Lovable vs Bolt, and what your app still needs after launch
Lovable and Bolt both build a working app or site from a prompt and publish it for you, on an address of their own. Lovable meters one credit balance across building, hosting and your app’s AI, and syncs your code to GitHub on every plan. Bolt meters tokens, spent mostly on keeping the AI in sync with your project as it grows, and its pricing page lists no code sync or analytics of its own. Neither comes with a support chat for your visitors. The third column is Deacon, an AI customer support agent that answers your visitors from your own docs, with website analytics from the same script. It has a free plan with no card.
Prices read on lovable.dev/pricing and bolt.new/pricing on 25 September 2026
How Lovable and Bolt charge you
Lovable spends one balance on building, hosting and your app’s AI
Lovable’s credits pay for building, for hosting your app and its built-in backend, Lovable Cloud, and for the AI features your live app runs. By Lovable’s own examples, making a button grey costs about half a credit and adding sign-in about 1.2. The free plan gives you 5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits a month. Pro is $25 a month, or $21 billed yearly, for 100 credits, and unused monthly credits roll over until 2 months after they were issued.
Bolt meters by tokens, and a bigger project spends more of them
Bolt’s own pricing page says most of your tokens go on “syncing your project’s file system to the AI”, so “the larger the project, the more tokens used per message”. The free plan gives you 1M tokens a month, at most 300,000 a day, and puts Bolt branding on your site. Pro is $25 a month, starting at 10M tokens with no daily limit, and removes the branding. Unused tokens roll over for one more month while you stay subscribed, so they’re good for up to two months in total. Teams is $30 a member a month.
The figures in these cards are from lovable.dev/pricing, Lovable’s credits guide and bolt.new/pricing, read on 25 September 2026. Bolt pricing and Lovable pricing go through every plan on each in more detail.
Underneath sit the plans. Lovable’s Pro starts at $25 a month, or $21 billed yearly, for 100 credits, rising with the credits you buy, up to 10,000 credits for $2,250 a month. Bolt’s Pro is $25 a month for 10M tokens, with no daily cap, and Teams is $30 a member a month. Bolt’s page shows monthly billing by default and says yearly billing saves up to 28%, without printing the exact yearly figure until you switch the toggle.
Lovable, Bolt and Deacon, row by row
| Feature | Lovable | Bolt | Deacon |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you build | Describe the app in the project chat. Lovable writes the code and hosts it, on Lovable Cloud or your own Supabase | Prompt Bolt to build and publish a site or app. Its docs say you don’t need a separate hosting account | Nothing to build. One script tag on an app made with either |
| Free plan | 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits a month | 1M tokens a month, at most 300,000 a day, with Bolt’s branding on your site | 50 answers a month on one seat, with every feature, no card and no end date |
| Cheapest paid plan | Pro, $25 a month billed monthly, or $21 a month billed yearly, for 100 credits | Pro, $25 a month billed monthly, starting at 10M tokens with no daily cap | Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats |
| What you’re paying for | One credit balance for building, for hosting with Cloud and for the AI features your live app runs | Tokens, and Bolt says most of them go on “syncing your project’s file system to the AI”, so a bigger project costs more per message | There are no credits. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one answer, and chats in the Playground never count |
| Unused allowance | Credits roll over on monthly billing, and expire 2 months after they’re issued | Unused tokens roll over for one more month while your subscription is active | Answers are a monthly allowance, and nothing is billed past it |
| Where the app lives | A lovable.app address on every plan, and your own domain from Pro | A free bolt.host address, with your own domain and private sites from Pro | Any address you list, so either builder’s address or your own domain |
| Their badge | The Edit with Lovable badge can be hidden from Pro | Bolt’s branding comes off from Pro | No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s no badge to pay to remove |
| A chat for your visitors | A chatbot Lovable builds for you with its AI connector, paid from your credits and looked after by you | None built in on Bolt’s pricing page. You’d prompt it to build one, spending the same tokens as any other feature | Answers from your own docs in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and asks for the visitor’s email |
| Traffic analytics | Visitors, page views, bounce rate, sources, pages, devices and countries, over ranges up to 90 days | None listed on Bolt’s pricing page | Visitors, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors, from the widget’s own script, with an all-time view |
How you build
- Lovable
- Describe the app in the project chat. Lovable writes the code and hosts it, on Lovable Cloud or your own Supabase
- Bolt
- Prompt Bolt to build and publish a site or app. Its docs say you don’t need a separate hosting account
- Deacon
- Nothing to build. One script tag on an app made with either
Free plan
- Lovable
- 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits a month
- Bolt
- 1M tokens a month, at most 300,000 a day, with Bolt’s branding on your site
- Deacon
- 50 answers a month on one seat, with every feature, no card and no end date
Cheapest paid plan
- Lovable
- Pro, $25 a month billed monthly, or $21 a month billed yearly, for 100 credits
- Bolt
- Pro, $25 a month billed monthly, starting at 10M tokens with no daily cap
- Deacon
- Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats
