VvvebJs vs Etch Studio: A Free Page Builder You Assemble Yourself
An Apache 2.0 drag-and-drop editor in vanilla JavaScript that's been going since 2017. It's a library, not a product, so you do the plumbing.
Etch Studio is a finished product you rent for $590 a year on the annual plan, or $708 if you pay monthly.
VvvebJs is the other end of the deal. It’s a free page builder library you build your own tool from.
A library, not a product
The GitHub repository description calls it a “Drag and drop page builder library written in vanilla javascript without dependencies or build tools.” It’s built on Bootstrap 5 and licensed under Apache 2.0.
No framework, no build step. You can read every file it ships.
What you get in the box:
- Drag-and-drop editing on a live page
- A live code editor, with CodeMirror syntax highlighting
- A file manager and a component tree
- A media gallery with CC0 image search and upload support
- A theme editor for global typography and colours
- Page download, HTML export, and a zip plugin that packs the page and all its assets
It “can be extended with any kind of components and inputs”. If you want your agency’s own sections in the sidebar, you add them.
It’s been around a while
GitHub shows the repo was created in October 2017. The last commit was in July 2026, and it has more than 8,700 stars.
That matters here. A lot of tools in this space are months old. This repo has been public since October 2017.
The same developer builds Vvveb CMS, a full open-source CMS on top of it. That’s the clearest sign of what the library is for: something you build into a bigger product.
There’s an AI button, sort of
The demo editor loads an AI assistant plugin by default. It adds an “Ask AI” prompt with “Insert content” and “Replace with” actions.
Don’t expect much from it. It’s a 228-line plugin that calls OpenAI’s completions endpoint with gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, and it ships with an empty key. Without one it tells you “No ChatGPT key configured!”
The better route is the one you’d use anyway. Your output is plain HTML and CSS, so Claude Code, Cursor or any other agent can edit it directly. Then you open it in VvvebJs to adjust things by eye.
The downside
You’re the integrator. Saving pages to a server and uploading images rely on the example PHP scripts in the repo. If you want logins, hosting, multiple sites or client access, you build or bolt on each of them.
It’s an editor for HTML pages. It isn’t a CMS on its own, and it won’t manage content across a site for you.
Allow for that time. If you’d rather not do the plumbing, a finished tool will suit you better.
Who it’s for
Developers who want a visual editor inside their own stack, and agencies that would rather own their tooling than rent someone else’s.
Etch Studio asks you to pay every year for its idea of how you should build. VvvebJs gives you the parts for free and lets you decide.