Lovable vs Base44

A guide by Builddu, which makes one of the builders covered. We are not affiliated with Lovable or Base44. Checked against their own documentation on 21 September 2026.

The short answer

Both turn a description into a working app and bill you in credits. They differ in what a credit pays for, and that difference decides which one suits you more than any feature list does.

Lovable

One credit balance for everything, a much longer price ladder, and published top-up prices. Git sync on every plan, free one included.

Base44

Building and runtime billed separately, with a backend, database and authentication documented as included on every plan. Cheaper to enter, and it stops quoting sooner.

The headline prices are not comparable

The advertised prices are not quoted on the same terms.

Lovable's $25 is its month-to-month price; paying for a year costs $250, which works out lower per month.

Base44's $16 is already the annual-billing rate. Month to month, Starter is $20 and Builder is $50 rather than $40.

So the honest entry-level comparison is $25 against $20 month to month, or $250 a year against $16 a month billed annually — not $25 against $16, which compares a monthly price with a discounted annual one.

Side by side

	Lovable	Base44
What you buy	One credit balance for building your app, hosting it and running its built-in backend (Cloud), and AI features your deployed app uses. Usage-specific grants are drawn on first — daily build credits, a monthly Cloud grant and a monthly AI grant — and general credits only once they run out. Unused grants do not roll over. Lovable says the single balance is rolling out gradually; some workspaces may still see the previous Cloud and AI balance experience.	Two separate balances. Message credits pay for building; integration credits pay for what the deployed app does — emails, image generation, LLM calls, in-app agents.
Free plan	5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month, plus a 20-credit Cloud grant and a 4-credit AI grant each month. No top-ups.	25 message credits a month, capped at 5 a day, plus 100 integration credits a month. Up to 5 apps.
Entry paid price	$25 a month month-to-month, or $250 for a year, for 100 credits.	Starter: $16 a month billed annually, or $20 month to month, for 100 message and 2,000 integration credits.
Top of the ladder	Pro climbs to $2,250 a month for 10,000 credits; Business covers the same amounts from $50 to $4,300 a month.	Elite: $160 a month billed annually, for 1,200 message and 50,000 integration credits.
Do credits roll over	Monthly plan credits roll over, but not indefinitely: rolled-over credits expire 2 months after they were issued on monthly plans, and 1 month after the annual billing period ends on annual plans. Daily build credits and the monthly Cloud and AI grants do not roll over.	Nothing rolls over — unused credits expire at the end of the cycle.
When the cycle resets	Daily build credits reset every day at 00:00 UTC. On the free plan they stop at 30 a month and resume on the 1st of the next calendar month. On Pro and Business, the monthly Cloud and AI grants refresh with your subscription billing cycle.	Paid plans reset monthly on your own reset date — the same day of the month you subscribed, at the time you bought it, in UTC. The free plan's daily allowance resets at midnight in the workspace owner's local timezone, or at midnight UTC if the workspace has no recorded timezone or you are not its owner.
Buying more mid-month	Published prices: Pro $15 for 50 credits ($0.30 each), Business $30 for 50 ($0.60 each). Valid 12 months. Auto top-up available.	not publicly stated (as of 4 September 2026)
What one action costs	Plan mode is 1 credit a message, plus the cost of any subagent research Lovable runs while planning. Build mode is usage-based: their illustrative examples run 0.50 for a styling change to 2.00 for a landing page with images.	Messages run about 0.5 for a simple change to 3–4 for a large one. Integrations are billed separately: roughly 1 credit an email, 1 an LLM call on the automatic model, up to 15 on advanced models, about 5 per second of video. Their docs call all of these estimates.
Running out mid-project	Building stops. A message already in flight pauses rather than failing and can be resumed. A published site stays live, but AI features inside a deployed app stop and a Cloud-backed app can pause.	You cannot send new messages until message credits return. Any action needing integration credits fails with an error, and published apps show their users a generic error rather than naming the limit.
Backend, database, auth	A monthly Cloud grant covers their built-in backend; how much usage it permits is not stated, and the database and authentication are not described on their public plan pages.	An integrated backend, database, and authentication with user management, included in every plan including the free one.
Getting the code out	“You own your code, which means the apps, websites, and other projects you build with Lovable, customer data stored in Lovable, as well as any AI output you generate in Lovable. (This is subject to any third-party rights in the underlying AI models.)” Git sync to GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket is on every plan, including free; downloading the code starts at Pro.	“You own everything you build on Base44: your code, your data, your users.” Two-way GitHub sync puts the full source in your own repo.
Custom domains	On Pro, Business and Enterprise. Not on the free plan.	Connect your own domain on Starter and above; a free domain for the first year comes with Builder and above, on yearly billing only — their billing docs say it is not available on the monthly plan.

On build speed, we have nothing to offer. Neither company publishes build-speed figures, so there is nothing to quote from either side. We have not run Base44 ourselves, so we are not offering our own number either — a timing from one of the two would look like a comparison and would not be one.

