Building an MVP with an AI app builder costs between $0 and roughly $100 a month at the subscription level, but the subscription price is rarely the full cost. What you are actually paying for is a combination of the build layer (AI generation credits or tokens), the infrastructure layer (database, auth, hosting), and, depending on the platform, a runtime layer that bills separately as your app gets used. Most pricing pages show you the first number. The second and third require some digging. This piece covers what the full cost actually looks like, based on my standardised test build across the major platforms, priced as of July 2026.

Why “how much does it cost" doesn't have one honest answer

There are three reasons the question resists a clean answer.

The first is that AI app builders have moved to pricing models that separate building from running. You pay to generate code; you also pay for the infrastructure that runs the generated app; and sometimes you pay again when users interact with the app at scale. These are billed differently, on different cycles, by different vendors. The sticker price is the entry ticket, not the total.

The second is that credit and token consumption vary significantly by how you build, not just by how much you build. A founder who writes clear, specific prompts and iterates deliberately uses fewer credits than one who writes vague prompts and relies on the AI fix loop to converge. Same app, different cost. Pricing guides that give you a single number for "how much it costs to build an MVP" are averaging over this variation in a way that may not match your specific workflow.

The third is that these platforms are moving quickly enough that pricing structures change before the category press can keep pace. I have confirmed the figures below against live pricing pages and independent breakdowns as of July 2026. Check the current pricing page before committing — specific numbers should be treated as a snapshot, not a permanent reference.

What you're actually paying for across different platform types

Two fundamentally different cost models run through this category, and understanding which one you're on changes how you budget.

Credit-based platforms (Lovable, Replit Agent) charge per interaction or per agent action. One credit typically equals one prompt exchange — though more complex actions (auth scaffolding, agent mode, image generation) consume more than one credit per interaction. The cost of building the initial app is predictable if you prompt efficiently. The cost of debugging is not high because the AI fix loop charges at the same rate as new feature generation. Platforms that run on credits have a specific failure mode: a stubborn bug can drain a monthly allocation faster than building three clean features would.

Token-based platforms (Bolt) charge based on the amount of code processed per prompt. Tokens are consumed by the AI as it reads the existing codebase and writes new code — which means cost scales with codebase complexity, not just the interaction count. A prompt sent to a small project early in a build costs far less than the same prompt sent to a large, complex project late in a build. This makes Bolt's true cost harder to forecast than Lovable's. One user-reported data point worth knowing: as a project grows complex, a single prompt can consume over 1 million tokens — comparable to the entire free tier allowance in one interaction.

Subscription-plus-runtime platforms (all of the above, to varying degrees) add a second billing layer on top of the generation cost. This is the one most founders miss because it doesn't appear in the headline pricing. Lovable charges separately for Cloud hosting and AI features once your app exceeds the included monthly allowance. Replit charges separately for always-on deployments and for agent credits consumed above the monthly inclusion. The generation subscription gets you to a deployed URL; the runtime subscription keeps it running when users arrive.

The real cost breakdown: subscription platforms vs credit-based platforms

These are the actual costs I tracked across my standardised test build — task manager with auth, database, and Stripe integration — as tested in Q1–Q2 2026. Credit consumption figures reflect the build as executed, including one debugging round on each platform. Any specific figure that may have changed is flagged.

Lovable Free tier: 5 credits/day, 30 credits/month. Enough to evaluate the platform and build a very simple prototype over several days. Not enough to complete a full-featured MVP — a 3-page CRUD app with auth and a database routinely runs 150–250 credits across the full build and iteration cycle, which exceeds the free monthly allowance by a factor of five to eight.

Pro tier: $25/month for 100 monthly credits plus 5 daily credits (up to 150 total per month). A straightforward MVP of the type I tested — 3 pages, auth, database, Stripe — sits at the top of what one Pro month covers if you iterate cleanly. If you hit the fix loop on a complex feature, you will exceed the monthly allowance and either pause the build or top up. Infrastructure billing for the Supabase backend (database, edge functions, storage) is included in a $25/month Cloud allowance for small apps; exceeding this amount incurs a separate bill.

Real cost for one MVP build: $25–$50 for the generation layer, depending on iteration efficiency. Add $0–$25 for infrastructure if the app sees meaningful traffic. Budget $50–$75/month for a focused MVP sprint.

Bolt Free tier: 1 million tokens/month with a 150,000 daily cap. Sufficient to scaffold a basic project and explore the platform. For my standardised test build — a complete app including auth, relational database, and Stripe — the full build consumed approximately 3 million tokens, exceeding the free allowance by a factor of three.

Pro tier: $25/month for 13 million tokens (as of May 2026, up from 10 million), no daily cap, rollover to next month. This covers my test build with significant headroom for iteration. The key variable: a complex project late in its build cycle can consume 1 million or more tokens per prompt. Token consumption is not linear with time; it's weighted toward the later phases of a complex build.

Real cost for one MVP build: $25/month for the generation layer if the build stays within 13 million tokens. Infrastructure runs through Bolt Cloud's Supabase and Netlify layer — included within the platform for basic use. Budget $25–$50 for a focused MVP sprint, accepting that late-build token costs are harder to predict.

Replit Agent Free Starter tier: Limited daily agent credits. Sufficient for learning and simple prototyping; not sufficient for building anything you intend to ship.

