Lovable pricing: the plans, the free daily credits, and the cost of one real project

By David Rieu, founder of Eqlo. Prices and rules checked on October 17, 2026 on Lovable's pricing page and in its documentation.

You've seen $25 a month on Lovable's pricing page, and what you really want to know is what your project will cost once the credits start moving. Here's Lovable pricing on October 17, 2026, in short: the Free plan gives you 5 credits a day, up to 30 a month. Pro costs $25 a month, or $250 a year, for 100 credits, plus 5 free credits every day. Business costs $50 for the same 100 credits and adds team controls. What decides your bill is how many credits your project eats, so I've priced a real one, a team app built for 27 credits, next to every other credit count I could verify.

One thing before you read on: I founded Eqlo, which competes with Lovable. Every figure about Lovable below comes from its pricing page, its documentation, or builders who published their own credit counts, linked where they appear. If a price has changed or I've got something wrong, write to hello@eqlo.app and I'll correct it.

Lovable pricing plans at a glance

Lovable has four plans on October 17, 2026. Free costs $0 and gives 5 credits a day, capped at 30 a month. Pro costs $25 a month, or $250 a year, for 100 credits. Business costs $50 a month for the same 100 credits plus team controls. Enterprise is quoted on request.

US dollars before tax, from Lovable's pricing page and its plans documentation, October 17, 2026. Free, Pro and Business also get 20 credits a month for hosting and 4 for AI features inside your app.

Two lines in that table matter more than they look. Pro and Business include exactly the same 100 credits, so the extra $25 on Business buys team features, not building capacity. A Business credit costs $50 ÷ 100 = $0.50, twice the $25 ÷ 100 = $0.25 of a Pro credit. Lovable's pricing FAQ adds that hosting and AI features cost the same in dollars on both plans: Business just deducts fewer credits for them.

The other line is the one that isn't there: seats. Every plan includes unlimited members, and the whole workspace shares one pool of credits. On paid plans, owners and admins can cap what each member spends in a month.

Lovable pricing tiers: what one credit costs

Pro and Business come in tiers from 100 to 10,000 credits a month, picked from a dropdown on the plan card. Up to 800 credits the rate is flat, and discounts start at 1,200:

The deepest discount is 10%: $2,250 ÷ 10,000 = $0.225 a credit, against $0.25 at the bottom of the ladder. Business follows the same steps at twice the price up to 800 credits, then tops out at $4,300 for 10,000, or $0.43 a credit. Paying yearly takes two months off any tier, so Pro's first tier costs $250 instead of 12 × $25 = $300.

Top-ups are the expensive way to buy. Pro charges $15 per 50 credits, or $0.30 each, and Business $30 per 50, or $0.60 each (credits documentation). That's 20% more than a plan credit, and Lovable's own documentation suggests moving up a tier if you top up every month.

How many free credits does Lovable give per day?

Lovable gives 5 free build credits a day on the Free, Pro and Business plans. They reset at midnight UTC and disappear if you don't spend them. On Free, the daily grant stops once you've had 30 in a calendar month. Pro and Business have no monthly cap, which comes to 150 credits in a 30-day month.

The documentation spells out the Free plan's arithmetic itself: "on Free, you receive daily build credits for the first 6 days each month (6 × 5 = 30), then none until the next month starts." So the free plan is a 30-credit monthly budget, handed out 5 at a time, and whatever is left at midnight UTC is lost. Lovable's pricing FAQ also mentions "regional plans" that cap paid daily credits at 30 a month, so check the figure your own account shows.

Daily build credits aren't the only free allowance. Here's the full list from Lovable's documentation:

Two of those are worth a habit. Inline text edits let you correct a typo or a phone number straight in the preview without paying for a message. And Chat mode, where Lovable answers questions without touching your code, draws on the daily chat allowance first, while a Plan mode message starts at 1 credit. Lovable's Plan mode page puts it plainly: "Chat mode is the cheaper way to ask." Lovable calls the current chat pricing a temporary offer, and it runs through October 31, 2026.

