# Is Lovable Free? What the $0 Plan Covers and Where It Stops

> Yes: Lovable's Free plan costs $0 with no card and gives 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month. See what it publishes, what it locks and what Pro costs.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/is-lovable-free — The Professional's Toolkit · updated November 2026_

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Yes. Lovable has a Free plan at $0 that needs no credit card, and it builds and publishes real web apps rather than a locked demo. Each Free workspace gets 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits, 4 AI credits and 1 connector credit a month for the apps it runs.[1] You can publish to a lovable.app address for anyone with the link, or for up to 10 invited people per project. What you cannot get is a trial of the paid plans. The next step is Pro with 100 credits, $25 per month billed monthly or $21 per month billed annually, and that price covers the whole workspace.


**30 credits** — Build credits a month on Free: 5 a day, then grants pause until the 1st



- **$0** — Free plan, no credit card needed
- **5 a day** — Free build credits, up to 30 a month
- **10 people** — Invite-only publishing limit per project on Free


## Thirty build credits a month, and what they buy

Lovable meters everything in one unit, the credit, and a Free workspace receives its credits as grants rather than a balance you buy. The build grant arrives at 5 a day and resets at 00:00 UTC, and whatever you leave unused is gone at the reset. Once 30 have been granted in a calendar month, the grants stop until the 1st; Lovable's own illustration is six days of five credits. The monthly Cloud, AI and connector grants refresh on the 1st, never roll over, and Lovable calls them a temporary offering that may change.

| Free grant | Amount | Refresh | Spent on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build credits | 5 a day, up to 30 a month | daily at 00:00 UTC, paused after 30 | messages in Plan and Build mode |
| Cloud credits | 20 a month | 1st of the month | hosting, database, logins, storage |
| AI credits | 4 a month | 1st of the month | AI features inside published apps |
| Connector credit | 1 a month | 1st of the month | connectors managed by Lovable |

Build mode bills on the work done, so a message has no fixed price and no estimate upfront. The pricing page lists sample costs: 0.50 credits to turn a button gray, 0.90 to remove a footer, 1.20 to add sign-up and login, and 1.70 to build a landing page with images. Plan mode costs 1 credit per message plus any research it runs. **Failed or unwanted output is charged too.** Retry loops drain a month fast.

Several things cost nothing. Publishing from the Publish dialog is free and works even at a zero balance. Quick and Deep security scans are free, and each account gets 10 free fixes, each one returning 24 hours after use. The preview toolbar allows 100 free inline text edits per account plus 2,000 per workspace every 24 hours, although selecting elements or drawing annotations uses credits. Your first project or website import is free as well.


> 💡 **Spend the free actions first:** Publishing, security scans, 10 free fixes and inline text edits in the preview toolbar (within a daily allowance) cost no credits. Save build credits for changes only the agent can write.


## Going live on Free: a public link or a guest list

A Free app can go live. The Publish dialog offers two audiences on Free: Public, the default, which anyone with the link can open, or Invite only, which admits up to 10 people per project after they sign in.[2] The site gets a lovable.app address with HTTPS, and the Free card allows 5 lovable.app domains. Publishing to the whole workspace or to selected groups needs Business. Free sites also carry the Edit with Lovable badge, which only paid plans can hide.

Hosting has its own Free ceilings. Apps created since May 2026 are limited to 1,000 server requests per project per 10 seconds; static files such as images do not count, and visitors above the limit see a temporarily unavailable page. The database runs on the Tiny instance only. Lovable may also unpublish a Free project that has had no visits and no owner login for 12 months and has no custom domain, pausing its backend without deleting code or data.

The quieter catch is who pays for traffic. Hosting, the built-in backend and AI features of a live app draw on the workspace's credits as visitors use them, starting with the 20 Cloud and 4 AI credits. Free cannot buy top-ups, so once those grants and any bonus credits are gone, the page keeps serving but AI features return errors and a Cloud backend pauses until credits return and the owner clicks Wake up. Lovable says most small or new apps cost nothing beyond the Cloud grant (November 2026).

## Features that stay locked until you pay

Free covers more than a sandbox. Unlimited collaborators, two-way Git sync with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, Lovable Cloud, templates, drafts, version history, visitor analytics, the SEO and AI search review, the Lovable MCP server and a connection to your own Stripe account all work at $0. The gates sit around ownership, polish and support. These need a paid plan:

- Custom domains, whether you connect, buy or transfer one (Pro and up).
- Editing code inside Lovable and downloading the project as a zip; on Free the code view is read-only.
- Built-in payments, where Lovable creates and manages a Stripe or Paddle account (Pro and up).
- App emails and custom email domains.
- Credit rollovers and top-ups (Pro and Business only).
- The support form and email support; Free gets community help through the docs, the status page and Discord.
- Uploads over 20 MB per file, admin and viewer roles, design systems and database instances larger than Tiny.

One gate concerns data rather than features. Since September 2026 Lovable may use Free and Pro content, meaning prompts, code, files and outputs, to train its models unless the account opts out in Account settings. The opt-out is free, works going forward only, and removes no feature. Business and Enterprise workspaces are excluded by default. Turn it off before pasting a client brief into the chat.


