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, and 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 27 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 27 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 costs about twice as much for the same credits and adds single sign-on and team controls. Cursor’s Individual plan is really three tiers behind one card, from Pro to Ultra. The two treat a team differently. Lovable’s workspace shares one credit balance across everyone in it, while Cursor bills each person, from $40 a seat a month on Teams.

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

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, or $16 a month billed yearly, 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 lets you carry on, 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 a lovable.app 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
Visits, 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 27 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 visits, 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 visits have been active in the last 5 minutes. It counts visits rather than people, so one person can show up several times. 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, its guide to project monitoring and cursor.com/pricing, read on 27 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’s cloud agents build and test on machines of their own, but nothing in Cursor runs or watches the app you ship. 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 don’t want to download an editor, choose a host or set up a repository before you see your app. 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 an editor you download, with an agent that works across 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. Cursor alternatives covers where to go if you do.

You don’t have to choose for good. Because Lovable syncs the code to your own repository, you can open the same project in Cursor once you want to read every change yourself, and Cursor’s free Hobby plan lets you try that without a card.

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. Lovable would build you a chatbot that spends your credits, and Cursor’s Agent would write one wired to a model API you pay for, but either way it’s yours to look after. Deacon answers those questions for you 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 there’s no model API for you to pay and none of your Lovable credits are spent. Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers. 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, which Lovable’s log of AI calls and costs doesn’t show and Cursor never sees. 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. That tells you what to open in Cursor and fix next. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals, funnels and the JavaScript errors people hit, and an all-time view that reads further back than Lovable’s 90-day range.

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, and Deacon and Lovable has every step. In Cursor, the Agent can do the whole job. On Deacon’s Install page, Copy the prompt for your agent gives you a prompt to paste into the Agent with your project open. It reads Deacon’s install guide for agents, adds the snippet and checks it’s live.

What founders ask about Lovable and Cursor

It depends on whether you already have a codebase. Lovable builds and hosts a working app from a description, with no editor, host or repository to set up first. Cursor is an editor with an agent built in, so it suits you once you have a project open and want the typing done faster, or once an app built elsewhere has outgrown its builder. The best vibe coding tools sets out the wider field.

Their entry prices are close but pay for different things. Lovable’s Pro is $25 a month, or $21 billed yearly, for a balance that covers building, hosting and your app’s AI features. Cursor’s Individual plan starts at $20 a month, or $16 billed yearly, on its Pro tier, for model usage inside the editor alone, with nothing spent on hosting because Cursor doesn’t host anything. A credit on one buys something different from usage on the other, so price the job, not just the number.

Yes, Cursor’s Agent can start a project from nothing and write every file. The difference is what happens next. Lovable publishes the result to a lovable.app address as part of the same chat. Cursor leaves the code in your project, and getting it live, choosing a host and keeping it running are yours to do.

Yes, though on Lovable how you get it out depends on the plan. Lovable’s Git sync keeps your project in your own GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository in both directions, on every plan, the free one included, though editing the code inside Lovable and downloading it as a zip need a paid plan. Cursor works on a project in your own repository from the first prompt, so there’s no separate step to get the code out.

On Lovable, building stops, AI features in your published app stop working and the built-in backend pauses shortly after, though your pages stay up. Cursor’s pricing docs say that past your plan’s included usage you can add on-demand usage, which carries on at the same API rates and is billed monthly, or move to a higher tier. With on-demand usage on, a busy week costs more rather than stopping outright.

Yes. A chatbot Lovable builds for you with its AI connector is billed from your general credits, first from 4 free AI credits a month, and it stops working at zero. What a Lovable chatbot costs to run goes through it in detail. Cursor has no connector like that, and a chat its Agent wrote for you would bill whichever model API you wired it to.

Build and change your app, for a start. Deacon isn’t a builder or an editor. It’s a chat widget and an analytics script you add to an app you’ve already made, whichever tool wrote it. It takes no actions in your app and declines questions about a visitor’s own account or data. If you want a chat that acts on a signed-in user’s behalf, build it in Lovable’s chat or with Cursor’s Agent, and let Deacon answer everyone else’s questions from your docs.

Where each figure was read

Every figure above was read on 27 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 Lovable credits or Cursor usage, 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.

READ NEXT