Will people log in to your app
Lovable vs Bolt is one of the closest match-ups in AI app building, and one question settles most cases: will people log in? If yes, pick Lovable. It bills in credits per message and includes a managed backend, Lovable Cloud, with login and a database you switch on. If not, or you mostly want room to experiment, pick Bolt. It bills in AI tokens, gives 1M a month on its free plan, lists unlimited databases and hosting from day one, and rolls unused tokens over on Pro.
Checked Oct 2026. Lovable details come from lovable.dev/pricing and its plans and credits docs. Bolt details come from bolt.new/pricing, which shows prices billed yearly.
Plans, allowances and seats
- How you pay. Lovable: credits per message, with a daily grant. Bolt: AI tokens per month, with a daily cap on Free.
- Free plan. Lovable: 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits. Bolt: 1M tokens a month with a 300K daily limit, public and private projects, Bolt branding on sites.
- Entry paid plan. Lovable Pro: $25 a month, or $21 billed yearly, for 100 credits. Bolt Pro: $18 a month billed yearly, $216 a year, against $300 a year at the monthly rate, for 10M tokens a month with rollover.
- Teams. Lovable Business: from $50 a month, no per-seat charge. Bolt Teams: $27 per member a month billed yearly.
- Backend. Lovable: Lovable Cloud with database, storage, login, realtime and functions. Bolt: unlimited databases on Free, and on Pro expanded capacity and a choice of database provider.
- Custom domain. Lovable: Pro and above. Bolt: Pro and above, which also removes Bolt branding.
What a message costs on Lovable, and a session on Bolt
Lovable publishes what typical messages cost: 0.50 credits to make a button gray, 0.90 to remove a footer, 1.20 to add sign up and login, 1.70 to build a landing page with three generated images. A message in Plan Mode is 1 credit. On those numbers, Pro's 100 monthly credits plus 5 daily build credits cover a lot of ordinary edits, and it is fairly easy to estimate a month.
Bolt counts tokens, the units AI models read and write. Larger projects mean more tokens per request because the model has more code to read. Bolt's Pro plan gives 10M tokens a month with no daily limit, and unused tokens roll over. That suits people who build in bursts. It also means one long session on a big project can use a lot of the allowance, so watch the meter early.
Neither model is cheaper in every case. Small, frequent edits feel cheap on Lovable. Big batches of work in one sitting feel roomier on Bolt Pro, at least until the project gets large.
Lovable Cloud against Bolt databases
Lovable Cloud is the more managed option. Lovable lists a database, storage, authentication, realtime and edge functions, plus secrets and logs, built on Supabase's open-source foundation. You switch it on and the app uses it.
Bolt's pricing page lists unlimited databases on every plan, then expanded database capacity and a choice of database provider on Pro, along with connectors and MCPs. File uploads are capped at 10MB on Free and 100MB on Pro.
For payments, both rely on connecting your own payment provider account.
Publishing and domains
Both include hosting. On Lovable, publishing happens in the editor, and Lovable says most smaller apps are covered by the hosting grant that comes with a subscription. On Bolt, website hosting is listed on every plan, and Pro adds SEO boosting for published sites, private sharing and your own domain without Bolt branding.
If a custom domain matters from the start, both mean a paid plan.
The photographer portfolio test
If you want to decide on your own project, use the same prompt in both, on the same day. A good one: a portfolio for a photographer with a gallery grouped by album, a contact form that saves messages, and an admin page to add photos. Then note:
- Minutes until the first preview works.
- How many follow-up messages it took to fix layout and the form.
- Credits used on Lovable and tokens used on Bolt.
- Whether the saved messages and photos survive a page reload.
That last point tells you more about the backend than any feature list.
Comfort zones
Both builders can make most small web apps, but they have different comfort zones.
Lovable is at its best when the app needs accounts and stored data from the start. Customer portals, booking tools, simple CRMs and member areas all lean on login and a database, and Lovable Cloud gives you both without picking a provider. Because the code syncs to Git on every plan, Lovable is also a sensible start if a developer will take over later.
Bolt is at its best when you want to try many ideas quickly or build in long sessions. The Free plan's 1M monthly tokens give more room to experiment, and Pro's rollover means a quiet month is not wasted. Bolt's pricing page also lists connectors and MCPs on Pro, and a choice of database provider, which helps when you already know which database you want.
For a plain marketing site or a one-page waitlist, either is more than you need, and a template you edit by chat is often faster. For a game, neither is the obvious pick, since both focus on websites and web apps.
Team pricing is the other real difference. Lovable does not charge per seat, so a co-founder or a class shares the workspace credits at no extra cost. Bolt Teams is $27 per member a month billed yearly, so four people cost $108 a month before anyone builds.
If you still cannot decide
Run the photographer test above on both free plans in one afternoon. Lovable's free plan gives 5 build credits a day; Bolt's gives 300K tokens a day. If the form and the photos survive a reload on one and not the other, you have your answer. If both pass, pick the one whose first preview you liked better, because you will be looking at that style of output for months.
Games, or voice prompts
VibeDream is another chat-first builder. You describe what you want by typing, talking or attaching a screenshot, and a live preview appears in seconds. Apps are React + FastAPI, so the backend is Python code you can read, and games are Phaser, made to play on phones and computers. Neither Lovable nor Bolt focuses on games.
Putting a project online takes one screen: press Put it online, pick a vibedreams.ai name, and it is live in a few minutes with HTTPS, at 5 credits per update. Your own domain takes one TXT and one CNAME record, shown in the deployment guide.
It is the wrong pick if you want a free plan, since there is none. Its built-in login and database work with one tap, and its one-tap payments are coming soon. Plans start at $49 a month on the pricing page. The Aesthetic Waitlist template shows a finished page that saves signups.