These are the two names that come up in almost every consultation. Elementor and Divi have both been building millions of WordPress sites for years, both work, and both have loyal followers who consider the other one a mistake.
I build and maintain sites with both. My honest answer up front: the difference is not in what you can build with them — that is practically the same for both. It lies in how many websites you run, how tightly you want to be tied down, and who will be maintaining the site in three years.
The short answer
Divi, if you maintain several websites and want a single licence for all of them.
Elementor, if you have one website, want to try before you buy, and care about easily finding someone later who can carry on.
Everything else is justification.
The difference that really counts: the licence model
This is where the two differ most clearly, and in practice this point decides more often than any feature argument.
Divi is sold by Elegant Themes as a membership: an annual fee in the region of 90 dollars — and for that you may use Divi on an unlimited number of websites. The Extra theme, the Bloom newsletter plugin and the Monarch share plugin are included as well. There is also a one-off lifetime licence in the region of 250 dollars.
Elementor Pro is a classic annual subscription, tiered by the number of websites. The entry-level licence starts at around 60 dollars a year for one website; the larger packages cover three, ten or more.
(Prices as of summer 2026 — both vendors change their tariffs regularly, so check them before you buy.)
Work this out for your own situation. With a single website there is barely anything between them. From the third site onwards Divi becomes noticeably cheaper, and from the fifth the gap is impossible to miss. Anyone building websites for other people cannot avoid this calculation.
That is why Divi is so widespread in agencies — and why sole traders with one website often answer the question quite differently.
Elementor and Divi at a glance
| Elementor | Divi | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | page builder (plugin) | theme and builder |
| Theme freely selectable | yes | no, Divi is the theme |
| Free version | yes, extensive | no |
| Licence | annual subscription by number of sites | annual or lifetime licence, unlimited |
| Front-end editing | yes | yes |
| Theme Builder (header/footer) | in Pro | included |
| Forms | in Pro | included |
| Popups | in Pro | Bloom (separate plugin, included) |
| Content stored as | JSON in the database | shortcodes in the post content |
| Adoption in German-speaking markets | very high | high |
| German-language material | a great deal | plenty |
Where Divi scores
One licence for everything. The point already mentioned, but it deserves repeating. Anyone maintaining five club websites or ten client projects saves a three-figure sum every year with Divi.
Everything is on board. Forms, newsletter integration, share buttons, A/B tests, Theme Builder — with Divi that is part of the package. With Elementor some of it sits in Pro, and the rest arrives via additional plugins. Fewer moving parts mean fewer places where an update can break something.
The built-in A/B testing. Divi Leads is a serious tool that you would have to buy separately with Elementor. If you actually run tests — and very few people do — that is a real argument.
The lifetime licence. Some people reject subscriptions on principle. For them, Divi is one of the few serious options in this field.
Where Elementor scores
You can try it for free. Elementor has a free version that is genuinely sufficient for many simple sites. Within an afternoon you will know whether the way it works suits you. Divi costs money from the very first click.
The theme remains your decision. Elementor is a plugin and works with practically any theme — usually a deliberately minimal one such as Hello. Divi is the theme. You buy into its design philosophy whether you want to or not.
The wider adoption, particularly in German-speaking countries. More tutorials, more videos, more people who know how to use it. That sounds like a soft argument, but it is a hard one: if you need someone to take over the site in two years, you will find that person faster and more cheaply for Elementor. For self-employed people without their own technical department, this is often the decisive argument.
The clean separation of content and presentation. Divi puts its layouts into the post content as shortcodes. Switch Divi off and your pages are left with a wall of square brackets. Elementor stores its data separately from the text field — when you deactivate it the page is unusable too, but it is not filled with code debris. A detail that only becomes important once it is too late.
Elementor Pro: Theme Builder, forms and popups sit in Elementor's Pro licence — that is the point at which the comparison with Divi's all-in package becomes fair in the first place. View Elementor Pro
On performance: the question is put the wrong way
Both builders have a reputation for making pages heavy, and both earned it at some point. Both have improved considerably in recent years.
What I see in practice: a page's loading time is not decided by the builder. It is decided by uncompressed images, cheap hosting, missing caching, and the number of effects somebody added because they felt good in the editor.
I have seen fast Divi sites and sluggish Elementor sites, and the other way round. Anyone who knows the levers gets good results with both. Which levers those are is set out in Optimising Elementor performance and in WordPress Page Speed 2026 — most of it applies to Divi just the same.
A note in fairness: Divi is working on a new edition that replaces the old shortcode substructure and considerably slims down its output. If you are reading this comparison, it is worth checking how far along that is by now.
Switching: do not underestimate it
There is no automatic route from Divi to Elementor or the other way round, and there never will be. The two store their layouts in completely different formats. A converter that turned a Divi module into an Elementor widget would have to reproduce the design logic of both systems.
In practice, switching means rebuilding the pages. Text and images can be carried over, the layout cannot.
With Divi there is an additional wrinkle: because the layouts sit in the post content as shortcodes, visible code remnants stay behind in your pages after you deactivate it. You have to clear those out before you rebuild — otherwise you drag them into the new site with you.
That is not an argument against switching when there are good reasons. But it should be a deliberate decision and not a side effect. Budget for the effort of a small website rebuild.
My recommendation by situation
Divi, if you run more than three websites, if you value a self-contained package without additional plugins, if you seriously want to run A/B tests, or if you do not want a subscription on principle.
Elementor, if you have a single website, if you want to try before you pay, if choosing your theme freely matters to you, and if it is foreseeable that somebody else will work on the site later.
Neither, if your website essentially consists of text — a blog, guides, a few subpages. Then the WordPress block editor is enough, and you save yourself both licence costs and a dependency. See: Block editor versus page builder.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run Divi and Elementor side by side?
Technically yes, sensibly no. You would have two layout systems, two update sources and two places where styles collide. Make a decision.
Is Divi really slower?
The old shortcode substructure produces more ballast than Elementor's approach — that was measurable for a long time. For your page's actual loading time, though, it is a small item next to images, hosting and caching.
What about the Divi Builder without the Divi theme?
The Divi Builder is also available as a standalone plugin for other themes. It remains tied to the Elegant Themes ecosystem, however, and some of the interplay is lost.
Which one is friendlier for beginners?
Both are. Divi has the slightly more playful editor, Elementor the tidier one. That is taste, not a difference in quality — try Elementor for free and after two hours you will know whether this way of working suits you.
And if you cannot decide
Then that is usually a sign that both would fit — and that the real question is a different one: how should your website be maintained in three years, and by whom?
You will find further comparisons in my overview of page builder comparisons and in the overview of WordPress tool comparisons. And if you would rather talk the decision through against your own specific project: that is a common way into my Elementor training.
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