in when they buy a builder.

Pricing now: $199.50 once, unlimited sites, no renewal. In 2023 it was 129 € basic and 249 € pro.

Bricks: where I ended up before I left

In 2023 I called Bricks the newcomer. It isn't anymore. The Bricks changelog shows version 2.4 landing on September 16, 2026, with two patch releases (2.4.1 and 2.4.2) in the two weeks after. That pace of updates is exactly what pulled me over from Oxygen.

Bricks is a theme with the builder built in, and the editor runs on Vue.js. When I used it, the editor was fast and the markup was clean enough that I rarely needed extra plugins to get a decent result. The 2.4 release adds AI-assisted site editing, a "Bricks Browser", proper media management and data transfers between sites. Like Oxygen and LiveCanvas, Bricks is putting AI into the editor. I haven't used any of that.

The biggest change for anyone who bought on my 2023 numbers is the pricing model. Bricks used to be a one-time purchase. It's now a yearly license by default: Starter at $79/year for 1 site, Business at $149/year for 3 sites, Agency at $249/year for unlimited sites. There's still an "Ultimate Lifetime" option at $599 once for unlimited sites. Every tier gets the full feature set, so you're only paying for site count.

The downsides I listed in 2023 still apply. There's no free version, and if you want to buy a finished template and tweak colors, other ecosystems have more to offer. You'll get the most out of it if you know some CSS.

My full take is in the Bricks Builder review.

Elementor: the beginner pick that finally went class-based

Elementor was one of my favorites for years, and it's still the only one of the four with a free version. It still works with themes like Astra and Kadence, and it's still the easiest place for a non-developer to start.

My main complaint in 2023 was markup. Elementor wrapped everything in nested divs, and the output was heavier than the other three. Elementor 4.0, released April 15, 2026, goes after exactly that. The new "Atomic" editor is CSS-first: you define classes and variables once and reuse them, there are components, and elements render with a single div wrapper instead of several. New installs get the Atomic features by default. Existing sites keep working as they are until you switch them on.

If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the way Oxygen and Bricks users have been working for years. Good for Elementor users. It also means that the main argument I had for leaving Elementor in 2018 is weaker today than it was. I haven't built on version 4, so I can't tell you how clean the output is on a real site.

The other change is the business around it. Elementor Pro starts at $49/year for one site (Essential). There's now an Elementor One bundle, around $168/year, which packages the Pro editor with 25,000 AI credits a month and extra tools like caching and an accessibility checker. Elementor also has an AI agent called Angie. And Elementor sells its own managed WordPress hosting, but the hosting plans don't include a Pro license, so read the checkout page carefully.

Elementor started as a page builder and is turning into a platform with subscriptions stacked on top. Whether that bothers you depends on how much you want one company owning your whole stack. After what I went through with WordPress itself, it bothers me a bit.

More background in my Elementor review.

Prices in 2023 vs. October 2026

The 2023 prices I quoted were in euros and are mostly useless now. Here are the current list prices from each vendor's pricing page, in US dollars, checked October 2026:

Builder	Cheapest option	Unlimited sites	Lifetime?
LiveCanvas	$79/year	$79/year	Yes, $299
Oxygen 6	$199.50 once	$199.50 once	Lifetime only
Bricks	$79/year (1 site)	$249/year	Yes, $599
Elementor Pro	Free / $49/year (1 site)	No (top Pro tier: 25 sites)	No

Prices change and discounts come and go, so check before you buy. The interesting shift is that Bricks moved toward subscriptions while Oxygen stayed lifetime-only.

Which one I'd pick today

If a client came to me tomorrow and WordPress was a hard requirement, I'd still reach for Bricks. It's the one I know best, and it gets updated constantly. The yearly license makes it less of a bargain than it used to be.

If the client is a developer or wants a site that is basically static HTML with a CMS behind it, LiveCanvas is the leanest option of the four.

If the client wants to edit everything themselves and has never seen a line of CSS, Elementor is still the most forgiving, and version 4 removes a lot of my old objections. I'd test the output first.

Oxygen 6 I can't judge fairly. It's a new product with an old name. If you already own a lifetime license, try it, because it costs you nothing. If you have a lot of Oxygen Classic sites, plan the migration as a rebuild.

And if you're asking whether WordPress is the right base in the first place, that's the question I ended up asking myself. These days I build with Next.js and Directus, and for marketing sites with Astro. That's not right for every business. WordPress is still the easier choice when a non-technical person needs to manage the site alone. If your project is more of an app than a brochure, that's the kind of custom web development I do now.

What I don't know

All four builders are betting on AI now: an AI assistant in LiveCanvas, AI editing in Bricks 2.4, an MCP-driven Oxygen 6.2 and Angie in Elementor. I don't know which of those will be useful on a real client site and which are launch slides. I haven't used any of them on a real project.

I also don't know if I'll ever build another WordPress site with a page builder. Maybe a client will pull me back. If that happens, I'll update this post with what I find.

If you're stuck choosing between these four, or wondering whether to leave WordPress altogether, let's talk. I've built on all four and I've walked away from the platform, so I can tell you which way I'd go for your project and why.