Lovable pricing, credits and Lovable vs Cursor
Lovable has four plans and one currency: credits. Everything you do — building, planning, database usage, AI calls — draws from the same balance. This page explains what each plan is for, what actually spends credits, and how Lovable compares with Cursor before you pay for either. Prices change, so the live figures always live on Lovable's own pricing page.
Lovable Student is 100% free and always will be — we don't sell plans and we're not affiliated with Lovable. Links to Lovable are referral links, which cost you nothing extra and don't change what's written here. Students: there's a student discount.
The four plans
Free
Trying Lovable out, small experiments, learning.
5 credits a day, capped at 30 credits a month.
- Full builder — no feature paywall on building
- Publish to a lovable.app address
- Lovable Cloud allowance included (20 credits/month)
- AI allowance included (4 credits/month)
- Daily credits refresh on the 1st of each month
Pro
Most commonMost people shipping a real site or app.
Monthly credit tiers from 100 up to thousands, plus daily credits.
- Custom domains
- Option to remove the Lovable badge
- Buy extra credits any time
- Credits refresh with your billing cycle
- Same Cloud and AI allowances included
Business
Teams with more than one person building.
Higher monthly credit tiers, up to 10,000.
- Everything in Pro
- SSO sign-in
- Granular roles and permissions
- Per-member monthly credit limits
- Usage breakdown by member
Enterprise
Larger organisations with procurement and security review.
Negotiated allowance.
- Everything in Business
- Custom agreements and security review
- Dedicated support
- Talk to sales rather than self-serve
Pro and Business each have several credit tiers, so the plan name matters less than the monthly credit number you pick. Start lower than you think you need — you can top up.
Lovable credits, explained
A credit is a unit of work, not a message allowance. Build-mode cost scales with the size of the change; plan mode is a flat 1 credit per message. Every workspace also gets a free monthly allowance for Cloud (20 credits) and AI (4 credits) before usage starts drawing on your balance.
- What uses a credit?
- Build-mode messages (usage-based — bigger, more complex changes cost more), plan-mode messages (a flat 1 credit each), Lovable Cloud usage beyond the free monthly allowance, and AI Gateway usage beyond its free allowance. "Try to fix" messages do not cost credits.
- How do credits refresh?
- Daily credits arrive every day on every plan. Monthly credits arrive with your billing period on paid plans. On the Free plan, daily credits are capped at 30 per month and reset on the 1st at 00:00 UTC.
- Where do I check my balance?
- Click your workspace name in the dashboard (or the project name in the editor) to see the credit bar, or open Settings → Plans & credits for the full breakdown of daily versus monthly credits.
- Can I buy more?
- Paid plans can buy extra credits any time in Settings → Plans & credits. Free-plan users need to upgrade first. Credits are not refundable.
- How do I use fewer credits?
- Fewer, more complete prompts beat many small ones. Say what should change and what must not, paste the exact error text, and avoid asking for a redesign while you're mid-feature.
Lovable vs Cursor
They are not really competitors. Lovable builds, hosts and runs the whole app for you; Cursor makes writing code faster for someone who already writes code. If you want a live product this week, Lovable. If you want a faster editor, Cursor. Many people use both, with GitHub in the middle.
| Lovable | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A browser tool that builds and hosts a working app for you. | An AI code editor you run on your machine. |
| Who it suits | Founders, marketers, students and developers who want a live product fast. | Developers who already read and write the code daily. |
| Setup | None. Open a browser, describe the app, see a preview. | Install the editor, set up the runtime, dependencies and deploy pipeline yourself. |
| Backend | Database, auth, storage and server functions provisioned inside the project. | You choose and wire up every service yourself. |
| Hosting | Publishing and custom domains are built in. | Bring your own host. |
| Billing model | Credits — you pay for work done, including Cloud and AI usage. | Subscription per seat, plus whatever your own hosting and APIs cost. |
| Best combined? | Build and ship here, sync the repo to GitHub. | Open that same repo locally for fine-grained refactors. |
Ready to pick a plan?
Start free, build something real, and only upgrade when you hit the daily credit ceiling or need a custom domain. Our free guide walks you through the first build so you don't spend credits learning the basics.
