Carrd Pricing: The $9 Tier Still Has No Custom Domain

Carrd's pricing page makes the decision look simple: Free, $9, $19, $49. It stops looking simple the moment you actually need something specific — because the $9 tier removes the "Made with Carrd" badge but still won't let you connect your own domain. That takes the $19 tier.

The short answer: Carrd Free gives you 3 sites with Carrd branding and no custom domain. Pro Lite ($9/year) removes the badge but keeps you on a carrd.co subdomain. Pro Standard ($19/year) is the cheapest tier with a custom domain, forms, and embeds. Pro Plus ($49/year) adds advanced forms and automation. Every tier caps your site count, and paying for more sites gets expensive fast.

Carrd Pricing at a Glance#

I checked every base tier directly against Carrd's own plan documentation — here's Carrd plans compared side by side, including where Carrd Pro pricing actually starts:

If you're weighing Carrd free vs Pro, the table answers most of it: Free and Pro Lite both cap you at 3 sites, and neither lets you use your own domain. Notice the gap between Pro Lite and Pro Standard. That $10 jump isn't a small upsell — it's the entire reason most people end up paying more than they planned.

The $9 Tier's Catch: No Branding, Still No Domain#

Pro Lite is the plan most people assume covers "a real site." It doesn't, and the confusion is common enough that it's a recurring question on Carrd's own subreddit.

For $9 a year, Pro Lite gets you:

• The "Made with Carrd" badge removed

• Premium, unbranded URLs (a cleaner carrd.co link, not your own domain)

• Larger image uploads (up to 16MB) and video uploads (up to 64MB)

• Unlimited page elements instead of the free tier's cap

• Premium and custom templates

What it doesn't get you: your own domain. Your site still lives at a carrd.co address. If the entire reason you're paying is to point yourname.com at your Carrd site, Pro Lite won't do it — you need Pro Standard.

What You Actually Unlock at $19: Pro Standard#

Pro Standard is the first tier built for a site you'd actually put on a business card. On top of everything in Pro Lite, Carrd's Pro page lists these additions:

• Custom domain URLs with SSL — the feature most people are actually paying for

• Forms — contact and signup forms that submit somewhere real

• Widgets — Stripe, PayPal, Gumroad, Typeform, and Facebook embeds

• Code embeds — drop in custom HTML, CSS, or JS blocks

• Analytics integration and custom meta tags for SEO

• Local fonts, beyond Carrd's built-in font list

At $19/year for 10 sites, this is the tier that makes sense for a single landing page, waitlist, or link hub you want on your own domain. It's also where Carrd pricing stops being a rounding error and starts being a real decision.

Pro Plus at $49: Who Actually Needs It#

Pro Plus adds automation, not more design freedom. Past Pro Standard, Carrd's documentation lists:

• Advanced forms that connect to Zapier, Make, n8n, or Airtable

• Stripe Checkout support built into forms, not just a payment widget

• Downloadable source — unminified HTML, CSS, JS, and images

• Redirects, password protection, and dynamic variables

• Custom site files (robots.txt, ads.txt) and canonical URL controls

Most single-page sites never touch any of this. Pro Plus earns its $49 if you're running a real funnel — a form that needs to hit a CRM automatically, or a page that needs password-gating for a client preview. For a portfolio, waitlist, or bio page, it's paying for automation you won't use.

The Hidden Cost: Scaling Past Your Site Cap#

The $9/$19/$49 numbers only cover the base site count. Need more sites on the same tier, and the price jumps in steps that aren't obvious from the homepage pricing table:

Per Carrd's plan documentation, Pro Standard alone runs from $19/year at 10 sites up to $599/year at 1,000 sites, and Pro Plus tops out at $999/year for the same count. If you're building one site, none of this matters. If you're an agency spinning up dozens of client pages, it matters a lot, and it's worth checking the exact tier table before you commit rather than assuming the $19 or $49 number is your ceiling.

