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Vibe coding tools ranked by what a working app costs

Vibe coding builders start at $16 to $30 a month, but a live app with 1,000 users adds a domain, email and AI API costs: about $47 to $107 a month.

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The cheapest paid plans of the main vibe coding tools cost $16 to $30 a month as of October 2026: Base44 Starter is $16 a month billed yearly, Replit Core $20, Lovable Pro and Bolt Pro $25, and v0 Plus $30 per user. Those prices cover building. Running a small app for 1,000 users adds the things the plan pages leave out, such as a domain, a mailbox, AI API calls and, for some tools, hosting and a database, and in our worked example the total lands between about $47 and $107 a month.

We haven’t built apps on these tools. The figures come from each company’s pricing page and docs, read on October 28, 2026, and from AskGPU’s own price data where noted, with its check date. Lovable’s pricing page loads its plan prices with JavaScript, so its plan price comes from our data (checked October 17, 2026). This guide compares cost, not the quality of the code each tool writes.

What does each vibe coding tool cost per month?

Tool Cheapest paid plan Price What you get for building Hosting included?
Base44 Starter $16/month billed yearly 100 message credits, 2,000 integration credits a month, unlimited apps Yes: backend, database and cloud storage on all plans
Replit Core $20/month, or $18 billed yearly “$20 towards more powerful models,” up to 30 hours of chat on Free Mode Publishing billed separately (below)
Lovable Pro $25/month 100 monthly credits plus 5 daily build credits Lovable Cloud, with a monthly grant
Bolt Pro $25/month, billed monthly 10M tokens a month, with rollover Yes: website hosting, 1M web requests a month
v0 Plus $30 per user a month $30 of credits a month plus $2 a day on login Deploys to Vercel, priced separately

Sources: Base44, Replit, Bolt and v0 pricing pages, read October 28, 2026; Lovable from AskGPU data, checked October 17, 2026.

Each meters building differently:

  • Base44 counts message credits and says “Exact usage varies based on the action and the selected AI model.” Annual billing saves 20%; the page shows only yearly prices.
  • Replit uses what it calls effort-based pricing. Core also includes Free Mode, which it says gives “Up to 30 hours of chat” without spending credits (our report on Free Mode).
  • Lovable adds plan credits monthly. Its FAQ says monthly-plan credits expire “two (2) months after they’re issued,” daily build grants expire at the end of each day, and top-up credits last twelve months. Chat is currently free up to a daily allowance (our report).
  • Bolt counts tokens. Pro removes the free plan’s 300K daily cap, and unused tokens roll over. Bolt’s page says yearly billing can “Save up to 28%” but shows no yearly price.
  • v0 publishes per-model token prices, from v0 Mini at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens up to v0 Max at $5 and $25. Plus is charged per user.

What do the free plans let you build?

Tool Free plan Can you put it on your own domain?
Base44 25 message credits and 100 integration credits a month, up to 5 apps Not listed on Free; paid plans include a custom domain and a free domain for 1 year
Bolt 1M tokens a month, 300K a day, website hosting, 333K web requests a month No
Lovable 5 build credits a day (up to 30 a month), 20 Cloud credits a month No; 5 lovable.app domains
v0 7 messages a day; deploys to Vercel Through Vercel
Replit No free plan on the pricing page n/a

Lovable’s free plan also shows a Lovable badge, with removal a Pro feature (AskGPU data, checked October 17, 2026). Bolt Pro lists “Your own domain, no Bolt branding.”

What does running the app cost beyond the builder?

This is the part the plan pages don’t add up for you.

Hosting and database. Base44, Bolt and Lovable host apps inside the plan, up to their limits. Lovable’s FAQ says most small or new apps are covered by the included Cloud grant, but apps with significant traffic “may start incurring cost on top of the included grant,” paid from your credit balance. Lovable doesn’t publish a traffic level where that starts.

Replit bills publishing separately:

Replit publishing option Price
Autoscale $2 a month base fee, plus $0.60 per million compute units and $0.40 per million requests
Reserved VM, shared 0.5 vCPU / 2 GB $15.00 a month
Reserved VM, dedicated 1 vCPU / 4 GB $35.00 a month
Static Free hosting, $0.05 per GB of data transfer

Replit’s docs say monthly credits apply automatically to publishing and “You only pay usage-based fees after your monthly credits are fully used.” Credits don’t roll over.

v0 apps usually go on Vercel. Vercel’s Hobby plan is free but “for personal, non-commercial use,” so a business app needs Pro at $20 a month, which includes a $20 usage credit and 1 TB of data transfer. If the app needs a database, Supabase is a common pairing: its Free plan covers 50,000 monthly active users and a 500 MB database, but “Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity.” Pro is from $25 a month with 100,000 monthly active users, 8 GB of disk per project and $10 of compute credits. Firebase’s Spark plan is another free option, with Authentication free up to 50K monthly active users (AskGPU data, checked October 25, 2026); see our Firebase page.

