Cheapest AI app builder: seven entry plans, billed monthly and annually

Cheapest AI app builder: seven entry plans side by side

Base44 Starter is the cheapest AI app builder of the seven paid entry plans read here: $16 a month on annual billing, and $20 a month on monthly billing, where Replit Core costs the same. Prices are in US dollars, as read on October 18, 2026, and each column sets monthly against monthly and annual against annual.

Overskill Starter is $20.83 a month, billed annually ($250 a year), or $25 a month, billed monthly. Lovable's figures come from its docs, and v0 by Vercel bills per user with no annual price.

Bolt's pricing page says yearly billing saves up to 28 percent, while a billing article says 10 percent, so read the yearly price on its own page.

Free plans at the cheapest builders, and what each leaves out

Six of the seven have a free start, and Overskill is the exception. Overskill lists no free plan, though a new account gets 500 credits before you choose one.

• Lovable gives 5 daily build credits, up to 30 a month.
• Bolt gives 300K tokens a day and 1M a month, with Bolt branding. A token is a small piece of text the AI reads or writes.
• Base44 gives 25 message credits a month and up to 5 apps.
• v0 by Vercel allows 7 messages a day, plus $5 in one-time credits for new users.
• Zite allows 5,000 records and 10 messages a day.
• Replit has a free Starter plan per its docs, with one published app whose deployment expires after 30 days.

What the cheapest paid plan buys on each meter

The meters differ in kind, so this page compares no credit count across builders.

• Base44 Starter: 100 message credits, spent when you chat with the AI while building, and 2,000 integration credits, spent when the finished app uses built-in services such as email.
• Replit Core: $20 towards more powerful models.
• Bolt Pro: from 10M tokens a month.
• Overskill Starter: 2,500 credits a month. A credit is Overskill's unit for AI work and for some actions inside a published app.
• Lovable Pro and Zite Pro: 100 credits a month each.

Costs the entry price leaves out

Replit's prices are subject to tax depending on your location, and v0's exclude VAT, GST and other applicable taxes. Services connected to a Base44 app, such as Stripe, SendGrid and OpenAI, bill you directly, and Base44's free domain for one year shows on yearly cards only. Overskill charges database storage past 50 GB at $1 per GB per month and file storage past 100 GB at $0.05 per GB per month, taken from credits.

When the cheapest plan is the wrong pick

A low entry price stops being the deciding factor in four documented cases.

• Lovable's monthly plan credits expire two months after they are issued.
• Bolt's free sites stop serving content once they hit their monthly data limits.
• Base44 has no way to preview an integration credit cost before an action runs.
• Overskill Studio, $99 a month billed monthly, allows four concurrent generations (builds or chat sessions at once) where Starter allows one.

Pick Base44 Starter for the lowest annual entry price of the seven read here, Replit Core or Base44 Starter for the lowest monthly one, and Lovable or Bolt to start on a free plan.

Pick Overskill Starter at $25 a month, billed monthly, when hosting, page views and sign-ins that cost no credits matter more than the lowest fee. AI app builder cost adds up the extras, Overskill pricing lists both plans, and the best AI app builder page picks by buyer type.