Emergent AI: what it builds and what it costs

Emergent AI, at emergent.sh, is a vibe coding platform. You describe the app you want in its chat, in plain English, and its agent builds the frontend, backend and database, then deploys it. Free costs nothing and gives you 10 credits a month. Standard is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, and Pro is $200 a month, or $167 a month billed yearly, its top self-serve plan. We read every figure on Emergent AI’s pricing page and in its docs on 25 September 2026.

Deacon is ours. It’s an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It answers your app’s visitors in seconds from your own docs, and the same script shows you where they came from. It spends none of your Emergent AI credits, and there’s a free plan that needs no card.

How you build an app with Emergent AI

You describe what you want in Emergent AI’s chat and its agent writes the app for you, frontend, backend and database together, then previews it before you deploy it. The same chat builds a website, a mobile app, a web app, a dashboard, a CRM, a full SaaS product, a schedule or an AI agent, by Emergent AI’s own categories.

Every exchange with the agent is a run, and every run spends credits. A run defaults to 5 credits and can be set as high as 1,000 for a bigger task, Emergent AI’s plans and credits page says. Standard and Pro add a GitHub sync, so you can pull your app’s code into your own repository and edit it there too.

Emergent AI pricing plans

Emergent AI’s pricing page says yearly billing saves $36 a year on Standard and $396 a year on Pro. Standard adds private project hosting, custom domains and buying extra credits on top of Free. Pro adds a 1 million token context window, an “ultra thinking” mode, editing the agent’s own system prompt, building custom agents and a faster machine, plus priority support. Business and Enterprise sit above Pro, priced by booking a demo with Emergent AI, and add single sign-on, shared team workspaces, audit logs and deploying into your own cloud.

If you’re weighing other builders, Base44 pricing covers what that one costs and Base44 vs Lovable sets two more against each other, while the best vibe coding tools lines up the field, Lovable’s pricing and Replit’s pricing among them. Lovable alternatives and Replit alternatives go wider still.

What a credit buys

A credit pays for two things: building and hosting. Building spends credits by the run, 5 by default and up to 1,000 for a large task. Hosting is a flat 50 credits a month for every deployed app, taken from the same monthly pool, and it covers managed production hosting, uptime monitoring, SSL, custom domains and your environment variables.

Only Standard and Pro can buy extra credits when the monthly allowance runs low. Free cannot. Emergent AI’s current top-up prices, from its plans and credits page, are these.

Top-up credits never expire. Your monthly plan credits reset every billing cycle and are spent first, so a top-up only fills the gap once they’re gone. When a credit balance hits zero, you can still open your projects, view your deployments and edit files by hand, but the agent stops generating new code, running tests or deploying a new build until your next reset or a top-up.

Emergent AI’s own docs give a worked example of a mid-cycle upgrade: move from Standard to Pro on day 15 of a 30-day cycle, and it charges $200 ÷ 30 × 15, or $100, for the new plan, less a $20 ÷ 30 × 15, or $10, credit for the days unused on Standard, so $90 is due at once. The gap between the two plans’ monthly allowances, 690 credits in that example, is added to your balance the same moment.

What a real Emergent AI app costs

These sums are ours, worked out from Emergent AI’s own credit rules, not a bill we’ve seen.

• Building a first version and previewing it, without deploying, stays under Free’s 10 credits if each change is a small, default-sized run.
• Putting that app live needs Standard, since Free doesn’t deploy at all. Hosting alone spends 50 of Standard’s 100 credits a month, before you’ve made a single change that month.
• With 50 credits left, that’s roughly 10 more runs at the 5-credit default for the rest of the month, fewer if any of them is a bigger task.
• A second deployed app doubles the hosting bill to 100 credits, which is all of Standard’s monthly allowance on hosting alone, so a founder running more than one live app, or making frequent, larger changes, tends to land on Pro’s 750 credits instead.

Who Emergent AI suits

Emergent AI suits a founder building a first web or mobile app who wants the whole stack, hosting included, handled from a chat, and who’s comfortable working within a credit budget that a bigger change can spend through quickly. Every plan up to and including Pro is a single seat, so it also suits someone building alone or bringing in help through their own GitHub repository rather than a shared workspace.

It suits fewer people if you need more than one seat without talking to sales, since Business is the first plan with team workspaces. It also isn’t the plan to test on for free and then flip live: Free can’t deploy at all, so you’re on Standard from the day you want a real URL.

What a launched Emergent AI app still needs

Two jobs start once an app is live that building it didn’t cover: answering the people who try it, and knowing where they came from. What to do after you launch covers the rest of the first few weeks.

Deacon on an Emergent AI app

Deacon is an AI chatbot for your website that sits beside your Emergent AI app rather than inside it. It answers your visitors in seconds from your own docs, at any hour and in the language they write in, and nobody has to sign in first. When your docs don’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of guessing and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard appears in their chat while it’s open.

Each question your docs didn’t cover gets an Answer this button, and every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it needs you less over time. Topics group the questions, count the people asking and label most of them, so you know what to fix and what to build next.

Deacon’s replies count against its own allowance, so they spend none of your Emergent AI credits. The same script counts your visitors, where they came from, your goals and your funnels, with ranges up to all time, so there’s no second script to add.

Emergent AI’s own docs don’t name a file or a field where a third-party script tag goes. Its custom domains guide is DNS only, and its API guide covers keys for services like Stripe, not a browser script. What you do have is a code editor and, from Standard up, a GitHub sync, so the practical route is to ask your coding agent to place the tag for you, the same way you would on a Lovable app or a Replit app. Copy the prompt for your agent from Deacon’s install page, or see adding an AI chatbot to your website for the general approach.

Every feature is on every Deacon plan. Free gives 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with no card and no end date. Starter is $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats. Growth is $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats. Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, no plan upgrades itself, and there’s no “powered by” line to pay to remove.

Questions about Emergent AI

Is Emergent AI free?

Yes, in the sense that Free costs nothing and gives you 10 credits a month for building. It can’t deploy an app to a live URL though, so anything you build on Free stays in preview until you move to Standard.

How much does Emergent AI cost a month?

Standard is $20 a month billed monthly, or $17 a month billed yearly. Pro is $200 a month billed monthly, or $167 a month billed yearly. Business and Enterprise, above Pro, are priced through a call with Emergent AI.

What does an Emergent AI credit pay for?

Two things: building, at 5 credits a run by default and up to 1,000 for a bigger task, and hosting, a flat 50 credits a month for every app you’ve deployed.

Can I buy more Emergent AI credits?

Yes, on Standard and Pro. Top-ups run from 5 credits for $1 up to 6,000 credits for $1,000, and they never expire. Free can’t buy top-ups.

What happens when Emergent AI credits run out?

You can still open your projects, view your deployments and edit files by hand, but the agent stops generating code, running tests or deploying a new build until your next monthly reset or a top-up.

Does Deacon use my Emergent AI credits?

No. Deacon counts only its own answers, and a page view never uses one. Its free plan has 50 answers a month with no card, and it runs on your Emergent AI app’s own address, so you don’t need a paid Emergent AI plan to add it.