Replit: What It Is Today, Whether It's Free and What Agent Costs

Replit costs $0 to start: the free Starter plan gives you daily Agent usage with a cap and one app you can publish for 30 days. Paid plans start at $20 a month with Core ($18 billed yearly), and Pro starts at $100 ($90 billed yearly). The twist is that the monthly fee comes back to you as credits that pay for Agent, hosting and databases. Replit itself is a platform that runs in your browser where you describe an app, a website or even a slide deck in plain English, and its AI, called Agent, builds it for you, with the database, sign-in and hosting already included.

What Replit is in 2026

If you came here from an old link, forget the online code editor with an autocomplete sidekick. Replit has turned itself into an AI app builder. The front page doesn't show code at all: it asks "What will you build?", promises to "turn ideas into apps in minutes — no coding needed," and gives you a prompt box with tabs for a website, a mobile app, a design, slides or an animation.

The idea is that you never leave the tab. Agent writes the code, and Replit supplies everything underneath it: authentication, a database, hosting and monitoring, plus integrations with services like OpenAI, Stripe and Google Workspace. There's also an infinite canvas where you play with designs visually and then apply them to your app. When it's ready, you publish it from the same place.

Developers still get a full cloud workspace. It's just that the way in is now a conversation, not a blank file.

How Agent works, without the jargon

Sorry, this part gets a little technical, but it's what decides what you'll pay. Agent has three modes, which you pick from a menu under the prompt box:

• Free Mode handles everyday work at no cost, within an allowance that depends on your plan. Replit picks the model for you.
• Power Mode is the middle option for most work, and it uses your monthly credits.
• Max Mode is what Replit pitches as its most capable option, for complex work and large codebases, and it also uses credits.

On top of that, there's Plan Mode, where you brainstorm and plan with Agent without it touching your code, and Full build, where Agent works on its own with more autonomy. Every time Agent finishes a build request, it saves a checkpoint you can roll back to, and that checkpoint shows what the work cost.

Is Replit free?

Yes, with limits that matter. The Starter plan costs nothing. You get daily credits for Agent that reset every day, up to a monthly cap, a built-in database and one published app. The catch is in the fine print: that free app goes down automatically after 30 days, and it carries a "Made with Replit" badge.

On Starter, Agent works in a lighter build mode for quick, focused changes. Full build, Plan Mode, Power and Max modes, connectors to services like Google or Stripe, and project types beyond web and mobile apps all need Core. Replit's own comparison table makes it clear.

Replit pricing

These are the prices as I found them on Replit's pricing page, front page and docs, in US dollars. Tax is added depending on where you live.

Pro is really a ladder. The pricing page has a dropdown with tiers at $100, $225, $440, $850 and $2,050 a month, and the bigger ones are discounted: the dropdown crosses out $250 next to the $225 tier and $2,500 next to $2,050. On Pro, the team works from the same pool of credits, with no per-user fees.

How Agent spends your credits

This is the part to read twice. The monthly price isn't really a fee plus extras: it's mostly credit. Core's $20 a month comes with $20 in credits, and Pro's $100 comes with at least $100. Those credits pay for everything you use on Replit: Agent's work in Power and Max modes, publishing your app, databases and storage.

Agent charges by effort. In Replit's words, "the Agent will spend more credits as it works longer, which means more complex requests will cost more than simple requests." A bug fix usually costs less than a whole new feature. Each request becomes one checkpoint, and you can see what each one cost. Two details worth knowing: Plan Mode can bill for reasoning even when it doesn't change any code, and when Agent calls models like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini behind the scenes, you pay those providers' public API rates out of your credits.

Credits reset each month on your renewal date, except on Pro, where unused ones roll over for two months.

Is Replit Core worth it?

If you want to keep an app online, I think it is, and the math is friendlier than it looks. Core's $20 comes back as $20 in credits, so you're not paying a fee on top of your usage: you're prepaying the first $20 of it. Use it or lose it, though: Core credits reset every month. What the plan itself unlocks are the main things Starter leaves out: Full build, Plan Mode, Power and Max modes, connectors, unlimited published apps without the badge, and up to 5 builders. On top of the credits, Core includes a Free Mode allowance that refreshes every five hours, and the pricing page lists up to 30 hours of chat and up to 60 projects on Free Mode for Core. Replit says Free Mode covers everyday work at no cost within that allowance, so small changes don't have to touch your credits.

When isn't it worth it? If you only want to see what Agent can do, Starter is enough for that. If you're building every day and the $20 is gone in a week, look at a credit pack or at Pro, which starts at $100 in credits that roll over for two months, with discounts on the bigger tiers. And if what you want is help with code you already write, Cursor or Claude do that job without paying for hosting you don't need, and both have free plans.

What happens when your credits run out

This is Replit's usage-based billing in practice. When the monthly credits are gone, Replit doesn't cut you off: whatever else you use is billed pay-as-you-go, with the same effort-based pricing, until you hit a limit you've set. If you'd rather prepay, Core and Pro subscribers can buy credit packs from their billing settings, with a small discount on the bigger ones.

Packs don't renew, and they expire six months after you buy them. The brake is real, too: once you reach the budget you've set, Replit emails you and pauses all your usage-based services until the next billing cycle or until you raise the limit.

What I could see without an account

Quite a lot, actually. The front page, the full pricing page with its FAQ and Replit's docs on billing, plans and Agent modes are all public, and they explain billing in more detail than I expected. What you can't see without signing up is the editor itself and your exact free allowance: Replit doesn't publish Starter's daily cap and sends you to the Usage page in Settings to check it. The official walkthrough video is the best way to look inside before you create an account.

Who Replit is for, and who should skip it

Replit makes sense if you want an app online without thinking about servers, databases or sign-in, whether that's a prototype, an internal tool or a small product. It's also handy for small teams, since Core already lets up to 5 builders work together and Pro raises that to 15.

Skip it, or stay on Starter, if you can't live with unpredictable bills. Effort-based pricing is fair in principle, but until you've built a few things you won't know whether a request will cost a little or a lot. And if you already write code in your own editor, paying for a whole platform to get AI help is overkill.

Replit vs Lovable vs v0 vs Cursor: what you pay per month

All four have a free way in, and all four meter the AI one way or another. Here's what each one charges, in US dollars, with the prices from each tool's page on this site.

The difference that matters isn't the sticker price. Replit, Lovable and v0 build and host the app for you, while Cursor is a coding agent for people who write their own code. And on Replit, as on Lovable, hosting and databases come out of the same credits as the AI, so a busy app eats into your Agent budget too.

Replit or something else?

Lovable · Lovable Labs Incorporated

Free with limits · from $25/mo

Lovable review →

If what you love is the chat-to-app part, Lovable does the same job for web apps with a simpler credit system. v0 is Vercel's take, and the natural pick if your app will live on Vercel anyway. And if you can code and only want help in your own setup, Claude has a free plan and Pro at $20 a month with Claude Code included, while Cursor puts an agent in a desktop editor or your terminal.