Lovable pricing: plans, credits and what a project really costs

How much does Lovable cost?

Lovable sells four plans. The numbers below are taken from Lovable's subscription plans page and its pricing page, as of October 2026. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax.

Pro and Business both come in monthly credit tiers from 100 to 10,000 credits. The price rises with the tier, so the figure on the pricing page depends on the number you pick in the credits dropdown. Annual billing is priced as two months free compared with paying monthly.

How do Lovable credits work?

Lovable uses one credit balance for everything: building your app, chatting with Lovable, hosting your app and running its built-in backend, and powering AI features inside the app you deploy. The credits and usage page splits that spending into five kinds.

Credits come from two places. Usage-specific grants only pay for one kind of usage and are spent first. General credits pay for anything and are used after the grants run out.

Daily grants reset at 00:00 UTC and do not roll over. On Free, the 30-credit monthly cap means you get the daily 5 credits for the first six days of the month, then nothing until the 1st at 00:00 UTC. Lovable notes that the monthly Cloud, AI and connector grants are a temporary offering and subject to change.

General credits come from your monthly plan credits, top-ups you buy, and bonus credits such as referrals. When a grant runs out, the usage it covered draws from general credits, so building does not stop as long as you have a balance.

How many credits does one message cost?

It depends on the mode and on how much work Lovable does. There is no fixed price per prompt in Build mode, which is the main reason a Lovable bill is hard to predict in advance.

• Plan mode costs 1 credit per message, plus the cost of any subagent research Lovable runs while planning. Plan mode never changes your code.
• Build mode is usage-based. Small, focused edits cost less than large generations, multi-step changes, or requests that need browser checks, web search or image and video generation.
• Chat mode and Chats have their own pricing: typically a fraction of a credit per message, drawn first from the daily chat allowance. Lovable labels this chat pricing as temporary and subject to change, so check the current terms.
• A stopped request is charged for the work completed so far. A request you stop before Lovable changes anything is not charged.

Lovable publishes illustrative Build mode costs. They are examples, not a rate card, and the docs say real costs vary with the size of your project.

To see the exact cost of any reply, open the More options menu under Lovable's response and read Credits used. Long Build runs also pause to check in once a single message crosses 20 credits by default. The check-in is a notification threshold, not a cap, and you can change the level or turn it off in account settings. A message set as a goal with the /goal command costs noticeably more for the same work, because Lovable keeps going until the goal is met.

What do the Pro and Business credit tiers cost?

Credits are cheaper per unit on bigger tiers, but only slightly at the low end. The per-credit figures in the last column are worked out from the table, not published by Lovable.

At the low tiers the Business plan costs twice as much per credit as Pro. What you pay the premium for is governance (SSO, role-based access, the security center, priority support), not more building capacity. A solo builder or a small team that does not need those controls is better served by Pro.

Students and teachers can verify at lovable.dev/students for 50% off the Pro plan with 100 credits a month, billed monthly, for up to 12 months. Higher tiers, annual billing and other plans are not eligible, and top-ups are charged at standard prices.

Do Lovable credits roll over or expire?

Monthly plan credits roll over while your subscription stays active, but they still expire. The rules are in the credits documentation and are easy to misread, so here they are side by side.

Lovable spends the general credits closest to expiry first. If you downgrade to Free, your current plan stays active until the end of the billing period, then the workspace moves to Free.

Should you buy top-ups or move up a tier?

A top-up is a one-time payment that adds credits without changing your subscription. It is available on Pro and Business, and you buy it from Workspace settings under Plans and credit usage. Per Lovable's top-up page, the price is the same on monthly and annual billing.

Compare that with the tier table: Pro credits cost USD 0.25 each on a monthly tier, so top-ups carry roughly a 20 percent premium. Lovable's own advice matches the arithmetic: if you need more credits every month, a higher tier is usually better value than repeated top-ups. Use top-ups for the one bad month, not as a habit.

Auto top-up buys credits for you when the balance drops below a threshold (25, 50 or 100 credits), up to a monthly spend limit you set. The limit resets on the 1st of each calendar month at 00:00 UTC. Without a limit, it can keep charging, so set one.

What costs extra beyond the plan fee?

Three things can add to the headline price.

• Run costs from your deployed app. The built-in backend (Cloud) bills database server size, database storage, network, storage, compute and realtime in credits. More visitors, bigger uploads and larger database instances use more. Paid plans can pick a larger instance, and the Manage instance dialog shows an estimated monthly cost for each size.
• AI features inside your app. Each model call your deployed app makes deducts credits based on the model, tokens, or seconds of generated media. A chatbot with many users costs more than a one-off summary button.
• Your own Supabase project. If you connect one instead of the built-in backend, Supabase bills you for it directly under your Supabase plan, and Lovable credits cover only the building work. The Lovable and Supabase guide compares the two.

A Pro plan is also what you need for a custom domain, code editing and code download. If your plan is for a real product rather than a prototype, count those as requirements, not extras.

How do you spend fewer Lovable credits?

Credits go to rework. Most of the savings come from deciding what you want before you ask for it. These habits follow directly from how the credit model works.

1. Plan in Plan mode. A planning message costs 1 credit plus any research, and it cannot break your code. Settle the data model and screens there before a Build message touches anything.
2. Write the first prompt as a brief. One screen, one user, one action. The template below is a starting point, and the guide to writing an app build prompt goes deeper.
3. Make one change per Build message. A request that bundles five changes costs more, and when one of them goes wrong you pay again to untangle it.
4. Check the cost of each reply under More options, so you learn what your project's messages cost.
5. Set limits. Workspace owners and admins on paid plans can cap credits per member, per project or for the whole workspace, and get alerts at thresholds.
6. Let the daily credits do the early work. The 5 daily build credits reset each day and expire at the end of it, so use them for small edits instead of leaving them unspent.

Build a [one-line description] for [specific user].

Screens (build only these): 1) [screen and what the user does there] 2) [screen and what the user does there]
Data: [list the 2-3 things you store, with the fields for each]
Sign-in: [none / email and password]
Out of scope for now: [payments, admin area, notifications, anything else you are tempted to add]

Before you change any code, tell me in 5 bullet points what you plan to build and ask me about anything unclear.

If you do not yet have an idea to point this at, browse the ideas on the board. Each one has a generated build prompt that works as a model brief for Lovable.

Which Lovable plan do you need?

Whatever you pick, Lovable is a builder for people who want to describe an app and see it appear. If you would rather work in a terminal or an editor with full control over the code, compare it with Claude Code, Cursor and Lovable.