An AI builder ships a website in an evening, and Lighthouse hands it an average SEO score of 96 out of 100. Sounds great. But when we measured 93 of these sites, the median mobile load was 6.6 seconds, two thirds had no main heading, and three quarters had no structured data at all. That 96 out of 100 can mislead you. Here are the numbers.
As building websites with AI builders becomes the norm, you hear the same line more and more: "You can make a website in one click now, so why pay extra...". Is that true or not? So we decided to run our own study (spoiler: sometimes). First, I want to thank Zhadyra Askarkyzy. I am Tair, I run DevNova in Bratislava, and it was that 96 out of 100 that pushed me to write this.
Let me get it out of the way: at DevNova we build sites in custom code, so AI builders are, to a degree, our competition. That is exactly why I will be straight here. No bashing, no "hire us". Just the raw numbers from the test, and an honest look at when an AI builder is genuinely ENOUGH and not worth paying more for.
1. A website in one click: what AI builders promise
Open LinkedIn and within a week you will hit the same post: someone built a site over a weekend, "no developer, no agency", with a hundred likes underneath. The ads run the same way. You describe what you want and the AI generates the site, copy and images included. And I will give them one thing. Visually, it often looks decent.
