# Lovable vs Replit: Credits, Free Tiers, Mobile Apps and Hosting

> Lovable vs Replit: credits per message vs effort pricing and Free Mode, free-tier publishing, hosting and database costs, native iOS, SSO and data use.

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

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Pick Lovable if you want a web app built and hosted with little setup, with a whole team sharing one bill. Pick Replit if you need a native iOS app, a choice of deployment types, or a build mode that does not touch your credits. On price, Lovable Pro with 100 credits costs $25 per month billed monthly or $21 per month billed annually, per workspace with unlimited users.[1] Replit Core costs $20 per month billed monthly or $18 per month billed annually, and Replit Pro with $100 of credits costs $100 per month billed monthly or $90 per month billed annually, with larger credit options above it.[2] The sticker gap is small. The real gap lies in how each product meters its agent, what the free tier lets you publish, and who pays when visitors arrive.


**$25 / month** — Lovable Pro with 100 credits, billed monthly, per workspace with unlimited users



- **5 a day** — Lovable Free build credits, up to 30 a month
- **30 days** — Life of the one free published app link on Replit Starter
- **iOS** — Native apps through Expo on Replit; Lovable builds web apps only


## Credits per message or effort per request

Lovable bills every message in credits drawn from one workspace balance. Plan mode charges 1 credit per message plus any subagent research, while Build mode is billed on the work actually done: the pricing page gives 0.50 credits for turning a button gray, 0.90 for removing a footer, 1.20 for adding sign-up and login, and 1.70 for a landing page with images. **Failed or unwanted output is charged too**, and reverting a version refunds nothing. Credit check-ins, a beta feature, pause a long message at 20 credits by default, a notification rather than a hard cap, so a runaway request is still your job to stop.

Replit uses effort-based pricing instead. Simple requests cost less than complex builds, and Replit asks for confirmation before a paid action starts. Its distinctive piece is **Free Mode**: on Starter, Core and Pro you can chat and build without spending credits, within an allowance that refreshes every five hours and has a weekly limit on Core and Pro, while Power and Max Mode draw on monthly credits. Third-party models the agent calls are billed at the provider's public API rate out of those credits. Replit sells one-time credit packs at $100 for $100 of credits, $290 for $300, $480 for $500 and $950 for $1,000, and they expire six months after purchase.

Lovable has its own cushion. Pro and Business workspaces receive 5 build credits a day on top of plan credits, which comes to 150 in a 30-day month by our arithmetic (some regional plans cap it at 30 a month), though they reset at 00:00 UTC and never roll over. On monthly billing, plan credits expire two months after issue; on annual billing they last until one month after the annual period ends. Lovable top-ups cost $15 per 50 credits on Pro and stay valid for 12 months. The two credit units are not interchangeable, so compare plan prices and behavior rather than credit counts.


> 💡 **Plan before you Build on Lovable:** Lovable's Plan mode costs 1 credit per message plus any subagent research and changes no code until you approve, so settle the scope there before a Build run spends more.


## Matching a paid plan to the project

For a solo builder the entry plans sit near each other on monthly billing. A year on monthly billing comes to $300 for Lovable Pro with 100 credits, by our arithmetic. Lovable's annual billing is one charge of 10 times the monthly price, so Pro with 100 credits costs $250 a year billed annually, again by our arithmetic. Paying monthly therefore costs less only if you stop within nine months, and the annual fee is non-refundable.

Team size changes the picture. Replit Core lets a workspace invite up to 5 builders, so a team of eight needs Replit Pro at $100 per month billed monthly, which allows up to 15 builders with pooled credits. A Lovable Pro workspace with 400 credits costs $100 per month billed monthly, and the price does not rise with users (Pro allows up to 200 members with editing roles). Single sign-on is where the gap widens. Lovable puts SSO on its self-serve Business plan. Lovable Business with 100 credits costs $50 per month billed monthly, or $42 per month billed annually, and a Business credit costs twice a Pro credit at most menu options, so the same credit count costs twice as much. Replit reserves SAML SSO for its custom-priced Enterprise plan. The full credit menu is in our [Lovable pricing guide](/articles/lovable-pricing).

