What a Free Plan Actually Buys You in an AI App Builder (September 2026)
Every AI app builder has a free plan. Almost none of them say, in plain words, how many apps it will build. We read the pricing pages, did the arithmetic for a month, and lined the results up.
Credits are a unit you cannot see
A free plan used to be simple: some number of pages, a badge, an upgrade button. AI builders replaced that with a meter. Lovable counts credits. Bolt counts tokens. v0 counts dollars of credit and messages. Base44 counts two kinds of credit, one for building and one for the app while it runs. The unit is different at every vendor, and none of them is a thing you can picture before you start.
That matters because the meter runs at a rate you do not control. A short request can cost the same as a long one, or ten times more, depending on how much the model decides to write. You learn the plan is empty when the next request is refused.
The second problem is that free plans have been getting tighter. Two of the builders below put a daily cap and a monthly cap on the same allowance, and the monthly one is the one that binds. Nothing rolls over.
The arithmetic, builder by builder
Each number below is from the vendor’s own public pricing page, checked September 2026. Where a vendor lists a daily and a monthly figure, the month column shows the smaller of the two, because that is what you actually get.
Lovable: 5 credits a day, 30 a month
The daily figure reads like 150 credits a month. The monthly cap is 30, with no rollover, so six days of full use empties the plan. Pro is $25 a month for 100 credits. Free apps carry a “Made with Lovable” badge. Checked September 2026, from Lovable’s public pricing page.
Bolt.new: 300K tokens a day, 1M a month
Tokens are fragments of text the model reads and writes, and a full-stack build reads and writes a lot of it. The daily figure suggests 9M tokens a month; the monthly cap is 1M, no rollover. Pro is $25 a month for 10M tokens. Checked September 2026, from Bolt.new’s public pricing page.
v0: $5 of credit a month, 7 messages a day
v0 prices in dollars, which is at least a unit you know, but the free plan is $5 a month and a message spends an amount you learn afterwards. Plus is $30 per user a month for $30 of monthly credits plus $2 of free daily credits. v0 generates components and pages; hosting, a database and sign-in are yours to add. Checked September 2026, from v0.app’s public pricing page.
Base44: 25 message credits a month
Building spends message credits and a running app spends integration credits: 25 and 100 a month on the free plan. Starter is $16 a month billed yearly (monthly billing is about 20 percent more). Checked September 2026, from Base44’s public pricing page.
Emergent: 10 credits a month
The smallest free allowance on this list. Standard is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, for 100 credits a month; Pro is $200 a month for 750. Checked September 2026, from Emergent’s public pricing page.
JustCopy: 3 builds a day, every day
A build is one request to create or change your app: a new site, a new feature, a fix. The free plan gives 3 a day and they come back every day, so a month is about 90, with no monthly cap and no meter. You can have 5 projects with a live preview. Changing words, colours and sections on a page is not a build and is unlimited. Published apps carry the JustCopy badge. From the JustCopy pricing page.
Side by side
| Builder | What it counts | Free plan | Most you get in a month | First paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JustCopy.ai | Builds (one request to build or change your app) | 3 a day, every day, no monthly cap | About 90 | Hobby $9.99 a month: your own domain, no badge, 5 builds a day |
| Lovable | Credits | 5 a day, capped at 30 a month, no rollover | 30 | Pro $25 a month for 100 credits a month |
| Bolt.new | Tokens | 300K a day, 1M a month, no rollover | 1M tokens | Pro $25 a month for 10M tokens a month |
| v0 | Dollars of credit | $5 of monthly credits, 7 messages a day | $5 | Plus $30 per user a month for $30 of monthly credits plus $2 of free daily credits |
| Base44 | Message credits (building) and integration credits (a running app) | 25 message credits and 100 integration credits a month | 25 messages | Starter $16 a month billed yearly |
| Emergent | Credits | 10 credits a month | 10 | Standard $20 a month ($17 billed yearly) for 100 credits a month |
| Replit | Plan | Not compared here; Replit is a coding environment first | n/a | Core $20 a month ($18 billed yearly) |
Competitor figures checked September 2026, from each vendor’s public pricing page. JustCopy figures from /pricing. Units are not comparable across builders: a Lovable credit, a Bolt token and a JustCopy build are different things.
