Two numbers for each: what you can genuinely start at, and what a small live project tends to cost.
You describe it, they build and host the whole thing.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Lovable ↗aff Prompt-to-app builder | Free | ~$25/mo | You describe an app in plain English and it builds the whole thing — screens, database, login — and hosts it. The friendliest on-ramp there is. | Credits are the real price. A one-page MVP is ~30–60 credits; a three-page app with login and a database routinely runs 150–250 — more than a month of Pro |
Bolt ↗aff Prompt-to-app builder | Free | ~$25/mo | StackBlitz's in-browser builder. Prompt it, watch a full-stack app appear and run in a browser tab, then deploy. Fastest zero-to-something of the bunch. | Tokens burn against your whole codebase, so cost climbs as the project grows, not as you prompt more |
| Prompt-to-app builder + IDE | Free | ~$25/mo | A full cloud development environment with an Agent bolted on. You get a real IDE, a terminal, a database and deployment without installing anything. | Effort-based billing: the Agent decides what a task costs and tells you after. Simple edits are usually under $0.25, complex ones bundle into one larger charge |
| UI-first builder | Free | ~$20/mo | Vercel's generator. Historically frontend-only; since February 2026 it has a sandbox runtime, a Git panel and database connections, so it now builds real apps — but it is still happiest making beautiful React interfaces. | Token-based since February 2026, so you do not know a generation's cost until it runs |
| Prompt-to-app builder | Free | ~$20/mo | An all-in-one builder aimed squarely at non-technical founders, with a dual credit system that separates building your app from running it. | Smaller community than Lovable or Bolt, so fewer tutorials when you get stuck |
A real editor with an agent inside. You keep the code.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI code editor | Free | ~$20/mo | A code editor built around AI. It looks like VS Code, opens your actual project folder, and an agent edits files while you watch. The default choice for people who want to keep the code. | Since June 2025 each paid plan includes a credit pool worth roughly the plan price. Hand-picking frontier models on every task drains it and triggers overage billed in arrears |
| AI code editor | Free | ~$20/mo | The editor formerly called Windsurf. Cognition renamed it on 2 June 2026 and windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai. Same VS Code base, same plans, plus an Agent Command Center that manages every local and cloud agent from one Kanban board. | The Cascade agent reached end of life on 1 July 2026 — Devin Local replaced it, and six Cascade features did not carry over at launch |
| AI code editor plugin | Free | ~$10/mo | Not an editor — a plugin that adds AI to the editor you already use. Cheapest paid tier in the category and it lives where your code already is. | Billing changed on 1 June 2026 from premium requests to GitHub AI Credits, metered per token (1 credit = $0.01). Chat, agent mode, code review and the CLI all draw down credits |
| Agent-first IDE | Free | Free | Google's agent-first IDE, launched alongside Gemini 3. Its Agent Manager spawns and supervises several agents at once across the editor, terminal and browser, and each produces artifacts — plans, task lists, screenshots — you can verify. | Google has changed the credit system repeatedly and gutted free tiers before — the Gemini CLI free tier for individuals ended 18 June 2026 |
No interface. Highest ceiling, steepest curve.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terminal agent | $17/mo | ~$20/mo | An agent that lives in your terminal. No editor, no buttons — you tell it what you want and it reads, writes and runs your codebase. The most capable option for large or messy projects, and the least hand-holding. | No free tier at all — this is the only mainstream tool where you cannot try before you pay |
| Terminal + cloud agent | $20/mo | ~$20/mo | You delegate a task, it runs in a sandbox connected to your GitHub repo, and you come back to a diff and a pull request. Available as a CLI, an IDE extension, a GitHub bot and inside ChatGPT. | Locked to one model family |
| Open-source agents | Free | ~$10/mo | Open-source terminal and editor agents. The software costs nothing; you bring your own API key and pay the model provider directly. | You are the support team |
Where anything that has to survive a page refresh lives.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend & database | Free | ~$25/mo | A Postgres database with authentication, file storage, realtime and serverless functions bolted on. The default backend for vibe-coded apps, and what several builders quietly use under the hood. | Row Level Security is OFF by default on new tables and AI tools frequently forget to turn it on. This is the single biggest cause of vibe-coded data breaches — read "Don't get burned" before you ship |
| Backend & database | Free | ~$12/mo | Google's backend platform. A document database, auth, storage and functions with an extremely generous free tier and per-operation billing after that. | Per-operation billing can spike hard. A badly written query loop is a genuine financial risk — set a budget alert on day one |
| Serverless Postgres | Free | ~$19/mo | Serverless Postgres that scales to zero when idle and can branch your database like Git branches your code. | Database only. You still need separate auth, storage and file handling |
Whatever my builder includes Backend & database | Free | Free | Use Lovable Cloud, Replit's database or Bolt's integrations and skip the separate signup. Fewer accounts, less control. | Runtime usage quietly drains the same credits you use for building |
