Lovable

Lovable is an AI app builder: you describe a web app in plain English, and it writes the code, runs it and shows you a live preview next to the chat. Is Lovable free? Yes, with limits. The free plan gives you 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, and you don't need a credit card. Paid plans start with Pro at $25 a month for 100 credits.

That's the short answer. Below is what one free day of credits got me (a working tip calculator and one change), what each plan costs in dollars, and how credits work, which is the part that confuses everyone, me included.

What Lovable is

Lovable describes itself as "an AI software engineer, which enables anyone to build for the web." In practice it's a chat on the left and your app on the right. You type what you want, it builds it, and every follow-up message changes the app. Along the top there's a Preview, the files and the code, plus Share, Upgrade and Publish buttons. Behind it sits Lovable Cloud, which the company pitches as a built-in backend for logins, databases and file uploads.

Lovable · Lovable Labs Incorporated

Free with limits · from $25/mo

Lovable review →

You don't have to look at the code at all, which is the whole point. But it's there if you want it, and Lovable's pricing page says you own it: the apps, the code and the data stored in Lovable belong to you, subject to any third-party rights in the AI models underneath.

How I tested it

On October 15, 2026, I used the free workspace I'd already set up with a Google account, with the interface switched to English (it's a setting in your account preferences). The workspace menu said 10 credits left before I started, more than the 5 a day the pricing page lists; the menu didn't say why. I wanted something with a result I could check with a calculator, so I wrote this:

Build a tip calculator that splits a restaurant bill between friends: bill amount, tip % (15/18/20/custom), number of people, and show the tip, the total and the per-person amount. Use US dollars.

Lovable answered "Building it now," named the project "Split The Bill" and had the app in the preview in under a minute. Its message described what it built and then added something I liked: it had written two small automatic checks on the math, "but I couldn't confirm they passed, and I haven't opened the page to look at it yet." I appreciated the honesty.

So I opened it myself. Bill $84.60, tip 18%, three people. By hand: the tip is $15.23, the total is $99.83, and each person pays $33.28. Lovable's app showed exactly that.

One change, and one small mismatch

Under the reply, Lovable suggested next steps: "Get a tip recommendation," "Round each share" and "Split unevenly." I asked for my own version of the second one: a toggle to round each person's share up to the next whole dollar, and to show how much extra tip that adds.

That took under a minute, too. The toggle worked: with it on, each person pays $34.00. Lovable's message said the new "Extra tip from rounding" line "shows how much more the table is tipping overall." What the app actually showed was $0.72 with "(3×)" next to it. That's the extra per person, times three people. The table's real extra is $2.17 ($102.00 against $99.83), and the Total line stayed at $99.83, the amount before rounding. The rounding works, but the summary doesn't match what the chat said, and you have to do the math yourself.

After that change, Lovable offered "Scan a receipt" and "Include sales tax" as next ideas. I didn't publish anything. According to the pricing page, publishing uses a lovable.app address, and the free plan includes 5 of those.

Lovable pricing, plan by plan

These are the prices on Lovable's pricing page from a US connection, in dollars. The page doesn't mention tax.

On Pro and Business, the 100 credits are a starting point: the dropdown under the price lets you buy a bigger monthly allowance on the same plan. Switch to yearly billing and the page promises "2 months free." Paid plans also keep the free daily grant of 5 build credits and 20 Cloud credits a month on top of what you pay for. Students with a valid university email can get up to 50% off Pro.

Why is Business twice the price for the same 100 credits? Lovable says you're paying for the team features, and that Business credits are priced higher: running an app or its AI features costs the same in dollars on both plans, so it uses fewer credits on Business.

How Lovable credits work

Here's the part I wish someone had explained to me first. A credit is Lovable's unit for everything: building (each message you send), hosting with Lovable Cloud, and AI features inside the app you build. How many credits a message costs depends on the mode:

• Default mode: it depends on how complex the task is.
• Plan mode: 1 credit per message.

Lovable's own examples give a feel for it: "Make the button gray" costs 0.50 credits, "Remove the footer" 0.90, "Add authentication with sign up and login" 1.20, and "Build me a landing page, use images" 1.70. My two messages landed in the same range: the whole tip calculator took my balance from 10 to 9.10, and the rounding change took it down to 8.40. You can see what each message cost in the message history.

Credits also expire, and the rules differ by type:

• Daily free build credits expire at the end of each day and don't roll over. The reset is at midnight UTC, which is late afternoon or evening in the US.
• Monthly plan credits roll over for a month and expire two months after they're issued.
• Yearly plan credits expire one month after your yearly period ends.
• Top-up credits last 12 months from purchase.

If you cancel, you keep your paid credits until the end of the billing period, and then you drop to the free grants. Credits aren't refundable. Hosting a small app is normally covered by the included Cloud grant. An app with a lot of traffic can start spending credits from your balance.

Who it's for, and who should skip it

Lovable makes sense if you have a clear idea for a small web app, a landing page or an internal tool, and you'd rather describe it than set up a framework, a database and hosting. My calculator and its first change together used fewer credits than a single free day gives you, so you can find out whether it suits you before paying anything.

Skip it, or keep it for prototypes, if you're a developer who wants to work in your own editor, or if you need every number checked without asking. Lovable got my math right. It also described its own feature differently from what it had built, and only testing caught that.

Lovable or something else?

Replit

Replit review →

If you want to see and edit the code yourself in a browser workspace, Replit is the closer cousin. If you'd rather have the code explained step by step and paste it into your own project, Claude or ChatGPT will do that in a chat, without hosting anything for you. And if what you want is a running app from one sentence, Lovable is the one I'd try first.