> ⚠ **Visitors spend your grants:** A live Free app's hosting, database and AI features draw on the workspace's 20 Cloud and 4 AI credits a month. When they run out, AI features fail and the backend pauses until credits return and you click Wake up.


## No trial, so the first paid month is the test

Lovable offers no free trial of Pro or Business. The Free plan is the trial. Pro with 100 credits costs $25 per month billed monthly, or $21 per month billed annually.[3] By our arithmetic, the annual option is one charge of $250 a year, ten monthly payments. Upgrading from Free grants the full monthly allocation at once. Business with 100 credits starts at $50 per month billed monthly. A Business credit, though, costs twice a Pro credit at most menu options, so Business buys controls such as SSO rather than extra building.

Pro also keeps the daily grant on top of its plan credits, without the 30-a-month cap except on some regional plans. By our arithmetic, a builder who uses every day's grant in a 30-day month gets 150 daily credits on top of the 100 plan credits, against 30 on Free. Daily credits still expire each night. Plan credits roll over for a while: on monthly billing they expire 2 months after issue, and on annual billing 1 month after the annual period ends.

For a first paid month, monthly billing is the safer test. Because the annual charge equals ten monthly payments, paying monthly costs less only if you stop within 9 months; at 10 months the totals match, and beyond that annual wins. Fees and credits are non-refundable except where the law requires. Canceling keeps the plan until the period ends, then returns the workspace to Free with unused plan credits frozen until you re-subscribe before they expire. Our [Lovable pricing guide](/articles/lovable-pricing) covers all 11 credit options.

## Half-price Pro for students, and smaller ways to stretch $0


> **About these prices:** Prices shown are what Lovable lists for visitors in the United States, in US dollars. Your price can differ by country, currency and local taxes such as VAT. Check your current price — Lovable: https://api.colosus.site/go/lovable?to=pricing



Besides annual billing's two free months, the one standing discount is for students and teachers. Verified accounts pay 50% less for Pro with 100 credits billed monthly: $12.50 a month instead of $25, for up to 12 months. By our arithmetic, that totals at most $150 over a year, a saving of up to $150 against $300 at the regular monthly price. Verification checks the account email domain against a list of academic institutions, needs no card, and works only for a workspace still on Free.

Each person can claim the offer once, and canceling ends it for good; after 12 months the plan continues at the regular price. Personal addresses such as Gmail cannot be verified, though an unrecognized school domain can go to review. Lovable's Privacy Policy requires account holders to be 18 or older, except under-18s in a school program under a written agreement. Our [guide for students](/articles/lovable-for-students) covers coursework use and the classroom route.


> 💡 **Plan before you build:** A Plan mode message costs 1 credit plus any research it runs, and settles the approach before Build bills for the work. Failed Build attempts are still charged, so a clear plan protects a 30-credit month.


Two smaller levers help everyone else. A referral gives a new account 10 bonus credits at signup, and bonus credits stay usable on Free for 12 months. The first import of a project or website is free once per account and workspace, so the first rebuild of an app exported from Replit, Bolt or v0, up to a working preview, costs no build credits. Lovable runs no startup credit program. Beyond these, more than 30 build credits a month means paying.


## FAQ

**Can I connect GitHub on Lovable's Free plan?**

Yes. Two-way Git sync with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket Cloud works on Free; each project syncs to a new private repository that Lovable creates, and an existing repository cannot be connected or imported.

**How many people can join a Free Lovable workspace?**

The Free card lists unlimited collaborators. Free and Pro workspaces hold up to 200 members with editing roles (viewers and external collaborators do not count), and a Free workspace can send 5 email invitations a day; invite links do not count toward that.

**Can a Free Lovable app take payments?**

Only through your own Stripe account, connected by pasting a restricted or secret key; one key works at a time, so a live key makes payments in the preview real. Built-in payments managed by Lovable need Pro or higher.

**Does the Lovable mobile app cost extra?**

No. The iOS and Android app is for building with Lovable on the same account and credits, not for publishing your app to the stores. Plans bought inside the iOS app cover one month and do not renew.


## The bottom line

Lovable is free in a useful sense: $0, no card, real publishing on lovable.app and a working backend. The limit is pace. Thirty build credits a month suit learning the agent, a small prototype or a personal site, not a product you iterate on daily, and live traffic draws on the same small grants. Use Free to judge how many credits your kind of request burns. If the answer clearly exceeds 30, start Pro on monthly billing, since there is no trial, and switch to annual only after nine months of steady use.



## Sources

[1] Lovable plans and pricing — https://lovable.dev/pricing (2026-11)
[2] Lovable docs: Publish your Lovable project — https://docs.lovable.dev/features/publish (2026-11)
[3] Lovable docs: Subscription plans — https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/subscription-plans (2026-11)
[4] Lovable documentation — https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/plans-and-credits
[5] Lovable Terms — https://lovable.dev/terms
[6] Lovable Privacy Policy — https://lovable.dev/privacy