No database Backend & database | Free | Free | A landing page, a portfolio, a calculator, a marketing site. If nothing needs to be saved between visits, skip this whole layer. | The moment you want accounts, saved data or user-generated content, you need a real backend |
Proving who someone is. Not the same as controlling what they see.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Authentication | Free | Free | Login built into the database you are already using. Email, magic links, social providers and multi-factor, with no extra account to create. | You build the login screens yourself, or the AI does — there are no drop-in components |
| Authentication | Free | Free | Drop-in login. Paste a component, get a polished sign-in flow with user profiles, organisations and multi-factor already built. | A second vendor to wire up, and connecting Clerk identities to Supabase rows is the step people get wrong |
| Authentication | Free | Free | Enterprise-grade auth with a startlingly large free tier, aimed at teams who know they will eventually need SSO and directory sync. | Per-connection SSO pricing is higher than Clerk's $75 |
No login Authentication | Free | Free | Everyone sees the same thing. No accounts, no passwords, no user data to protect. | You cannot save anything per-person |
Where it lives on the internet. Watch the commercial-use clauses.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Free | ~$20/mo | The default host for React and Next.js. Connect a GitHub repo and every push deploys automatically, with a preview URL for every branch. | Hobby is non-commercial only. The moment your project earns money — ads, subscriptions, anything — you need Pro |
| Hosting | Free | ~$19/mo | The other big frontend host. Similar model to Vercel, flat team pricing instead of per-seat, and a slightly gentler learning curve. | Free tier hard-stops your site when credits run out — the site goes down, it does not just bill you |
| Hosting | Free | ~$5/mo | Unlimited bandwidth on the free tier, forever. Cloudflare sells network services, so serving your traffic costs them almost nothing and they do not charge you for it. | Next.js runs through the OpenNext adapter rather than natively; most App Router projects work but anything relying on Node APIs in server components needs attention |
My builder hosts it Hosting | Free | Free | Press Publish in Lovable, Bolt or Replit and you are live. No host to choose, no repo to connect. | On Replit's free tier, published links go down after 30 days |
The fee difference is mostly about who is legally responsible for tax.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payments | Free | Free | The industry standard. Best documentation, best API, supported by every template and boilerplate you will ever find — but you are the legal seller, so sales tax and VAT are your problem. | You are responsible for sales tax in every US state and VAT across the EU. This is a real obligation, not a formality |
| Payments | Free | Free | A merchant of record built for developer products. Polar becomes the legal seller in every country, so global tax compliance stops being your problem. Lowest MoR fee on the market. | Roughly 1.1% more than raw Stripe — that is the price of never thinking about VAT again |
| Payments | Free | Free | The indie-favourite merchant of record. Stripe acquired it in July 2024; it still runs as a separate product with the dashboard and API intact. | Post-acquisition, users report slower onboarding and an unclear roadmap |
| Payments | Free | Free | A long-established merchant of record aimed at SaaS. Same headline fee as Lemon Squeezy, with more mature subscription and dunning tooling. | Approval process is stricter than Stripe's or Polar's — not instant |
Not charging yet Payments | Free | Free | Free product, internal tool, or you want to see whether anyone actually wants it before you build a checkout. Entirely reasonable. | "I will monetise later" is where a great many projects quietly end |
Email, analytics, error tracking and rate limiting.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactional email | Free | Free | Sends the emails your app has to send: password resets, receipts, verification links, notifications. | You must verify your sending domain with DNS records or everything lands in spam |
| Analytics & product insight | Free | Free | Analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B tests, surveys and error tracking in one tool. You can watch recordings of real people using the thing you built. | Adding a script affects page performance — measure it |
| Error tracking | Free | Free | Tells you when your app breaks for a real person, with the exact line, the browser and what they were doing. Without it, you find out from a complaint or never. | Noisy by default — spend twenty minutes filtering out browser extension errors or you will ignore it |
| Rate limiting & caching | Free | Free | Serverless Redis, most usefully as a rate limiter. Stops one person — or one bot — hammering your API and running up a bill. | AI tools almost never add rate limiting unless you ask explicitly |
Free, ten minutes, and the thing that saves you.
| Tool | Start at | Once live | What it is | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version control | Free | Free | Where your code lives, with a complete history of every change. This is your undo button when the AI confidently deletes something important — and it will. | Commit before every big prompt, not after — a commit you did not make cannot save you |
Builder snapshots only Version control | Free | Free | Rely on your builder's built-in checkpoint history and skip GitHub entirely. Honest option, real cost. | If the account lapses or the platform changes, the work is gone |
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