Lovable vs Cursor, and what your app still needs after launch
Lovable and Cursor both write code from a prompt, for very different founders. Lovable describes itself for people who don’t code at all: it builds the whole app and hosts it for you. Cursor is an editor built around an agent, for a codebase and a host you already have. Neither comes with a 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 cursor.com/pricing on 25 September 2026
How Lovable and Cursor charge you
Lovable runs everything from one balance
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 Business is $50, or $42 billed yearly, for the same 100 credits plus single sign-on and team controls. When the balance runs out, building stops and AI features in your live app stop working, though your pages stay up.
Cursor meters what the Agent uses, not what you ship
Every Cursor plan includes a set amount of model usage, and cursor.com’s own pricing page says on-demand usage past it “allows you to continue using models after your included amount is consumed, billed in arrears”. Hobby is free, needs no card and gives you limited Agent requests. Individual is priced in three tiers, Pro at $20 a month, Pro+ at $60 and Ultra at $200, each with more usage than the last. Teams starts at $40 a seat a month. None of this meters your live app, because Cursor doesn’t run one. It only meters the work of writing the code.
The figures in these cards are from lovable.dev/pricing, Lovable’s credits guide and cursor.com/pricing, read on 25 September 2026. Lovable pricing goes through every Lovable plan and its credits 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. Business doubles the price of the same credit tiers and adds single sign-on and team controls. Cursor’s Individual plan is really three tiers behind one card, Pro at $20 a month, Pro+ at $60 and Ultra at $200, and Teams starts at $40 a seat a month. Neither vendor prices a seat the same way: Lovable’s workspace shares one credit balance across everyone in it, while Cursor bills each person’s usage.
The two meters measure different things. Lovable’s credits pay for building your app and for running it, so a busy live app costs you more. Cursor’s usage pays only for the Agent’s work in your editor, so it rises with how much you ask it to change, not with how many people use what you shipped.
Lovable, Cursor and Deacon, row by row
| Feature | Lovable | Cursor | 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 | Write and prompt inside Cursor’s own editor, on a codebase and a host you already have. Its Agent edits the files and runs commands for you | 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 | Hobby needs no card and gives you limited Agent requests plus access to Composer | 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 | Individual’s Pro tier, $20 a month billed monthly, with extended Agent limits and access to frontier models | 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 | A set amount of model usage in every plan. Past it, on-demand usage keeps working, billed in arrears | There are no credits. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one answer, and chats in the Playground never count |
| Bigger tiers | Business from $50 a month, or $42 billed yearly, for the same 100 credits, plus single sign-on and team controls | Individual also prices Pro+ at $60 a month and Ultra at $200, each with more usage than Pro | Move to a bigger plan when you choose to. No plan upgrades itself |
| Where the code ends up | On Lovable’s infrastructure, synced both ways to your own GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository on every plan | Wherever your project already lives. Cursor edits the files in your own repository and hosts nothing | Deacon adds one script tag and changes nothing else in your code |
| Where the app lives | A lovable.app address on every plan, and your own domain from Pro | Nowhere of its own. Cursor doesn’t publish what it builds, so the app lives wherever you deploy it | Any address you list, so either builder’s address or one you host yourself |
| 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. You’d ask the Agent to write one, wired to whatever model API you choose to pay for | Answers from your own docs in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and asks for the visitor’s email |
| Seeing what visitors ask | Each AI call your app makes, with its model, tokens and cost, under Cloud › AI | Nothing. Cursor doesn’t run or watch the app it helped you write | Every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics that group questions, count who asked and label most of them |
| Traffic analytics | Visitors, page views, bounce rate, sources, pages, devices and countries, over ranges up to 90 days | None. Cursor is an editor, not a hosting platform | 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
- Cursor
- Write and prompt inside Cursor’s own editor, on a codebase and a host you already have. Its Agent edits the files and runs commands for you
- 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
- Cursor
- Hobby needs no card and gives you limited Agent requests plus access to Composer
- 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
- Cursor