The credit models, and why they are not the same unit

This is where the two products differ most, and where a straight price-per-credit comparison goes wrong.

Lovable runs one balance, with grants in front of it. The same general credits pay for the messages that build your app, for the Cloud backend that hosts it, and for AI calls the finished app makes to models on your users' behalf. But each kind of usage first spends its own grant — daily build credits for building, a monthly Cloud grant for hosting, a monthly AI grant for the app's AI calls — and Lovable always uses those before general credits. So a busy deployed app uses up its Cloud and AI grants first, and only then draws on the credits you build with; in Lovable's words, your deployed apps “keep running as long as your workspace has credits available.”

Base44 splits those in two. Message credits are spent only while you are building — prompts that plan, update or fix the app. Integration credits are spent by the deployed app when it uses Base44's own services: sending an email, generating an image, calling an LLM, running an in-app agent. Work done through your own API keys is not charged against them.

That is why matching the credit counts is misleading. Base44's Starter gives 100 message credits and 2,000 integration credits; Lovable's entry Pro gives 100 monthly credits, plus 5 build credits a day, a 20-credit Cloud grant and a 4-credit AI grant each month — and once those grants are spent, hosting and any AI the live app uses come out of the same 100. The numbers look comparable and are measuring different things.

The practical difference: on Base44 a popular app can exhaust its integration credits without touching your ability to keep building. On Lovable, heavy runtime usage spends the monthly Cloud and AI grants first; past them, it draws on the same general credits your building does.

Lovable’s half of this is the more tangled of the two, so if that is the side you are pricing, our guide to what Lovable costs works through the rollover rules, the per-action costs and the top-up prices in full.

For Base44’s side, our guide to what Base44 costs sets out every plan on the same billing terms, what each kind of credit is spent on, and what happens when either one runs out.

Which one should you pick?

It depends on the job. Six readings, and neither product wins all of them.

You are building an internal tool that needs logins and roles on day one

Base44

Authentication, user management and a database are documented as included on every plan, free one included. Lovable's public plan pages describe the Cloud backend but do not describe database or authentication.

You care most about how the finished thing looks

We can't say

Lovable has a widespread reputation for design polish, but that is an impression we have picked up rather than anything either company publishes, and we have never run Base44 to compare the two ourselves. We are not going to hand one of them a design verdict on the strength of a reputation we cannot cite — for the same reason we do not score build speed above.

You want to try it seriously without paying

Roughly even

The two free plans are near-identical in shape: both meter a small daily allowance against a monthly cap. Lovable gives 5 build credits a day up to 30 a month; Base44 gives 5 a day up to 25 a month plus 100 integration credits and up to 5 apps.

Your app will be busy — lots of email, images or AI calls for real users

Base44

Runtime usage is metered separately there, so a busy app does not eat the credits you build with. On Lovable, a deployed app's usage spends its monthly Cloud and AI grants first, and only once those run out does it draw on the general credits you also build with. This is not immunity: if Base44's integration credits run out, the actions that need them fail and your users see a generic error.

You want to know exactly what an overspend will cost before you commit

Lovable

Their top-up prices are published — $15 for 50 credits on Pro, $30 for 50 on Business, valid 12 months. Base44 says you can top up at any time but does not publish a price anywhere we could find.

You expect usage to grow a long way

Depends how far

Base44's published ladder stops at Elite, $160 a month for 1,200 message credits. Lovable's Pro ladder continues to $2,250 a month for 10,000. Above Elite, Base44 stops quoting and Lovable does not.

A third option, for completeness

We make a third product in the same category, so this section is what it looks like. It is here because someone comparing two builders is usually open to a third, not because this page needs a winner.

Builddu charges $20 a 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.

Where they beat us

Neither of these two is a small or new product; we are both. They have the templates, tutorials and community that we have not accumulated yet.
Base44 documents two-way GitHub sync and a free tier you can keep using every month; our free credits are a one-off grant.
Lovable's ladder has eleven rungs against our three tiers, so cost tracks usage more finely there than with us.

Where we might suit you

You want the backend and database generated together in one pass, described once in plain language.
You want a short price ladder: three plans, rather than a metered chat and a ladder that runs to four figures.

Sources

Everything above about Lovable and Base44 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
https://lovable.dev/pricing — checked 2026-09-11
https://base44.com/pricing — checked 2026-09-11
https://docs.base44.com/Account-and-billing/Billing-and-plans — checked 2026-09-12
https://docs.base44.com/Account-and-billing/Credits — checked 2026-09-11
https://base44.com/blog/how-much-does-base44-cost — checked 2026-09-21

If a figure here is out of date or wrong, tell us at support@builddu.com.

Lovable and Base44 are trademarks of their owners. We name them for comparison and use no logos or branding of theirs.

For a side-by-side of Builddu and Lovable, see Builddu vs Lovable. For a side-by-side of Builddu and Base44, see Builddu vs Base44. More guides and comparisons.