Lovable vs Bolt: which costs less to build an app?

The headline prices

Lovable Pro starts at $25/month with 100 monthly credits, plus 5 free build credits a day. Bolt Pro is $18/month billed yearly ($25/month equivalent on monthly billing, based on its $300/year non-discounted price) with 10 million tokens a month that roll over.

Both have free tiers: Lovable gives 5 build credits a day (up to 30 a month); Bolt gives 1M tokens a month with a 300K daily cap.

Credits vs tokens: why it matters

Lovable prices each message by complexity. Its own examples range from 0.50 credits ("make the button gray") to 1.70 credits ("build me a landing page with images"). Plan Mode messages cost a flat 1 credit.

Bolt meters tokens, and says most token use comes from syncing your project's files to the AI. That means the same short prompt costs more as your app grows. Small projects stretch 10M tokens a long way; big codebases burn through it.

Which is cheaper?

For small apps and early prototypes, both fit inside their entry paid plans. For a medium app (around 250 prompts a month in our estimate) Lovable's 100 + daily credits may run short, while Bolt's 10M tokens usually hold if the project stays modest. For large apps both will need top-ups, and neither page publishes a simple per-unit top-up price in its default view.

Use the CreditBurn calculator to compare with your own prompt count.

Bottom line

Pick Lovable if you want predictable per-message costs and built-in hosting/backend from one balance. Pick Bolt if your project is small and you want the lowest sticker price with token rollover.