How much does Lovable cost?
A guide by Builddu, which makes one of the builders covered. We are not affiliated with Lovable. Checked against their own documentation on 11 September 2026.
The short answer
Lovable sells credits, not seats. Four tiers, and the paid two are ladders rather than single prices.
| Plan | Per month | Per year (total) | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month |
| Pro | $25 – $2,250 | $250 – $22,500 | 100 – 10,000 credits a month |
| Business | $50 – $4,300 | $500 – $43,000 | 100 – 10,000 credits a month |
| Enterprise | Volume-based | Volume-based | Negotiated |
- Free: Daily credits reset at 00:00 UTC and do not roll over. Once the monthly cap is hit, the daily grant stops until the 1st of the next calendar month.
- Pro: A ladder of tiers, not one price. Adds 5 daily build credits with no monthly cap, and unused monthly credits roll over — expiring 2 months after they were issued on monthly billing, or 1 month after the annual period ends on annual billing.
- Business: The same credit amounts as Pro at roughly double the price: exactly twice Pro on every rung up to 5,000 credits, then 1.95 times at 7,500 and 1.91 times at 10,000 ($4,300 against $2,250). Plus team features.
- Enterprise: Does not include the free daily build credits or the monthly Cloud and AI grants.
Pro and Business, rung by rung
Both ladders are priced by monthly credits. Business costs exactly twice Pro on every rung up to 5,000 credits, and a little under twice above that: 1.95 times at 7,500 and 1.91 times at 10,000.
| Monthly credits | Pro, month to month | Business, month to month |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | $25 | $50 |
| 200 | $50 | $100 |
| 400 | $100 | $200 |
| 800 | $200 | $400 |
| 1,200 | $294 | $588 |
| 2,000 | $480 | $960 |
| 3,000 | $705 | $1,410 |
| 4,000 | $920 | $1,840 |
| 5,000 | $1,125 | $2,250 |
| 7,500 | $1,688 | $3,300 |
| 10,000 | $2,250 | $4,300 |
What a credit actually buys
A credit is the unit Lovable uses to measure and pay for usage across your workspace.
One balance covers three different things:
- Build usage — sending messages to plan, generate, edit or update your app.
- Cloud usage — hosting your app and running its built-in backend: database, network, storage, compute and realtime.
- AI gateway usage — AI features your deployed app itself uses, such as calls it makes to AI models.
What a single message costs depends on which mode you are in:
- Plan mode costs 1 credit a message, plus the cost of any subagent research Lovable runs while planning. It never modifies your code.
- Build mode is usage-based. Lovable's own illustrative examples: 0.50 credits to make a button gray, 0.90 to remove a footer, 1.20 to add authentication, 2.00 to build a landing page with images. Actual use varies with the complexity and scope of the project.
- A long-running message checks in with you when it crosses your credit check-in level — 20 credits by default, and adjustable. A single message can run for up to 10 hours.
The free plan's real limits
The free tier is usable, but the ceiling is lower and arrives sooner than the headline suggests.
- 5 build credits a day, resetting at 00:00 UTC. They do not roll over — unused credits are gone at midnight.
- A hard ceiling of 30 build credits per calendar month. Five a day reaches it on the 6th, and then there are no more daily grants until the 1st of the next month.
- A 20-credit monthly Cloud grant and a 4-credit monthly AI grant, neither of which rolls over.
- No top-ups. Buying more credits is a paid-plan feature, so the only way past the cap is to upgrade or wait.
Top-ups, and what they cost
- Pro: $15 for 50 credits — $0.30 a credit.
- Business: $30 for 50 credits — $0.60 a credit, double the Pro rate.
- Purchased credits are valid for 12 months from your most recent purchase.
- Auto top-up can trigger at 25, 50 or 100 credits remaining; the default adds 100 credits when you drop below 25, with a 400-credit monthly ceiling.
The student and teacher discount
Half price, but narrower than it sounds: one plan, one credit tier, monthly billing only.
- Students and teachers at universities, colleges and schools get 50% off for up to 12 months, on the Pro plan with 100 credits a month, billed monthly.
- That plan and billing only: higher Pro credit tiers, annual billing and other plans are not available with the discount.
- Credit top-ups are charged at standard prices.
- Verification runs on lovable.dev/students against your account's email domain, is available only to workspaces on the Free plan, and each person can use the discount once. Lovable does not offer it again after you cancel.
What happens when credits run out
Running out does not break what you have already built. It stops you adding to it.
- Building stops until credits are available again.
- If a message is mid-flight, it pauses rather than failing. You can add credits to resume where it left off, or have Lovable wrap up what it has.
- A published site stays live and its pages keep serving.
- AI features inside a deployed app stop working, and an app relying on the built-in Cloud backend can pause. Their docs say data stays safe while services are paused.
What we saw ourselves
Running out mid-project, in practice
On 2 September 2026 we built the same app — Luna Hair Studio — in parallel on Lovable and on Builddu.
Partway through, Lovable's build stopped. The message was “5 credits arrive in 11 hours”: the free plan's daily grant had run out mid-project.
Everything already built kept working. The booking flow ran end to end, through to a confirmation screen. Nothing was lost and nothing broke — only further progress was frozen, until either the next day's credits arrived or we paid.
That matches what Lovable documents, and seeing it is different from reading it: on the free plan the limit is not a wall you hit at the end, it is a pause that can land in the middle of a piece of work.
Things that are easy to miss
None of this is hidden — all of it is in their documentation — but none of it is on the pricing page either.
- Rollover is asymmetric, and temporary: monthly plan credits roll over but still expire 2 months after they were issued on monthly plans, while daily build credits and the monthly Cloud and AI grants do not roll over at all.
- On Free, the whole month's allowance arrives in the first six days. In Lovable's own words: “you receive daily build credits for the first 6 days each month (6 × 5 = 30), then none until the next month starts.”
- Downgrading to Free freezes what you paid for: “unexpired credits granted through your paid subscription cannot be used while your workspace is on Free. This includes monthly plan credits and rollover credits.”
- Top-up credits cost twice as much on Business as on Pro — $0.60 against $0.30 — even though the plan already costs more.
- The auto top-up monthly spend limit resets on the 1st of the calendar month, not on your subscription date, so the two cycles drift apart.
- Upgrading from Pro to Business automatically pauses auto top-up, so it silently stops refilling until you turn it back on.
- On annual billing the credits are still issued monthly, and they expire one month after the annual period ends.
For comparison: what Builddu costs
We make a competing product, so treat this section as what it is. It is here because if you are pricing Lovable you are probably pricing alternatives too.
Builddu charges $20/month for 100 credits, $49 for 300 and $99 for 600, with top-ups at 100 credits for $19. An AI run is charged the credits it actually uses, rounded up, and publishing costs 1.
Builddu suits you better if
- You want a short price ladder: three plans, rather than one that runs to $2,250.
- You want the backend and database generated together in one pass.
Lovable suits you better if
- You want a free plan you can keep using every month — ours is a one-off grant of free credits, not a renewing allowance.
- You want Git sync on every plan — Lovable documents it on every tier, including the free one.
Sources
Everything above about Lovable was read from the pages listed here on the dates shown. Prices change, so weigh every figure here against the date beside the source it came from.
- https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/subscription-plans — checked 2026-09-11
- https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/plans-and-credits — checked 2026-09-11
- Our own test, run 2026-09-02 — checked 2026-09-02
If a figure here is out of date or wrong, tell us at support@builddu.com.
Lovable is a trademark of its owner. We name it for comparison and use no logos or branding of theirs.
For a side-by-side of Builddu and Lovable, see Builddu vs Lovable. More guides and comparisons.