Three ways a free plan gets stingier without changing its headline
A second cap under the first.“5 a day” and “300K a day” are the numbers on the page. The monthly caps of 30 and 1M sit under them and cut the real allowance to a fifth or a ninth of what the daily number implies.
No rollover. A quiet week does not bank anything. Whatever you did not use is gone at the month end.
A unit the model spends for you. When a request costs whatever the model chose to write, the plan can be emptied by one ambitious prompt. You cannot budget what you cannot predict.
A daily allowance that comes back every day avoids all three. The day is the cap, the month takes care of itself, and a build is a build whether the page it produces is short or long.
Promotional inference versus a price list
The other way free gets complicated is a promotion. On 29 September 2025 Lovable announced Lovable Cloud, a built-in backend for its apps, and Lovable AI, a way to put a model inside the app you build. The next day it announced that AI usage in published Lovable apps was free, on Google Gemini models, until 6 October 2025. The announcement was careful to say that normal pricing still applied to Lovable credits; what was free was the AI inside your app, for one week. Lovable Cloud’s free tier covers up to $25 a month of usage, after which usage-based billing begins. Read on lovable.dev/blog, 12 September 2026.
A promotion like that is worth taking. It is not a price. When it ends you are on a rate you had no reason to look up while it was free, and your app is already live.
JustCopy prices the things an app does in plain units, and they are the same on the free plan and every paid plan. Builds are the plan allowance; everything else an app spends is paid from a balance at these prices, listed under “What things cost” on the pricing page:
- A reply from an app’s chat or agent2¢
- A minute of live voice15¢
- A picture15¢
- A minute of narration10¢
- A short film$1.50
- An email1¢
- A text message5¢
You can set a daily ceiling on what an app may spend. None of it is promotional, and none of it is counted in tokens.
What the free plan is for, and when to pay
On JustCopy the free plan is enough to build a real site and keep changing it. The demo on the homepage builds a restaurant site from one sentence with no account; the first thing you type after that becomes your project, and three builds a day is usually more than a small business needs once the first version is up, because rewording, recolouring and adding or removing sections never cost a build.
Two things cost money. Your own domain and a page with no JustCopy badge are the Hobby plan, $9.99 a month, which also raises builds to 5 a day. Bigger allowances and more domains are Starter and up. There is no credit pack to buy and nothing to top up to keep building.
If you are comfortable counting tokens, Bolt’s free plan is generous for a day and thin for a month; see the Bolt alternatives page. If the 30-credit month is what sent you here, the Lovable alternatives page covers the switch.
Questions
What are the Lovable free plan limits in September 2026?
Five credits a day, capped at 30 credits a month with no rollover, and a 'Made with Lovable' badge on your apps. Pro is $25 a month for 100 credits a month. Checked September 2026, from Lovable's public pricing page.
Why do Lovable credits run out so early in the month?
Because two limits apply at once. The daily limit of 5 suggests about 150 a month, but the monthly cap of 30 is the one that binds: six days of full use and the free plan is finished until next month.
What is the Bolt token limit on the free plan?
300K tokens a day and 1M tokens a month, with no rollover. Pro is $25 a month for 10M tokens. A token is a fragment of text the model reads or writes, so one large build can spend a full day's allowance. Checked September 2026, from Bolt.new's public pricing page.
What does the v0 free plan include?
$5 of monthly credits and a limit of 7 messages a day. Plus is $30 per user a month for $30 of monthly credits plus $2 of free daily credits. Checked September 2026, from v0.app's public pricing page.
What is the best free AI app builder if I do not want to count credits?
JustCopy is the only builder in this comparison whose free plan has no meter: 3 builds a day that come back every day, about 90 a month, on up to 5 projects. Changing words, colours and sections is unlimited and never counts as a build. The trade is a JustCopy badge on what you publish; Hobby at $9.99 a month removes it and puts the site on your own domain.
Does a free plan ever get better?
Promotions do appear, such as free Gemini-powered AI inside Lovable apps for one week in 2025, but they end on a date. The numbers on the pricing pages above are the ones to plan around.
Three builds a day. Every day.
Describe your app, watch it build and test itself, and publish. No card, no credits, no meter.
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