AI app builder pricing compared (2026)

Every AI app builder charges for the same underlying thing — model usage — but the way each one meters it changes what you actually pay. Here's how the four best-known models work, with numbers taken from each vendor's public pricing page in early July 2026. These change often; treat the vendors' pages as the source of truth.

Lovable: flat credits

Lovable's free tier grants 5 build credits a day (up to 30 a month). Pro is $25/month for 100 monthly credits, with top-ups and rollovers on paid plans — but rolled-over monthly-plan credits expire two months after issuance. Simple to understand; the fine print is the expiry clock.

v0: dollar-denominated usage

v0 by Vercel prices in literal dollars of usage: the free tier includes $5 of monthly credits (capped at 7 messages a day), and Team is $30 per user/month with $30 in credits plus small daily grants. Unused credits roll over. Arguably the most transparent unit in the category — you're just buying metered compute.

Bolt: tokens

Bolt.new meters raw tokens: 300K a day (up to 1M/month) free, and Pro at $25/month starts at 10M tokens. Since mid-2025, unused paid tokens roll over one extra month — as long as the subscription stays active. Tokens track the model's real work closely, which also means a confused generation costs what it costs.

opix: credits with a meter and a floor

opix plans start at $29/month for 120 credits, with one-time packs from $10 that never expire. Two design choices set it apart:

1. A live cost meter. Every build shows its real cost, and you can set a hard spend cap per project.
2. Failed builds are free. Auto-fixes, type-check repairs and failed generations bill nothing.

What to actually compare

The sticker prices are within a few dollars of each other. The real differences are in the failure and expiry mechanics:

1. Who pays for failure? Token and per-attempt metering bill you for the model's detours. opix eats them.
2. Does unused money evaporate? Check expiry: Lovable's rollover credits lapse after two months, Bolt's after one extra month, v0's roll over, opix packs never expire.
3. Can you see the unit cost? A meter you can watch beats an allowance you estimate.
4. What does a dollar buy at the exit? Code you own on infrastructure you control means your spend built an asset, not a subscription.

Run the same real prompt on every free tier and read the meters — twenty minutes of testing beats any comparison table, including ours.