What do 5 credits buy? Lovable's examples price "Make the button gray" at 0.50 credits, "Add authentication" at 1.20 and a landing page with generated images at 2.00 in its documentation, or 1.70 on its pricing page. On those figures, 5 credits is ten small edits or two landing pages. Users describe something heavier once a project grows. In a July 2026 r/lovable thread, one member counted 113 credits for 32 messages on a single project, about 3.5 credits a message, and another replied that "even 1 change can eat up the 5 and then some."

How Lovable charges credits

Every message you send to Lovable is billed on the work it triggers, from one balance that also pays for running your app. If vibe coding is new to you, that's the main shift: you pay for the work the AI does, not for pages or seats. Lovable's documentation splits it like this:

Three rules change the bill in practice. A long message pauses and asks before going on once it passes 20 credits, a threshold you can raise or switch off but can't set below 20. A message you stop is charged for the work already done, and nothing if Lovable hadn't changed anything yet. Going back to an earlier version refunds nothing: "messages you later revert still count" (version history FAQ).

You can follow what a message costs while it runs and afterward, under More options, then Credits used. You can't see it before you send it, and that's the part users complain about most. In a September 2026 thread, a member working on a complex production app reported 1,364 credits in 30 days and asked Lovable to show what had consumed them.

Running the app comes out of the same balance. For "smaller or new apps", Lovable's pricing FAQ says the cost of keeping an app online is usually covered by the monthly Cloud grant. It hasn't always gone unnoticed: in June 2026, a Pro subscriber reported 2.67 credits a day of run costs from five unpublished apps, about 80 a month. The documentation now says Lovable pauses inactive Cloud projects automatically, and you can pause a project with scheduled jobs yourself.

If your balance reaches zero, building stops and AI features inside your app stop working. A backend with a database, sign-in or file storage pauses shortly after, and you may have to click Wake up once credits are back. The published site itself stays online (what happens when you run out).

What changed in 2026

Lovable pricing has changed several times this year, which is why older guides disagree with the figures above. Here are the dated changes from its changelog:

A guide that mentions a dollar allowance for hosting predates June, and one that charges 1 credit for "Chat mode" is describing what's now Plan mode.

The cost of one real project

The most detailed real build I could find cost 27 credits: a team project management app built on Lovable Pro and published on October 1, 2026. At $0.25 a credit, that's $6.75 of credits inside a $25 month. Other public reports run from about 4 credits for a one-page site to more than 3,000 for a booking platform with payments.

I didn't note my credit usage when I tested Lovable for our review, so this section relies on builders who published theirs. The credit counts are theirs, dated and linked. The dollar conversions are mine, at the October 17 prices above.

Northwind Studio: a team app for 27 credits

Chris, who writes The AI Sidekick newsletter, wanted to know whether a five-person agency could build its own project management tool instead of renting one. The agency, Northwind Studio, is invented for the test. The app isn't: it's online on a lovable.app address, behind a login page, with a separate account for each team member.

His first versions looked like project management software but weren't something a team could actually use. So he rewrote the brief as one prompt in nine numbered sections. It asked for email sign-up with login and password reset, a shared workspace that other workspaces can't see into, admin and member roles, and email invitations. It also asked for changes that show up for everyone without a refresh, a My Tasks page and a timeline view, an activity log, a sample team of five and a permanent public URL. Then he kept going, changing parts of the interface, adding features and fixing issues.

His total: "Building the entire Northwind application used 27 credits." That count includes the iterations. He paid $25 for Pro and still had 73 of its 100 monthly credits left.

At Pro's rate, 27 credits are worth 27 × $0.25 = $6.75. As top-ups they'd be worth 27 × $0.30 = $8.10, and on Business 27 × $0.50 = $13.50. None of those is what he paid. His bill was the $25 minimum, and nearly three quarters of the month's credits went unused.