- Individual’s Pro tier, $20 a month billed monthly, with extended Agent limits and access to frontier models
- 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
- Cursor
- A set amount of model usage in every plan. Past it, on-demand usage keeps working, billed in arrears
- Deacon
- There are no credits. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one answer, and chats in the Playground never count
Bigger tiers
- Lovable
- Business from $50 a month, or $42 billed yearly, for the same 100 credits, plus single sign-on and team controls
- Cursor
- Individual also prices Pro+ at $60 a month and Ultra at $200, each with more usage than Pro
- Deacon
- Move to a bigger plan when you choose to. No plan upgrades itself
Where the code ends up
- Lovable
- On Lovable’s infrastructure, synced both ways to your own GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository on every plan
- Cursor
- Wherever your project already lives. Cursor edits the files in your own repository and hosts nothing
- Deacon
- Deacon adds one script tag and changes nothing else in your code
Where the app lives
- Lovable
- A lovable.app address on every plan, and your own domain from Pro
- Cursor
- Nowhere of its own. Cursor doesn’t publish what it builds, so the app lives wherever you deploy it
- Deacon
- Any address you list, so either builder’s address or one you host yourself
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
- Cursor
- None built in. You’d ask the Agent to write one, wired to whatever model API you choose to pay for
- Deacon
- Answers from your own docs in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and asks for the visitor’s email
Seeing what visitors ask
- Lovable
- Each AI call your app makes, with its model, tokens and cost, under Cloud › AI
- Cursor
- Nothing. Cursor doesn’t run or watch the app it helped you write
- Deacon
- Every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics that group questions, count who asked and label most of them
Traffic analytics
- Lovable
- Visitors, page views, bounce rate, sources, pages, devices and countries, over ranges up to 90 days
- Cursor
- None. Cursor is an editor, not a hosting platform
- 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 Cursor’s from cursor.com/pricing, all read on 25 September 2026. The other pages behind the remaining rows are listed at the end.
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, and how many people have been on your app in the last 5 minutes. 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.
Cursor stops at the code
Cursor doesn’t publish or host what you build, so once you’ve shipped, it has nothing left to watch. There’s no analytics, no error tracking on your live app and no record of what your users hit, because those users are on infrastructure Cursor never sees. Whatever you deploy to, from a simple host to your own cloud account, is where you’d need to add that separately.
These cards come from Lovable’s guide to project analytics and cursor.com/pricing, read on 25 September 2026.
So the gap after launch looks different on each side. Lovable leaves you with no support chat and no way to read campaigns or funnels. Cursor leaves you with nothing at all watching the live app, because it never sees it. Either way, nobody answers your visitors unless you build something for it, and neither sums up what they wanted to ask.
Choosing between Lovable and Cursor
Pick Lovable if you want the shortest path from an idea to a live app, with no editor, host or repository to set up first. It publishes to a lovable.app address from the first prompt, and Git sync keeps a copy of the code in your own repository on every plan, the free one included, for the day you want to hand it to a developer.
Pick Cursor if you already have a codebase, or want to choose your own host from day one. It’s the editor you already work in, with an agent that reads the whole project, and from Pro there are cloud agents that build and test on machines of their own. Nothing about your app’s infrastructure runs through Cursor, so nothing about it changes if you stop using Cursor.
Plenty of founders use both: Lovable to get something live fast, and Cursor once the app is complex enough that they want to read every change themselves.
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 nothing Cursor meters at all. 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, and an all-time view, which reads further back than Lovable’s 90-day range and, unlike Cursor, exists at all once your app ships.
It takes one script tag on an app built with either. On Lovable, paste the tag into the project chat and ask it to place it. In Cursor, or in any project Cursor is working on, its Agent can add the tag the same way it adds anything else you ask for, and Deacon and Lovable has every step for that side. Cursor, like Claude Code, can also follow a prompt built for coding agents: Copy the prompt for your agent, on Deacon’s Install page, gives it Deacon’s install guide for agents, which adds the snippet and checks it’s live.
What founders ask about Lovable and Cursor
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, Cursor 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 Claude Code, Bolt and v0, and its plans are on the pricing page.