Yes, Lovable has a free plan: 5 daily build credits, capped at 30 per calendar month. The entry Pro tier costs $25 per month for 100 monthly plan credits. A credit is Lovable's unit for measuring usage; it does not mean one finished website or one successful change. See the official pricing and subscription tiers.
Before paying, identify what is holding you back: today's allowance, the monthly allowance, an expensive change, a paid feature, or usage from an app that is already running. Each needs a different decision.
Prices and rules checked: September 8, 2026. Amounts below are the documented USD prices. Confirm your region's offer, billing period, tax, and final charge at checkout.
Lovable Free, Pro, and Business pricing
These are the entry paid tiers, not every credit package available:
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing, paid upfront |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | — |
| Pro | $25 | $250 per year |
| Business | $50 | $500 per year |
Both paid tiers in this table include 100 monthly plan credits, plus daily build grants.
Annual subscribers still receive plan credits monthly. Higher credit tiers are available within Pro and Business. Business adds organizational features; its entry tier does not double the monthly credit count. The plan comparison lists the features and allocations.
Paid plans usually include 5 daily build credits, but the pricing page notes a 30-per-month cap on some regional plans. Check the offer attached to your workspace before budgeting those grants.
For a first practice page, start with the free allowance and inspect what you get. Our Lovable beginner guide provides a small service-site exercise you can use for that decision.
What do Lovable credits pay for?
Keep three activities separate when reading your usage:
- Building: asking Lovable to plan, create, or change the project. Plan mode costs 1 credit per message; Build mode varies with the work involved.
- Running the app: hosting, data, storage, and other resources consumed through Lovable Cloud, including activity after you stop editing.
- AI used inside the app: for example, a visitor asking your app to summarize a document. These AI feature costs are distinct from asking Lovable to build that feature.
Lovable is gradually moving workspaces to one credit balance. Activity-specific grants are spent first; general credits then cover eligible additional usage. Some workspaces still show the previous Cloud and AI balance screen. Follow the current credit guide for the version your workspace has.
The current project-usage documentation lists temporary monthly grants of 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits on Free, Pro, and Business. These cover their respective running costs; you cannot add them to the free build allowance to claim 54 credits for editing. The grants may change.
For your own budget, keep a separate line for services you pay directly outside Lovable. A domain registration or another provider's bill does not disappear because the builder shows available credits.
How far will 100 credits get you?
There is no reliable conversion from 100 credits to a number of completed apps. An initial page, a difficult bug, and repeated layout changes ask Lovable to do different work. The Build mode documentation describes usage-based charging rather than a fixed price for every request.
Use your next small task to collect evidence. Write down the intended result first, make the change, inspect it, then record what happened:
| What to record | Example of a useful note |
|---|---|
| Task | Change the service page's opening hours in every place they appear |
| Scope | Keep the services, contact link, and layout unchanged |
| Observed cost | Copy the actual amount shown for that response |
| Result | Hours correct; contact link still works; mobile layout checked |
| Follow-up | Record any extra request needed to repair an unintended change |
This is a worksheet, not a measured Lovable run. It gives you a way to compare the cost of useful progress with the cost of rework. A cheap response that leaves the page broken has not finished the task.
After a few representative changes, use your own record to choose a working budget. Avoid projecting one unusually easy edit across the whole project.
How to read the usage screen
Open Settings → Plans & credit usage → Usage details, then choose Build credits for creating and editing or Run credits for Cloud and AI usage. For a single response in the project chat, open its three-dot menu and read Credits used. Paid workspace owners and admins can return to the balance summary and inspect credit types and expiry dates under Details → Breakdown. These labels follow the documented credit controls.
For a deployed project's running costs, More → Cloud → Usage opens a project breakdown; access depends on your workspace role. The project-usage guide explains the categories and notes that new usage may appear with a delay.
Use the screen to answer these questions before changing your plan:
| Read this | Question it should answer |
|---|---|
| Remaining allowance and next renewal | Can the next task wait for an allowance that actually applies to it? |
| Credit type and expiry | Which available credits can fund this work, and when do they expire? |
| Building usage for the relevant period | Did the intended changes use the budget, or did repeated repairs consume it? |
| Running usage by project and category | Is a live app consuming resources while you are no longer editing? |
Keep the same project and time range when comparing figures. A whole-workspace monthly total cannot tell you the cost of one response. Likewise, an empty recent chart is not sufficient evidence that a live feature costs nothing.