Over a year, what Northwind costs depends on the plan kept after the build:

Lovable prices on October 17, 2026, before tax. Northwind runs on a lovable.app address, so there's no domain name to add.

The two cheap rows come with conditions. On Free, the 73 unused credits would freeze, later edits would come out of the 30 free credits a month, and a message that uses up the day's 5 credits pauses, with no top-up on Free to resume it. Northwind also runs a database, sign-in and live updates, which use run credits whenever the team works in it. A live site uses no credits on its own, according to Lovable's hosting documentation, and the 20-credit monthly Cloud grant pays for that usage first. On Free, though, only top-up or bonus credits stand behind the grant. Without them, a month that needs more pauses the backend until the grant renews on the 1st. Chris doesn't report his run costs, so that's the figure to watch in Usage details during the first month.

PostSpark: the part of the bill outside Lovable

Credits aren't the whole launch budget. When Abdullah, a solo founder in Pakistan, launched PostSpark, an AI tool that turns one blog post into 30 pieces of content, he listed what he'd spent on Indie Hackers in May 2026. Lovable Pro took $150, the domain $30, business email $20, Claude API credit $50, an image generation API $50 and Supabase $20. That adds up to $320, which he rounds to "~$300".

Lovable was $150 of it, a little under half: $150 ÷ $320 = 47%. The other $170 went elsewhere: the domain and email, his database on Supabase, and AI models he paid for directly at Anthropic and Replicate. He doesn't give a credit count or say how many months the $150 covered, so PostSpark shows the rest of the bill, not the credits.

What other builders report

Credits as each builder reported them. The Reddit figures are self-reported and unverified. Dollar values use Pro's $0.25 a credit and leave out the daily credits that bring it down.

The cheap end of that table is close to Lovable's own examples. In our review, I estimated 7 to 13 credits for a plumber's site from those examples, and the measured one-page sites, from 1.5 to 14 credits with a median of about 4, sit in that range or below it. The expensive end comes from two things the examples don't show. The first is rework. The team behind websiteprompts.ai thinks its 14-credit site was "almost certainly not a single generation" but one build plus rounds of correction, although it didn't log messages to prove it. A September r/lovable thread puts it more bluntly: "retries on a broken build are where the burn happens." The second is integrations. Replying to the 3,000-credit booking platform, another builder wrote that "Integrations always eat the most credits," and that "anything involving payments doubles that instantly."

Read together, these reports sort projects into three budgets:

• A one-page site: under 15 credits for the build in every measured case, so the Free plan can build it. What you'd pay for is the custom domain, $25 for a month of Pro.
• An app with accounts and a database: 15 to 27 credits in the two measured builds, before heavy revisions. Pro 100 gives up to 250 credits in a 30-day month if you spend every daily credit.
• A SaaS with payments and integrations: about 500 to more than 3,000 credits in these reports. At that size, a Pro tier of 400 credits at $100 a month or 800 at $200 costs less than the same credits in top-ups.

Is the Lovable subscription worth it?

Pro is worth $25 a month if you build often. Spend every daily credit and a 30-day month gives you 250 credits for $25, or $0.10 each. It's poor value for a finished brochure site you'll rarely touch, where you mostly pay for the custom domain. Business is worth it only for its team features.

The $0.10 comes from this sum: $25 ÷ (100 + 5 × 30) = $25 ÷ 250. Skip the daily credits and you're back at $0.25. Here's how each plan fits.

Free: to find out whether Lovable gets your idea

Thirty credits a month, a lovable.app address, and code you can read but not edit inside Lovable, although Git sync works. That covers a one-page site, and even Northwind's 27 credits if you spread them over six days. Once you revise a lot, the r/lovable answers of 50 credits and up for a complete site are closer to the mark. Free apps created since May 13, 2026 also have a traffic ceiling: 1,000 server requests per project every 10 seconds, after which visitors see "App temporarily unavailable" for a minute (hosting documentation).