| Point | Lovable | Replit |
|---|---|---|
| Free-tier publishing | Public or invite-only (up to 10 people per project) on lovable.app | One app, link expires after 30 days, can be republished |
| Agent billing | Credits per message, billed on work done | Effort-based; Free Mode builds without credits |
| Native iOS app | No (PWA, or a Capacitor wrapper outside Lovable) | Yes, through Expo |
| Lowest plan with SSO | Business | Enterprise |
| Training opt-out | Any account; Business and Enterprise excluded by default | Pro feature; Enterprise per its agreement |
| Per-member spend limits | Pro and up (build credits only) | Enterprise only |
| Database restore | One daily backup kept about 14 days | Point-in-time, 7 days (28 on Replit Pro) |

## What each free tier lets you ship

Lovable Free costs $0 and needs no credit card. It grants 5 build credits a day up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud, 4 AI and 1 connector credit a month, with unlimited collaborators. A Free project can go live on a lovable.app address publicly or invite-only for up to 10 people per project, across up to 5 lovable.app domains. Free projects may be unpublished only after 12 months with no visits, no owner login and no custom domain, and a Free app on Lovable Cloud also pauses its backend if the 20 monthly Cloud credits run out. Code stays read-only, and the custom domain, badge removal and built-in payments start at Pro. There is no free trial of Pro or Business.

Replit Starter is free as well. It gives daily Agent credits up to a monthly cap and Free Mode within Starter's own limits (Replit publishes no numbers), but it allows Lite build only; Plan Mode, connectors and Replit AI Integrations need Core or Pro. The bigger limit is publishing: one published app whose link expires after 30 days and carries a Made with Replit badge, though you can republish it. For a portfolio piece or class demo that must stay online, Lovable's free tier keeps the app up with less effort, as long as a backend-using app stays within the 20 Cloud credits a month. For experimenting without spending credits, Replit's Free Mode is the mechanism to try first.


> 💡 **Start Replit work in Free Mode:** Replit's Free Mode builds without spending credits, and Replit warns before a request moves to Power or Max Mode, which use monthly credits.


## Hosting and the database bill after launch

On Lovable, hosting comes with every plan and the built-in backend, Lovable Cloud, is billed from the same balance as building. The first 20 Cloud credits a month are a grant; after that, instance size, storage, network and compute draw on general credits, and **visitors of a live app spend the owner's credits**. Lovable publishes no dollar price per instance size, only an in-product estimate in credits. At zero credits the published site keeps serving, but AI features fail and the backend pauses until someone clicks Wake up. Regions are Americas, Europe or Asia Pacific, chosen at creation and then locked.

Replit prices infrastructure in dollars. You choose Autoscale, Reserved VM, Static or Scheduled deployments: Static hosting is free plus $0.05 per GB of transfer, Autoscale costs $0.60 per million compute units and $0.40 per million requests, and a Reserved VM runs from $15 per month for a shared 0.5 vCPU with 2 GB to $130 per month for 4 vCPU with 16 GB. Development databases are free, and production PostgreSQL is billed at $0.16 per compute hour plus $0.35 per GiB per month of storage. Free accounts publish to North America, while Core, Pro and Enterprise can choose North America, Europe, Asia, South America or Australia.

The practical difference is forecasting. Replit lets you estimate a server bill from public unit prices, and its checkpoints roll back code and AI context and can include the development database, while production data is never restored by a rollback and needs a point-in-time restore. Lovable folds hosting into credits you also spend on features, so a busy app competes with your next build for one balance, and reverting a version restores code but not data. Our [Lovable Cloud guide](/articles/lovable-cloud) covers instance sizes and the manual move to your own Supabase.


> ⚠ **Visitors spend your Lovable credits:** Hosting, the backend and AI features of a live Lovable app draw on the same credit balance as building; at zero the backend pauses until someone clicks Wake up.


