Free AI App Builders in 2026: What Happens on Day 31

Every AI app builder has a free plan, and they all look generous on day one. The difference shows up later: whether the free app can go live at all, whether it is still up a month from now, and whether it can do anything while you are not looking at it.

We make one of the tools below, Bnome, so read this as a comparison written by someone with a stake. Every line about another product quotes that product's own pricing, docs or terms page, all read on 15 October 2026 and linked at the bottom. Where a vendor's page could not be read, we say so instead of guessing.

The short answer

* Replit's pricing page and terms refuse automated readers, so its exact free amounts and its commercial terms are not in this table. A dash means the vendor's pages don't say.

Day 31: which free apps are still up

Four of the thirteen can't put a free app live at all. Anything says "Building an app requires a paid plan". Emergent's help centre says the free tier "cannot publish". Glide says "Organizations with paid plans can publish apps", and Bubble's free plan is a "Development version", with "Live website" starting on Starter.

One takes the app down. On Replit's free plan, "This published link will automatically go down after 30 days". It can be published again, by hand.

Two stop serving when something runs out. Bolt: "Free plan sites stop serving content once they hit their monthly data limits", and they come back next month. Lovable keeps the app published, but an idle backend pauses, and "Traffic to your published app does not resume a paused project, and neither does waiting": the owner has to wake it.

Bnome's trade-off is sleep. A free system goes to sleep after a day without visitors and wakes on the next visit in a few seconds; paid plans never sleep. What keeps it from being a dead link: a scheduled job or a message on its queue wakes it too, so a free app that sends a morning digest still sends it.

Count builds, not credits

A free allowance is only as big as what one build costs on that platform, and almost nobody says. What the pages do say:

• Lovable: "a daily grant of 5 build credits (up to 30 a month)". Its docs spell out that on Free "you receive daily build credits for the first 6 days each month (6 × 5 = 30), then none until the next month starts".
• Base44: "up to 5 credits a day, up to 25 credits a month".
• Bolt: 300,000 tokens a day and 1 million a month — and Bolt's own quickstart "will use just under 300K tokens, which is the daily limit". That is about three working sessions a month.
• v0: "$5 in one-time credits for new users". Rocket: 20 credits "with no time limit". Both are a one-time grant, not a monthly one.
• Bnome: 500 credits a month plus 1,000 to start, charged by the work actually done: "a small fix is often under 100 credits; a new program usually 300–800".

A daily cap slows you down; a monthly or one-time grant runs out. Users notice the first kind fast: "I barely get through one or two features before I'm locked out for 24 hours", one Lovable user wrote in April.

Background work and money: where free plans quietly stop

An app that only answers when someone opens it is a page. Most useful small software also has to act on its own: send a reminder the evening before, pull prices every hour, post a digest at 8:00. That is where free plans differ most.

• No scheduled work on free: Base44 ("Workflows is available on the Builder plan and above"), Glide ("Workflows can be created on any plan, but require a paid plan to run"), Anything ("Built-in scheduled tasks are coming soon"), Emergent (nothing runs live) and Google's starter tier.
• Once a day: Vercel Hobby, under v0 — "Hobby accounts are limited to cron jobs that run once per day".
• Included: Softr (as often as every minute, within 500 workflow actions a month), Lovable (from its Cloud credits) and Bnome (scheduled jobs, durable queues with retries and long-running workers, from the same credits).

Commercial use is the other quiet line. "Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use only" on Vercel, which covers v0's free deploys. Emergent's terms limit the free plan to "personal, non-commercial purposes", and Google's starter tier is for "trade, business, craft or professional purposes only". Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Softr, Rocket and Bnome allow commercial use on free.

Where Bnome fits, and where it doesn't

Bnome's free plan includes what the others charge for: a real database, scheduled jobs, durable queues that retry until a message is handled, long-running workers, files shared by every program, AI models through one balance, and your app at its own address on bnome.app, for commercial use. It is built for software that has to keep working: several programs on one database, run by an agent that checks every program answers before it publishes.

The limits are real too: up to 3 programs, a custom domain only on paid plans, and a free system that sleeps after a day without visitors and needs a few seconds to wake. If you want a polished one-page site fast, Lovable or Bolt will feel quicker. If you want a visual editor you control by hand, Bubble and Softr are more mature.

FAQ

Is Lovable free?

Yes, with a small allowance: 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits for the backend. Lovable's docs say the daily credits come in the first six days of each month, then none until the next month. A published app stays up, but an idle backend pauses until the owner wakes it.

Which AI app builder has the best free plan?

It depends on what the app has to do after day one. For a free app that stays live, has a database, runs scheduled jobs and may be used commercially, Bnome and Softr include all four; Lovable includes them through its Cloud credits. Anything, Emergent, Glide and Bubble can't put a free app live at all.

Can I publish an app for free?

On most builders, yes, at an address on their domain: Bnome, Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Softr, Rocket, Google AI Studio and v0 with Vercel Hobby. Replit's free link goes down after 30 days. Anything, Emergent, Glide and Bubble need a paid plan to publish. A custom domain takes a paid plan almost everywhere.

Do free plans allow commercial use?

Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Softr, Rocket and Bnome allow it. Vercel's Hobby plan, which v0's free deploys run on, is for non-commercial personal use only, and Emergent's free plan is personal and non-commercial too.

Is Bolt.new free?

Bolt's free plan gives 300,000 tokens a day and 1 million a month. Free sites are public and carry a Bolt badge, custom domains need a paid plan, and a free site stops serving content for the rest of the month once it hits its monthly data limit.

Does Replit have a free plan?

Yes. The Starter plan gives daily Agent credits up to a monthly cap, a 1 GiB database and one published app, but that published link goes down after 30 days unless you publish it again, and connectors such as Stripe need Core.