Domain. A .com at Cloudflare Registrar costs $10.46 a year, the same at renewal (AskGPU data, checked October 18, 2026). Base44’s paid plans include a free domain for the first year.

Email. An address on your domain for support mail. The lowest price on our records is Zoho Mail Lite at $1 a user a month billed yearly; see our free business email guide for options at $0.

AI API calls inside your app. If your app uses AI for its users (a chatbot, summaries, image tagging), someone pays per token. Base44 says “Third-party services you connect to your apps (Stripe, SendGrid, OpenAI, etc.) bill you directly on their own pricing.” OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 mini is $0.75 per million input tokens and $4.50 per million output tokens (AskGPU data, checked October 25, 2026).

Worked example: a small app with 1,000 users

Assumptions, which are ours: a business app (so Vercel Hobby is out), 1,000 monthly active users, light traffic within each tool’s included hosting, one support mailbox, a .com domain, and an AI feature that each user calls 10 times a month at about 1,000 input and 500 output tokens per call, on GPT-5.4 mini.

AI cost first: 1,000 users × 10 calls = 10,000 calls. That’s 10M input tokens × $0.75 = $7.50, plus 5M output tokens × $4.50 = $22.50, so $30 a month. Domain: $10.46 ÷ 12 = $0.87 a month. Email: $1 a month.

Route Builder Hosting and database Domain Email AI API Monthly total
Base44 Starter $16 (yearly billing) Included $0 in year 1 $1 $30 $47
Replit Core + Autoscale $20 $2 base, plus usage, against Replit’s monthly credits $0.87 $1 $30 $53.87 plus any usage beyond credits
Lovable Pro $25 Included Cloud grant $0.87 $1 $30 $56.87
Bolt Pro $25 Included (1M web requests) $0.87 $1 $30 $56.87
v0 Plus + Vercel Pro + Supabase Free $30 $20 + $0 $0.87 $1 $30 $81.87
v0 Plus + Vercel Pro + Supabase Pro $30 $20 + $25 $0.87 $1 $30 $106.87

Over a year, the Base44 route is $47 × 12 = $564, and the v0 route with Supabase Pro is $106.87 × 12 = $1,282.44. The AI feature is the biggest single line after the builder on every route. Drop it and every total falls by $30.

The table assumes you keep paying for the builder after launch. On Base44, Bolt and Lovable the hosting comes with the plan, and none of the pricing pages we read say what happens to a live app if you downgrade, so check before you cancel.

What to watch for

  • Credits that expire. Lovable’s daily credits vanish at the end of the day and monthly credits after two months. Replit’s monthly credits don’t roll over. Bolt Pro rolls tokens over.
  • Usage-based hosting. Lovable Cloud charges your credit balance once an app outgrows the included grant, and Replit Autoscale bills per request and compute unit after credits run out. Neither publishes the traffic level where a typical app crosses that line.
  • Non-commercial free hosting. Vercel Hobby is “for personal, non-commercial use.” A business app on v0 needs Vercel Pro.
  • Database pausing. Supabase pauses free projects after a week of inactivity, which can bite a new app with few users.
  • Per-user pricing. v0 Plus and Bolt Teams ($30 per member) charge each teammate.
  • Yearly prices. Base44’s $16 needs yearly billing. Bolt advertises a yearly saving without showing the price.
  • Third-party bills. AI APIs, payment processors and email senders bill you directly, on their own terms.
  • Credit cost changes. Lovable’s current chat pricing is set to run through October 31, 2026, per our report linked above.

Which should you choose?

  • Lowest monthly bill for a simple app with login and data: Base44 Starter, $16 a month billed yearly, with hosting, a database and a first-year domain included.
  • You want hosting bundled and a predictable flat fee: Bolt Pro or Lovable Pro, both $25 a month. Bolt rolls unused tokens over; Lovable adds daily build credits.
  • You can code a little and want control of hosting: Replit Core at $20, with publishing billed by use or a fixed Reserved VM from $15 a month.
  • A Next.js or React app headed for Vercel: v0 Plus, but budget Vercel Pro ($20) and a database on top. It is the priciest route in our example.
  • You’re comparing builders with a code editor instead: see our Claude Code vs Cursor cost guide.

More builders and their free plans are on our AI app builders hub and in our Lovable alternatives roundup. For native iPhone and Android apps, store fees and the full first-year bill are in how much it costs to make an app.

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