## Phones, data use and who answers support

Mobile is the cleanest split. Lovable builds web apps, not native mobile apps: no React Native project and no App Store or Google Play package. You can make the app installable as a PWA, or wrap the published URL with Capacitor yourself, outside Lovable, with your own store accounts and fees. The Lovable mobile app, launched in April 2026, is for building from your phone. Replit builds native iOS apps with Expo, compiles them in the cloud and submits the build to App Store Connect for TestFlight review.[3] You still need an Apple Developer Program account with its annual fee. Details sit in our [Lovable mobile apps guide](/articles/lovable-mobile-apps).

Since September 2026, Lovable may use Free and Pro customer data, including prompts and code, to train its models unless the user opts out. The opt-out is free, set per account, and works going forward only.[4] Business and Enterprise workspaces are excluded by default. Replit uses prompts and generated responses to improve its models and describes the opt-out control as a Pro feature, and says Enterprise customer content is not used to train its models, subject to the Enterprise agreement. So a Lovable Free user can switch training off; on Replit, that control starts at Pro.

Code leaves both platforms readily. Lovable's two-way Git sync with GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket Cloud works on every plan, and paid plans add a zip download, but database records, auth settings, secrets and connectors stay behind. Replit imports a Lovable project through a GitHub export or a ZIP built by Lovable's agent, bringing code and database schema but not data records or secrets. Since October 2026 Lovable can import a Replit ZIP export and rebuild it; the first import per account and workspace is free, and imported users set a new password at next sign-in.

Support starts thin on both. Lovable Free gets community channels only, Pro adds email support and Business priority support; the first reply comes within 24 hours, mainly on weekdays, and opens with a support AI. Replit Core support is AI-powered, with billing questions escalated to staff, while Replit Pro and Enterprise get prioritized access to a support engineer; Replit's support policy staffs those Premium Support Engineers Monday to Friday, 6 am to 6 pm PT. Neither debugs your app code. On Trustpilot, reviewers most often complain about Lovable's credits running out, support and price, which reads as a map of friction points rather than a trend.


**What users rate it, by platform**

| Platform | Rating | Reviews | As of |
|---|---|---|---|


_Rendered from our current record; these are other platforms' user scores, separate from our own Toolkit Score._



## FAQ

**Can I choose the AI model on Lovable or Replit?**

Not on Lovable: it picks the model for Build, Plan and Chat, though you can choose models for AI features inside your app. Replit lets Core and Pro builders choose a specific model in Power or Max Mode, while Free Mode always uses its own model routing.

**Do Lovable and Replit both work with Shopify?**

Yes. Lovable can create a Shopify development store you later claim, which starts a separate 120-day Shopify trial, or connect an existing store; Replit provisions a Replit-owned development store that you claim on Shopify, where the plan and payments are set up.

**Do both have an MCP server?**

Yes. The Lovable MCP server works on every plan and lets clients such as Claude or Cursor create projects and send build messages, which spend standard credits. Replit supports MCP both ways: external MCP servers inside Replit, and MCP clients connecting to the Replit MCP Server to manage apps.

**Which free plan removes the platform badge?**

Neither. Hiding the Edit with Lovable badge needs Lovable Pro, and removing the Made with Replit badge needs Replit Core or Pro.


## The bottom line

Choose Lovable when the product is a web app, the team is bigger than five builders, or SSO matters before an Enterprise contract does; one workspace bill covers everyone, and even the free tier keeps a public app online while a backend-using app stays within 20 Cloud credits a month. Choose Replit when you need a native iOS app, server costs you can forecast in dollars, or a Free Mode that builds without spending credits. On Lovable, watch the shared balance once visitors arrive. On Replit, watch the 30-day free publishing limit and the Pro gate on the training opt-out.



## Sources

[1] Lovable plans and pricing — https://lovable.dev/pricing (2026-11)
[2] Replit pricing — https://replit.com/pricing (2026-11)
[3] Replit docs: Build a mobile app — https://docs.replit.com/build/mobile-app (2026-11)
[4] Lovable docs: Manage training data and privacy — https://docs.lovable.dev/features/business/data-opt-out (2026-11)
[5] Lovable documentation — https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/plans-and-credits
[6] Lovable Terms — https://lovable.dev/terms
[7] Lovable Privacy Policy — https://lovable.dev/privacy