Which Carrd Plan Should You Actually Buy?#

Strip away the feature lists and the decision comes down to two questions: do you need your own domain, and do you need forms or automation?

• Just testing an idea, no domain needed: Free covers it. Three sites, Carrd branding, zero cost.

• Want the badge gone, still don't need your own domain: Pro Lite at $9/year. Common for portfolio pages shared as a carrd.co link rather than a branded domain.

• Need **yourname.com** pointed at the page: Pro Standard at $19/year is the floor, not Pro Lite. This is the plan most people actually need and the one most people underestimate when they see "$9" on the pricing page.

• Need automated form handling or a client-facing page with password protection: Pro Plus at $49/year.

Still not sure which tier fits? Compare what a single live profile costs instead before you commit to a year of any Carrd plan.

Carrd Pricing vs a Live Developer Profile#

Carrd charges by the site. A developer-bio platform charges for one profile, which changes the comparison if what you actually need is a single page that represents you, not a landing page for a product.

DevBio's free plan already includes a public bio, every bio component, GitHub public-repo metadata, a LaTeX-generated PDF resume, and a marketplace listing — no domain, same as Carrd's free tier. Pro runs $2/month, or $12/year billed annually, and adds a custom domain, badge removal, 30 days of analytics history, private-repo GitHub sync, and hourly revenue updates. There's also a $39-once "Pro forever" founding offer for the first 100 signups.

That's a narrower comparison than Carrd's, because DevBio builds one live profile, not a general-purpose site builder — you're trading Carrd's design freedom (custom CSS/JS, 250+ templates) for components that update themselves. If that tradeoff is the one you actually care about, the full Carrd alternative breakdown covers the feature-by-feature case in more depth than pricing alone.

When Carrd's Price Is Worth Paying#

None of this makes Carrd overpriced. For what it's built to do, $19/year for a custom-domain landing page is genuinely inexpensive next to most website builders. I priced it against every other tool in this category while writing our comparisons, and nothing beats it on design freedom per dollar. Carrd earns its price when:

• You need more than one static page (an event, a waitlist, a link hub, a product teaser)

• Design flexibility — custom CSS, JS, and 250+ templates — matters more than live data

• You want full control over exported source (Pro Plus) for a client project

• You're shopping across several static-site and link-in-bio tools rather than picking one built for a developer profile specifically — see how Beacons compares if that's the search you're actually running, or how Linktree prices the same job across its four tiers, where the gated feature is branding removal rather than a custom domain — and the head-to-head on Linktree vs Carrd, which turns on the one row Linktree's own paid-features docs never mention

Where it stops making sense is when the thing you're building is a single profile meant to represent your work over time. That's a different job than a static site builder was designed for, and it's worth reading what actually belongs on a developer bio before you decide which kind of page — and which kind of pricing — fits what you're building.

Carrd's flat annual price looks even better next to a platform that takes a percentage. For that contrast, see how Beacons pricing and its 9% seller fee stack up tier by tier.

It looks better still against a creator storefront. Stan Store's entry plan costs $29 a month — more than Carrd Pro Standard costs for an entire year — because you're renting a checkout, course hosting, and product delivery rather than a page. The Stan Store pricing breakdown covers what that actually buys and the sales volume where it starts earning its keep.

Key Takeaways#

Carrd pricing is straightforward until you need one specific thing — usually a custom domain — and discover it's gated a tier higher than the homepage pricing implied. Free covers testing an idea. Pro Lite ($9/year) is a badge removal, not a real upgrade. Pro Standard ($19/year) is where most people actually land. Pro Plus ($49/year) is for automation most single-page sites don't need.

If what you're pricing out is a static landing page, that $19/year tier is a fair deal. If what you actually need is a profile that keeps itself current — your GitHub activity, your project revenue — without you manually editing it every time something changes, it's worth pricing against a platform built for that instead of a general-purpose site builder.

See what a live developer profile costs instead