Pro: for a project you'll launch

Your own domain, 100 credits a month plus 5 a day, and the option to edit the code yourself at no credit cost. Northwind, the team app above, used 27 of its first 100. Unused monthly credits roll over while you stay subscribed, but each batch still expires two months after it was issued, so they don't pile up for long. Lovable spends the free daily credits before your monthly ones. If you're starting a product with accounts and payments, our guide to building a SaaS MVP covers what to put in front of users first.

Business: when the team features are the point

Single sign-on, publishing restricted to your workspace, design templates, the API and priority support. The credits are the same 100 as on Pro, at twice the price each. If you need capacity and not those controls, a higher Pro tier costs less.

Enterprise: for large organizations

Pricing is set by contract, with volume-based credits. Enterprise plans don't get the daily credits, the chat allowance or the monthly Cloud and AI grants.

If credits are what's putting you off, our comparison of eight Lovable alternatives puts their free plans and first-month prices side by side.

How to get Lovable cheaper

The documented ways to pay less are yearly billing, the student and teacher discount, nonprofit pricing and referral credits. The bigger savings come from how you spend: free allowances first, the right tier instead of top-ups, purchases on the website instead of the iPhone app, and no subscription once the project is done.

1. Pay yearly. Pro 100 costs $250 a year instead of $300, so $50 saved, the price of two months. Credits still arrive monthly, and they expire one month after the yearly period ends.
2. Students and teachers pay half. Pro 100 drops to $12.50 a month, billed monthly, for up to 12 months. You verify with an academic email on lovable.dev/students while your workspace is still on Free. The discount works once per person, and top-ups stay at full price.
3. Nonprofits get special pricing. Lovable's nonprofit program offers "special pricing on Business or Enterprise plans".
4. Refer people. Someone who signs up through your invite link gets 10 bonus credits. You get 100 when they pay for their first Pro or Business plan, up to 100 sign-ups per workspace (referral rules). Bonus credits last 12 months.
5. Spend the free allowances first. Fix text in the preview, and use "Try to fix" once or twice before describing the bug yourself, as Lovable's debugging guide suggests. Ask your questions in Chat mode before switching to Plan mode.
6. Edit the code yourself. On paid plans, editing code in Lovable's editor costs no credits. On any plan, GitHub sync lets you change the code in another tool. Several r/lovable members describe doing their heavier work in Claude Code or Codex and keeping Lovable for the interface.
7. Move up a tier instead of topping up. Two top-ups of 50 credits cost $30 on Pro. Going from the 100-credit tier to the 200-credit tier adds the same 100 credits for $25 a month.
8. Buy on the website, not in the iPhone app. Plans bought in Lovable's iOS app go through Apple, cover one month and don't renew (mobile app documentation). On October 17, 2026, the App Store listing prices the Pro plan at $39.99 and 50 Pro credits at $19.99, against $25 and $15 on lovable.dev. That's $14.99 more for the plan, and $0.40 a credit instead of $0.30.
9. Set a spending limit. Since October 7, 2026, owners and admins on paid plans can set a credit limit for the workspace, a project or a member, with an alert, a block or both when it's reached (usage limits). It doesn't make credits cheaper, but it stops one bad week from emptying the month.
10. Stop paying once it's built. Downgrading to Free keeps your published app online, and Lovable's domain documentation says "connected domains keep serving your published app"; only connecting a new domain needs a paid plan. You do give up a few things. Unused monthly credits are frozen until you subscribe again, the Lovable badge comes back the next time you publish, and edits come out of the 30 free credits a month. Top-up and bonus credits stay usable on Free. Read the confirmation screen before you click, though: a cancellation guide's screenshots from June 2026 show it warning that custom domains would be removed.