When do credits reset or expire?
Daily build grants refresh at 00:00 UTC and do not accumulate. On Free, reaching the 30-credit monthly cap means waiting until the next calendar month for more daily grants. A new day does not bypass that cap. See the subscription rules.
The pricing FAQ gives these expiry windows: monthly plan credits last 2 months from issue; annual-plan credits expire 1 month after the annual period ends; purchased top-ups last 12 months from purchase. Check each grant's actual expiry in your balance details before relying on unused credits.
Rollover therefore needs a date in your budget. “I will use the leftovers later” is only useful if later falls before their expiry and the credits remain available on your plan.
The temporary Cloud and AI grants also expire without rollover: at the calendar month's end on Free, or at the billing-cycle end on Pro and Business. Their refresh schedule is separate from the daily build allowance.
Wait, buy a top-up, or change the plan?
Use the task you need to complete as the starting point:
| Your situation | Check first | A reasonable next step |
|---|---|---|
| Trying a first page | Does the free allowance let you inspect one useful result? | Keep the scope small; pause and review before paying for more work |
| Continuing several revisions | Which changes and repairs consumed credits, and when will more become available? | If the work can wait, use the next applicable grant; if it cannot, compare a paid tier or top-up against your remaining scope |
| Operating a deployed app | Which running category is consuming usage, and what would stop at zero? | Budget for continued operation; reduce unnecessary usage and choose a replenishment method you can afford |
Pro and Business support one-time and automatic top-ups. The documented prices are $15 for 50 credits on Pro and $30 for 50 on Business. Auto top-up can make repeated purchases; inspect its monthly limit and displayed maximum charge. That limit controls automatic top-ups, not your entire product budget. See top-up rules.
For a concrete comparison, suppose you have determined that you need 200 general credits in a month on Pro. The 100-credit subscription plus two 50-credit top-ups costs $25 + $15 + $15 = $55. The documented 200-credit Pro tier costs $50 per month. This is price arithmetic, not an estimate of how many credits your app will use. Compare the current tier quote, taxes, and the effect of changing an existing subscription before purchasing.
A plan feature is a separate reason to upgrade. You can publish a free project at a lovable.app address, while connecting a new custom domain and removing the Lovable badge require a paid plan. Buying more usage does not replace a missing feature. See publishing, custom domains, and the feature comparison.
What happens if you run out?
Without available build credits, further building stops. Published pages can remain online, while AI features fail and built-in backend services can pause when no applicable credits remain. Check the zero-balance behavior before relying on a live app.
For a practice page, a pause may simply mean continuing later. For an app used by other people, test the functions they rely on: opening the homepage alone does not prove that sign-in, saved data, or AI features still work.
To plan costs beyond Lovable, read our AI app budget guide. If you want a structured path for building and checking a first app, the Vibe Coding course uses a Todo app for practice. Its introduction is free; the full course is paid. Course fees and provider charges are separate, and enrollment does not supply Lovable credits.
Based on official documentation checked September 8, 2026. The worksheet and decision scenarios are original examples, not measured credit-consumption results.
FAQ
Is Lovable free to use?
Yes. The Free plan gives you a limited allowance for building. Start with a small task and review the result before deciding whether you need a paid feature or more usage.
Does 5 credits a day mean 150 free credits a month?
No. The Free plan has a 30-credit calendar-month cap. Daily grants do not accumulate, and reaching the monthly cap stops further daily grants until the next month.
Are 100 Lovable credits enough for a website?
They may be enough for your scope, but there is no universal promise. Record the cost and result of representative tasks, including follow-up repairs, before estimating the remaining work.
Does a Lovable subscription cover everything my app costs?
No. Check included usage, additional credit purchases, your domain, and any services billed directly by other providers. A subscription price alone is not the complete operating budget.
Will my whole website disappear if credits reach zero?
Published pages can keep serving, but functions that depend on AI or the built-in backend can stop. Check those functions separately and replenish the applicable credits to restore operation.