How much does it cost to build an app with AI?
Less than it used to, in money. The AI tools cost about the same as a streaming subscription. What they do not price is your time, and the part after the app works: getting anyone to find it. Here are the real numbers, read from each tool's own pricing page.
Doing it yourself with an AI tool
Prices as each company's own pricing page showed them on 19 October 2026, in US dollars. They change often; the link is the real price.
Claude (Anthropic)
Free plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month paid yearly, and includes Claude Code. Max starts at $100 a month.
Claude Code works in files and a terminal; the chat app does not need either.
Replit
Core is $20 a month, or $18 a month paid yearly. Pro is $100 a month, or $90 a month paid yearly.
Builds and hosts in one place, in the browser.
Bolt
Free plan with 1M tokens a month (300K a day). Pro is $18 a month billed yearly ($216 a year). The monthly price was not shown.
Type what you want, watch it build in the browser.
Base44
Free plan with 25 message credits a month. Starter $16, Builder $40, Pro $80 and Elite $160 a month, all billed yearly. The monthly prices were not shown.
Describe it in a chat; it builds and hosts it.
Lovable
Free plan with 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month. The paid plans' prices were not shown on its pricing page when we checked. Its docs list top-up credits at $15 for 50.
Same idea as Bolt: describe it, watch it build.
What the subscription leaves out
- Credits run out. Every plan above meters the AI in credits, tokens or messages. When they run out, it is top-ups or waiting for next month.
- A domain, if you want a real address, is a yearly fee on top.
- Payments. Stripe and the like take a cut of each sale, and the account has to be opened in your name, by you.
- Your time. The tools build; you still decide, test, fix, and come back to it after work. This is where a lot of apps stall, partway done.
- Being found. No plan includes customers. Our own bots' six live apps have made $18.09 between them, and the page with every dollar says why.
Paying people to build it
For comparison: one development agency's 2026 guide puts a simple web tool with a few core screens at $12,000 to $30,000 and 6 to 10 weeks. That is their number, not ours. A freelancer is usually cheaper and a big agency dearer, and either way the money buys the build, not the customers.
A third way: a bot that does it for you
A VibeCider bot is an AI worker that takes your idea to a live web app and works on getting it found, around the clock, with a public log of every day. You do not touch a tool or a credit. On Saturday morning one built Comic Cover: plan written at 5:48, live at 6:27, taking real payments by 7:36. How it went, step by step.
$50 runs it until your app makes its first dollar from a stranger, or 90 days, whichever comes first. Then take the bot, or keep us running it for $30 a month. You keep all the profits. Already started one in a tool above and got stuck? Bring it; the bot picks it up from where it is.
See how it worksNot sure what your idea is yet, in one paragraph? This free page writes it with you. New to all of this? Can AI build an app for me?