Lovable Lite: the $5 plan you won't find on the pricing page

Lovable's public pricing page and documentation don't list a Lite plan on October 17, 2026. Some accounts see one anyway. RecurDash's guide to canceling Lovable shows a "Switch to Lite" offer in the downgrade flow: $5 a month, 5 daily credits, custom domains kept and no Lovable badge. An independent pricing guide also saw a Lite card at $5 a month, VAT included, from an EU account on September 26, 2026. Lite isn't for building. It's the price of keeping a finished site on its domain without the badge, and you can only take it if Lovable offers it to you.

Lovable pricing vs Eqlo: a fixed price instead of credits

A reminder: Eqlo is my company, and it prices the other way around. Each plan includes a monthly AI budget instead of credits: $3 on Free, $30 on Plus at $19 a month, and $120 on Team at $49 a month (Eqlo pricing). Moving things around in the Design tab or editing text in the preview doesn't touch that budget. If it runs out, only AI requests wait until the 1st of the month, and your sites stay online. Visitors aren't counted, so a site with a hundred visits or a hundred thousand costs the same.

Three things set it apart beyond the price:

1. Pages that search engines can read from the day you publish. Every page goes out as full HTML with its title, description and canonical URL, and publishing stops if a page lacks an H1 or has a broken link. Our free index check tool shows what Google receives from any page, built with Eqlo or not.
2. The iPhone and Android app from the same project. The store app shares the site's database, and Plus sends signed builds to both stores from a browser, as our page on building an iPhone app with AI explains.
3. A hosting region you choose, the European Union, the United States or the United Kingdom, set per project (data residency).

For a small business site like the plumber's in our Lovable review, Plus comes to $19 × 12 = $228 for a year with your own domain, against $250 for Lovable Pro paid yearly. If you'd rather build once and barely edit afterward, the downgrade route described above costs less on Lovable. If you run a trade business, our page on websites for home services shows what Eqlo builds for one, and our Lovable alternative page compares the two point by point.

Prices and rules checked on October 17, 2026 on Lovable's pricing page, documentation and changelog, and on its App Store listing. Project figures come from the builders' own reports, linked in the article. Lovable changes its pricing often, and the current chat allowance terms end on October 31, 2026. If you spot an error, write to hello@eqlo.app and we'll fix it.

FAQ

Is Lovable free?

Yes, with limits. The Free plan costs $0, needs no card and gives 5 credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus small monthly grants for hosting and AI features. You publish on a lovable.app address, and your own domain or editing the code inside Lovable takes a paid plan.

How much is Lovable per month?

$0 on Free, $25 on Pro and $50 on Business, each with 100 credits, in US dollars before tax. Larger tiers go up to $2,250 a month for 10,000 Pro credits. Paid yearly, Pro's first tier works out to about $21 a month ($250 ÷ 12).

How many credits does a Lovable project take?

Anywhere from a few credits to a few thousand. In the public reports gathered above, one-page sites took 1.5 to 14 credits, a team app with accounts took 27, and SaaS products with payments ran from about 500 to more than 3,000. At Pro's $0.25 a credit, that's under $4 at one end and $750 at the other.

Do Lovable credits roll over?

Monthly plan credits do, as long as your subscription stays active, but they still expire two months after they were issued, or one month after the year ends on yearly billing. Daily credits and the monthly Cloud and AI grants never roll over. Top-up credits last 12 months.

What happens when you run out of Lovable credits?

Building stops until you add credits or the next free grant arrives. Your published site stays online, but AI features inside the app stop, and a backend with a database or sign-in pauses shortly after. Chat mode keeps working while the daily chat allowance lasts.

Can I get a refund on Lovable?

Not for credits: Lovable's FAQ says they "aren't refundable or redeemable for cash or any other value." Canceling stops future charges, and your plan runs until the end of the period you've paid for.

Does Lovable charge per user?

Every plan includes unlimited members, so the price doesn't change when you invite people. The whole workspace shares one pool of credits, and on paid plans owners and admins can set a monthly limit per member.