How to choose an AI tool for web design

1. Do you want code you own?

If the site has to live in your repository, be handed to a developer or move between hosts, start where the code is ordinary files in a folder: a coding agent or an editor with an agent. A chat app also gives you code you can keep, one file at a time.

If you don't mind where the code lives as long as the site works, an app builder is open to you. Read its documentation on export first, so that not minding is a choice and not a surprise later.

2. Do you have real content in files?

Photographs, screenshots, a logo, copy in a document. If yes, prefer a tool that can read a folder, because it can build the layout around the real material. If the content doesn't exist yet, any kind will do for a draft, and a chat app is the least setup.

3. Will you maintain it?

A site that changes every week needs to be easy to change in the same place it was built. If you will make the changes by describing them, an agent, an editor or a builder all hold the project between sessions. If someone else will maintain it by hand, ask them where they want it; that usually means a normal project in a repository.

A page that is finished the day it ships, an invitation or a one-off announcement, needs none of this. One HTML file from a chat app is a complete answer.

4. Do you need hosting included?

An app builder publishes what it generates. With an agent or an editor you get a project and choose a host yourself, which is one more step and one more decision. With a chat app you get a file to upload somewhere. If having no hosting step is the thing you need most, that settles it.

Reading your answers

• Own the code, have content, will maintain it: a coding agent, or an editor if you want to read each change.
• Existing project, small exact changes: an editor with an agent.
• No content yet, want to see a direction: a chat app, one HTML file.
• Need it live today, hosting and all: an app builder, with the look fixed in the brief.
• Restyling a live site: whichever kind can open its code. See redesigning a website.
• Starting from a Figma file: a tool that reads a project folder or a connection. See Figma to code.

What the four questions leave out

They don't ask which tool designs best, because that is not a property of the kind. The same session gives a plain page or a distinctive one depending on what it is given. Once you have picked a kind, spend the time you saved on the brief and on the design you start from. Why the tool matters less than the brief makes that case.

Keep reading

• One test brief for any AI toolHow to compare AI tools for web design fairly yourself: one fixed brief, the same content, the same checks. The brief is on this page to copy.
• Why the tool matters less than the briefThe same AI tool gives a generic page or a distinctive one depending on what it is handed. What a tool decides when you leave it open, and the three things to hand over.
• Using a design library with any AI toolThe four ways a template from a design library reaches an AI tool: the prompt, the project, the Figma file and an MCP server. Which route suits which kind of tool.

• Coding agents
• App builders
• Chat apps