v0 by Vercel

v0 is Vercel's AI app builder: you describe a web app in plain English, and it writes the code, runs it and shows a live preview next to the chat. Is v0 free? Only to get started. A new account gets a one-time $5 credit that doesn't renew, with a limit of 7 messages a day. After that, the cheapest paid plan is Plus at $30 per user a month, before tax.

That's the short answer. Below is what about a dollar of that credit got me (a working gas cost calculator and one change), what each plan costs, and how v0 turns your messages into dollars.

What v0 is

v0 comes from Vercel, the web hosting company. Its home page has a single question, "What do you want to create?", a box that says "Ask v0 to build…" and a model picker underneath. You type, it builds, and every follow-up message changes the app. When you're happy, a Publish button puts it on Vercel.

v0 · Vercel

Free with limits · from $30/mo

v0 review →

Two things to know before you sign up. The interface is in English only; I didn't find a language setting. And you sign in with a Vercel account: if you don't have one, signing up creates it. v0 isn't included in Vercel's own Hobby, Pro or Enterprise subscriptions, though. It's billed separately.

There's more around the chat than I used: Design Mode for editing visually, GitHub sync, templates, an iPhone app, an option to "Use your ChatGPT plan in v0" and a way to send messages while v0 is still working, which v0 says it picks up as it goes.

How I tested it

I used a free account signed in with Google, with under $3 left of its one-time $5 credit. The model picker said "ACCESS TO ALL MODELS · 29 days left" and had v0 Max selected by default, so I left it there. I wanted something with numbers I could check by hand, so I wrote this:

Build a road-trip gas cost splitter: trip distance in miles, car MPG, gas price per gallon and number of people; show total gallons, total gas cost and cost per person, and warn if any field is empty or zero. Use US dollars.

v0 named the project "Road trip cost calculator" and worked for about two minutes. Its progress steps were all on screen: it wrote the calculation logic, the input fields and the page, and then did something I didn't expect. It opened the app in its own browser, typed a zero into the MPG field, emptied the people field and took a screenshot to check the warnings. Only then did it reply, in plain English, with what it had built and the example it had tested.

So I tested it too. A 600-mile trip in a car that gets 30 MPG, gas at $3.50 a gallon, three people. By hand: 20 gallons, $70 of gas, $23.33 each. v0's app showed exactly that.

Then I broke it on purpose. With MPG at zero and the people field empty, each field got its own warning ("Car MPG can't be zero." and "Number of people is empty."), a list above the results said "Can't calculate yet. Please fix:" with both problems, and the totals switched to dashes. That's what the chat said it would do, and it's what it did.

One change: a round-trip switch

My follow-up was short: "Add a round-trip toggle that doubles the distance." It took under a minute. v0 added a "Round trip" switch under the distance field and explained that the distance you type stays as the one-way number. With the switch on, my 600-mile trip became 40 gallons, $140 and $46.67 each. Right again.

The whole test, app plus change, used about a dollar of credit and 2 of the 7 messages the free plan allows per day. Publishing puts the app on a Vercel address, and Vercel's own video in this review walks through that step.

v0 pricing, plan by plan

These are the prices on v0's pricing page. They're in US dollars and, in v0's words, "exclude value-added tax (VAT), goods and services tax (GST), and other applicable taxes," so your bill depends on where you live.

The FAQ adds a few things worth knowing before you pay: there are no refunds ("because each model call incurs a cost"), no PayPal, and no discounts for nonprofits or by country. Unused monthly credits on paid plans roll over for one month, and credits you buy on top expire after one year.

How v0 credits work

A v0 credit is money. Every message is charged by the tokens it uses, at the price of the model you pick, per million tokens:

The catch is the input side. v0 sends more than your message: it adds the chat history, your project's files and Vercel-specific knowledge, and all of that counts as input. That's why a short follow-up isn't free, and why the same request can cost more as a project grows. v0 Max Fast promises 2.5 times faster output for double the price of Max.

The good news is that you don't have to guess. Open the work summary on a reply and it shows what that message cost, and the credit button shows your balance. My first message's cost was right there, and my balance went down by exactly that.

Who it's for, and who should skip it

v0 makes sense if you want a small app, a calculator or a landing page running without setting up a framework and hosting, and even more if you already use Vercel or GitHub. What stood out in my test was the habit of checking its own work in a browser before answering. When I tested Lovable, it told me it couldn't confirm its own checks had passed. v0 ran them.

Skip it if you mainly want to try things for free over several weeks. The $5 is a one-time credit, the generous model access lasts 30 days, and after that a free account keeps only v0 Mini with no way to buy more credits.

v0 or something else?

Lovable · Lovable Labs Incorporated

Free with limits · from $25/mo

Lovable review →

If you want free credits that come back every day, Lovable gives 5 build credits a day on its free plan, up to 30 a month. If you'd rather edit the code yourself in a browser workspace, Replit is the closer fit. And if you only need the code written and explained, Claude or ChatGPT will do it in a chat, without hosting anything for you. For a running app from one paragraph that checks its own work, v0 is the one I'd pick.