As the first Website Experience Platform, our goal at Webflow is to empower modern teams to create engaging, brand-differentiated experiences that turn visitors into customers — and the best-performing sites we see are interactive and use animation to stand out.

This is why in the fall of 2024, Webflow acquired the industry-leading JavaScript animation library, GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP), to take our Interaction solutions to the next level. We’re honored to be able to partner with GSAP on this journey to give web animation superpowers to everyone — whether you want to bring your ideas to life visually or through code.

Today, we’re excited to share some major updates to GSAP and Webflow, made with the broader GSAP community and our shared customers in mind.

GSAP is now 100% free — here’s why

We’re fully committed to investing in GSAP’s future, guided by your feedback and the expertise of the original GSAP team who brought this technology to life. And that investment starts with making GSAP 100% free for all users. 

This means everyone — whether or not you’re a Webflow customer — will be able to leverage all of GSAP’s tools completely free of charge, including the previously paid Club plugins. We’re also expanding the standard license to cover commercial use, so you’re fully empowered to use GSAP anywhere, at no cost to you.

The GSAP team has always strived to make their offerings free to as many people as possible while maintaining high quality standards that benefit the entire community. That’s why Webflow is excited to be able to help them achieve this goal of becoming 100% free. With Webflow’s support, the GSAP team can continue to lead the charge in product and industry innovation while allowing even more developers the opportunity to harness the full breadth of GSAP-powered motion. 

What’s new from GSAP and Webflow

In addition to making GSAP 100% free, we're excited to release a series of improvements for GSAP developers and our shared Webflow customers. Here’s what we’ve been working on together: 

Major upgrade to GSAP’s SplitText plugin

As part of our ongoing investment in GSAP, we’ve honed in on making one of GSAP’s most popular plugins even better. SplitText has been completely rewritten from the ground up with exciting improvements that include:

• 50% file size reduction for faster load times and improved performance 
• Baked-in accessibility for screen readers
• Easy masking for advanced “reveal” effects
• New deepSlice feature that intelligently handles nested elements that spill onto multiple lines
• New responsive features allowing for cleaner reflows and more seamless animations
• And more!

With 14 new features in total, we’re excited to see more community members leveraging the improved — and now free — SplitText plugin. To get started, see GSAP’s updated documentation on SplitText.

Easier GSAP plugin integration in Webflow

Previously, using GSAP Club plugins in Webflow was often a cumbersome process. We've made it easier by making all GSAP plugins directly available in and hosted by Webflow. Here's how it works: 

1. Go to Site Settings and toggle on the GSAP Core library and plugins you want to include on your site.
2. Create your animations with custom code. 

And that’s it! To learn how to get started, check out GSAP’s Webflow guide. 

Preview custom code in Webflow before publishing

To give you more confidence and control in your deployment, we launched site previews with custom code. This allows you to preview the effects of any custom code before publishing it on your Webflow site — including animations written with GSAP.

What’s next 

In the coming months, we’ll be expanding our native Webflow Interactions with:

• Popular GSAP features, so you can start building GSAP-powered animations visually
• The ability to create with and preview your Interactions on a horizontal timeline for a more intuitive motion development experience
• The ability to reuse any Interaction across your site, resulting in increased workflow efficiency and design consistency

These updates unlock the ability for anyone — regardless of coding knowledge — to build GSAP-powered motion into Webflow sites. It also sets the foundation for the next generation of native Webflow Interactions. This will be entirely replatformed on GSAP and deeply integrated with our Website Experience Platform — from design systems to collaboration workflows and much more.

We can’t wait for what’s to come. Together, GSAP and Webflow are committed to shaping the future of web animation and continuously raising the ceiling on what developers, designers, marketers, and agencies can build — visually or with code.

Stay connected with us:

• Learn more during our announcement video: Join us on May 9 at 9 AM PT on YouTube to hear from myself (Rachel Wolan, CPO of Webflow), Cassie Evans (GSAP Developer Education Lead), and Keegan O’Leary (Webflow & GSAP Developer) as we share more about these Webflow and GSAP updates, including live demos. Subscribe to Webflow’s YouTube channel to get notified.‍
• Participate in our community challenge: In partnership with Codepen, we’ve kicked off an exciting Webflow and GSAP community challenge running throughout May. We invite all GSAP developers — Webflow customer or not — to participate. We can’t wait to see what you build — learn more about the challenge.