What you’re paying for
- Lovable
- One credit balance for building, for hosting with Cloud and for the AI features your live app runs
- Bolt
- Tokens, and Bolt says most of them go on “syncing your project’s file system to the AI”, so a bigger project costs more per message
- Deacon
- There are no credits. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one answer, and chats in the Playground never count
Unused allowance
- Lovable
- Credits roll over on monthly billing, and expire 2 months after they’re issued
- Bolt
- Unused tokens roll over for one more month while your subscription is active
- Deacon
- Answers are a monthly allowance, and nothing is billed past it
Where the app lives
- Lovable
- A lovable.app address on every plan, and your own domain from Pro
- Bolt
- A free bolt.host address, with your own domain and private sites from Pro
- Deacon
- Any address you list, so either builder’s address or your own domain
Their badge
- Lovable
- The Edit with Lovable badge can be hidden from Pro
- Bolt
- Bolt’s branding comes off from Pro
- Deacon
- No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s no badge to pay to remove
A chat for your visitors
- Lovable
- A chatbot Lovable builds for you with its AI connector, paid from your credits and looked after by you
- Bolt
- None built in on Bolt’s pricing page. You’d prompt it to build one, spending the same tokens as any other feature
- Deacon
- Answers from your own docs in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and asks for the visitor’s email
Traffic analytics
- Lovable
- Visitors, page views, bounce rate, sources, pages, devices and countries, over ranges up to 90 days
- Bolt
- None listed on Bolt’s pricing page
- Deacon
- Visitors, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors, from the widget’s own script, with an all-time view
Lovable’s prices come from lovable.dev/pricing and its plans guide, and Bolt’s from bolt.new/pricing, both read on 25 September 2026.
What each gives you after launch
Lovable watches the app it hosts, for up to 90 days
Lovable’s analytics starts the moment you publish, with nothing to set up. It shows visitors, page views, views per visit, visit duration and bounce rate, by source, page, device and country, over ranges up to the last 90 days. It doesn’t read UTM tags, and Lovable’s docs point you to PostHog for campaigns or funnels. From Pro, project monitoring, still in beta, checks your app on a schedule and emails you the important problems.
Bolt doesn’t watch the site it hosts
Bolt’s pricing page lists nothing for analytics on any plan, free or paid. Once you’ve published, there’s no built-in way to see who visited, where they came from or what broke for them. If that matters to you on Bolt, it’s something to add yourself.
These cards come from lovable.dev/pricing and bolt.new/pricing, read on 25 September 2026.
So once your app is live, the gap is wider on Bolt’s side. Lovable at least shows you visitors and pages for 90 days. Bolt shows you nothing about who’s using what it built, and neither answers a question for them. Those questions are where Deacon comes in.
Choosing between Lovable and Bolt
Pick Lovable if you want the code in your own repository from day one and some visibility into your visitors once you ship. Git sync runs both ways on every plan, the free one included, and analytics starts as soon as you publish.
Pick Bolt if hosting is the main thing you don’t want to think about. Bolt’s docs say you don’t need a separate hosting account, and unused tokens roll over for a month rather than expiring outright at the end of the cycle, which forgives a quiet month more than Lovable’s credits do.
Neither tells you what happens after launch. That’s the job Deacon does on top of whichever one you pick.
Where Deacon fits once your app is live
Once people start using your app, the same few questions come in again and again, and each one takes you away from building. Deacon answers them on your app in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the visitor’s language, with no flows to build. When your docs don’t cover something, it says it doesn’t know rather than make an answer up, and asks for the visitor’s email. You’re emailed when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard lands in their chat while it’s still open.
Deacon answers from its own allowance, so it spends none of your Lovable credits and none of Bolt’s tokens. Each answer you write makes it better. A question your docs missed gets an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows.
You also see what people need. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics group the questions, count the people behind each one and label most of them, for example as a bug report, a feature ask or a how-to. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals, funnels and the JavaScript errors people hit, which is more than Bolt’s pricing page lists at all, and it reads further back than Lovable’s 90-day range.
It takes one script tag on either builder. Paste it into Lovable’s project chat and ask it to place it, and Deacon and Lovable has every step. On Bolt, prompt it to add the tag just before the closing body tag, the same way you’d ask for any other change, and Deacon and Bolt has the details.
What founders ask about Lovable and Bolt
Where each figure was read
Every figure above was read on 25 September 2026, from these pages.
Try Deacon for free
Deacon answers your visitors in seconds from your own docs, says so when it doesn’t know, and shows you what they asked, on an app built with Lovable, Bolt or anything else. It spends none of your builder’s credits, and the free plan needs no card.
For more builders and agents side by side, see the best vibe coding tools. Deacon also goes on apps built with Cursor, Claude Code and v0, and its plans are on the pricing page. For another builder held up against Lovable, see Base44 vs Lovable.