Core tier: $25/month ($20/month billed annually), which includes $25 of monthly usage credits. The included credits cover light use, but active building can exhaust them within one to two weeks. Agent actions are metered individually — a complex auth scaffold runs 50–200 credits. Always-on deployments that keep the app live around the clock are billed separately, starting at around $20/month for a reserved VM. Credits do not roll over on Core.

Real cost for one MVP build: $25 for the subscription plus a variable amount for additional usage. Developers who build actively report spending $50–150/month above the Core subscription during intensive build periods. For a focused MVP sprint, budget $50–100/month and expect to top up.

Mayson Free tier: 10 credits, no credit card required. Designed to let you build something real before committing to a paid plan — generous enough for a substantive first build.

Paid tier: Mayson pricing

The architectural difference relevant to cost: Mayson generates backend infrastructure as owned code rather than routing through a managed service. This means there is no separate Supabase billing layer — the infrastructure cost is your deployment cost, which you control.

Hidden costs that don't show up on the pricing page

Four cost lines that appear consistently across the category but are not prominently disclosed on pricing pages.

The fix loop tax. When the AI's fix attempt introduces a new bug, the next fix attempt costs the same as a new feature. On all credit- and token-based platforms, a stubborn bug in an iteration cycle can consume 20–50% of a monthly allowance before converging. The screenshot test I apply to pricing pages: the advertised "credit" or "token" count assumes clean, efficient use. Real MVP builds include debugging. Budget accordingly.

Supabase billing for managed-backend platforms. Lovable, Bolt, and v0's database all route through Supabase. Supabase's free tier covers two projects and 500MB of storage. The Pro plan is $25/month. If your app exceeds the free tier — in traffic, storage, or connection counts — you need to acquire a Supabase subscription on top of the builder subscription. Most pricing pages for builders mention this; few make it prominent.

Always-on deployment costs. A deployed, publicly accessible MVP that runs around the clock uses compute resources. On Replit, always-on deployments incur costs beyond the Core subscription. On Lovable and Bolt, the included Cloud allowance covers small apps; high-traffic apps are billed on usage. The deployment line appears in the fine print and is easy to miss when you're focused on the generation-layer pricing.

Monthly credit expiry. Replit Core credits expire at month-end. Unused Lovable Pro credits roll over for one month only. A founder who builds in irregular sprints — two intensive weeks followed by two quiet weeks — can lose credits to expiry and effectively overpay for the same amount of building. This is disclosed in the plan details but not in the headline pricing.

What free tiers actually let you build before you hit a wall

This is where the "what the landing page says vs what actually happens" test is most useful. Every major platform offers a free tier. Not every free tier is sufficient to build a real MVP.

Lovable free: 30 credits/month (5 daily, capped). Enough for a simple prototype built over several sessions. Not enough for a full-featured MVP with auth, database, and payment integration. If you're evaluating Lovable before paying, use the free tier to build one core feature and verify the generated output meets your quality bar. Don't try to build the complete app on the free tier — you'll run out before you learn what you need to know.

Bolt free: 1 million tokens/month, 150,000 daily cap. More generous than Lovable's free tier in raw allowance. Sufficient to scaffold a meaningful first version of a simpler app. For a full MVP with the complexity of my test build, it falls short — but the surplus over Lovable's free tier gives you more room to evaluate before committing.

Replit Starter: Limited daily agent credits. Functional for learning, too constrained for a serious MVP build. The free Starter is best treated as a 30-minute product demo, not as a build environment.

Mayson free: 10 credits, no credit card required. The framing is different from the others — the 10 credits are sized to build something real, not just to evaluate a UI. This is a product confidence signal: the platform believes the first build will be worth returning for.

How to estimate your real cost for an MVP-sized build

A practical calculation, based on what I've seen across multiple test builds:

Take the platform's advertised credit or token allowance and multiply it by 0.6. That's a realistic estimate of how much of your allowance goes to the actual build before accounting for iteration, debugging, and revision cycles. The remaining 40% disappears into fix loops, styling passes, and prompts that didn't land as intended.

Then add the infrastructure layer. If the platform routes through Supabase and your app will have more than a few hundred active users, budget $25/month for Supabase Pro. If the platform generates native infrastructure, your cost is your deployment cost — typically $5–20/month on a standard cloud provider for an MVP-scale app.

Then consider the time dimension. An MVP is not typically built in a single month. A realistic timeline for a functional, testable product built by a non-technical founder using an AI app builder is 2 to 6 weeks of active development. Budget for two months of the generation-layer subscription to account for iteration after the initial build.

At those parameters, a realistic total cost for a production-capable MVP built on a credit- or token-based AI app builder is $75–$200 across the full build cycle, depending on the platform and iteration efficiency. The $25 monthly subscription number that appears on most pricing pages is the floor for a single month of light use. It is not the cost of shipping an MVP.

For founders for whom cost is a primary constraint, a free-tier evaluation path is available across all major platforms. Build the same core feature on two platforms during the free tier, compare the output, and commit to the one whose generation quality justifies the paid spend.

Frequently asked questions

Ananya is a product analyst and developer tools reviewer who writes the comparison and review content on Mayson's blog. She tests AI app builders against standardised criteria and does not accept sponsorships from any tool she covers. She last ran the standardised task manager test across the major AI app builders in Q1–Q2 2026.