By Mehdi HassanCan you export code from Framer?
No, you can't export code from Framer as a complete, maintainable website. Framer builds, renders and hosts your site on its own platform, and it doesn't offer a download of the React or HTML project behind it. That's the core of Framer's lock-in, and it's a deliberate trade for the speed of its visual editor.
That doesn't mean everything is trapped. Your words, images, CMS content and custom code components can all come out. What stays behind is the layout and interaction layer, which is exactly what you'd rebuild if you moved. If you're weighing a move, our guide to leaving Framer covers every destination and when each one makes sense.
What can you get out of a Framer site?
You can get your content, media and any code you wrote yourself out of a Framer site. The table shows each piece, how to get it and how useful it is in a migration.
What | How you get it | Useful for a move? |
|---|---|---|
CMS collections | Export each collection as CSV from the CMS | Yes: rich text comes as HTML you can convert |
Images and files | Download from the assets panel or the CMS export | Yes: re-host them, since URLs point to Framer |
Code components and overrides | Copy the React code you wrote | Partly: they use Framer-specific APIs |
Page copy and metadata | Copy from the editor or crawl the live site | Yes: essential for SEO parity |
Static HTML snapshot | Third-party scraper tools | Rarely: hard to edit, misses CMS logic |
Layouts and interactions | Not exportable | Rebuild from the live site |
The CSV export is the most valuable thing on the list. It carries every item and field, and it's what you'd feed into a new CMS. If your concern is the CMS rather than ownership, read Framer CMS limits before deciding anything.
Do Framer HTML export tools solve lock-in?
Framer HTML export tools reduce lock-in a little but don't solve it. They crawl your published site and save the rendered HTML, CSS and assets, which gives you a snapshot you can host elsewhere. They don't give you components, a CMS or anything you'd want to keep editing.
Pros
- Fast way to get a static copy of the site
- Useful as an archive or a temporary fallback
- Can host a simple page on any static host
Cons
- Markup is generated, not written for humans
- CMS collections become flat pages with no editor
- Interactions may depend on scripts that break
- Every change after export is manual HTML editing
- May conflict with Framer's terms; read them first
Some third-party tools go further and wrap Framer components so you can render them inside a React app. That can help a product team reuse a few marketing sections, but the components still rely on Framer's runtime and design, so you've moved the dependency rather than removed it.
Can you self-host a Framer site?
No, you can't self-host a Framer site in the usual sense. Framer serves the site from its own infrastructure, and you point your custom domain at it. What you control is the domain, not the server.
Some teams route a path on their main domain to a Framer site through a reverse proxy, so example.com/blog serves Framer while the rest of the domain runs elsewhere. That's useful when the marketing site and the app share one domain, but Framer still hosts and renders those pages. If security, compliance or procurement requires code you host and audit yourself, a Framer site won't meet that, and a Framer to Next.js migration is the honest answer.
How do you back up a Framer site?
You back up a Framer site by exporting its content, downloading its assets and recording its structure, so you could rebuild it anywhere. Do this once a quarter even if you plan to stay, because a good backup turns lock-in from a risk into a choice.
Export every CMS collection
Download each collection as CSV and store it with the date. Check that rich text and image fields came through.
Download assets
Save the images, videos and files used on pages and in the CMS, with their original filenames.
Crawl the live site
Use a crawler to record every URL, title, meta description, canonical and heading. This is your future redirect sheet.
Capture the design
Screenshot each page at desktop and phone widths, and record key interactions as short videos.
Save your code
Copy code components, overrides and any custom scripts into a git repository.
What an export looks like, in a hypothetical example
For example, suppose a startup has a Framer site with a blog of 80 posts, a case studies collection and eight static pages.
The backup produces two CSV files with every item and field, a folder of a few hundred images, a crawl spreadsheet with around 100 URLs and their metadata, a set of screenshots and a small repo of three code components.
That package is enough for any team to rebuild the site in Next.js, Webflow or WordPress and keep every URL intact. Without it, a rebuild starts with someone copying content by hand.
What does Framer lock-in mean for your business?
Framer lock-in means that leaving costs a rebuild, so your exit price is the cost of recreating the site. For most marketing sites that's an acceptable trade for faster publishing and no engineering overhead.
Lock-in becomes a business problem when the site has to grow in ways Framer doesn't support, when pricing for seats or locales outpaces the value, or when your product needs to share code with the marketing site. It also matters for AI visibility: you depend on Framer for how pages are rendered and what structured data you can add, which our AI visibility audit guide shows you how to check.
Lock-in is fine when the exit price is known and the backup is current.
What should you do if you need to own your code?
If you need to own your code, plan a clean rebuild in a framework such as Next.js rather than trying to rescue exported markup. A rebuild from a good backup gives you readable components, a proper CMS and the same URLs.
- Compare the platforms first. Our guide to choosing a platform for your marketing site weighs Webflow, Framer, WordPress and Next.js.
- Price the rebuild. See what drives a quote in our guide to Framer website cost, which covers the same layout and CMS drivers.
- Consider AI-assisted rebuilding. Framer to code with AI shows how agents speed up the build while people keep QA.
- Or keep Framer and move only content. Framer with a headless CMS gives you portable content without leaving the editor.
