How much does it cost to build an app with AI?

What you end up with

By the end of this guide you have an app that is live on the internet at your own address, where people can sign up, log in, and pay you. Behind that sit six pieces, and each one has a free tier:

1. Something that writes the code. Either an AI app builder you talk to in the browser (Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Base44) or a coding agent that works on files on your computer (Claude Code, Cursor).
2. Hosting, so the app has a web address.
3. A database, so signups and accounts are kept.
4. A domain name, so the address is yours rather than the tool’s.
5. Payments, so people can pay.
6. Email, so you can send a sign-in link or a receipt.

The builders bundle hosting and a database, so on that path you mostly pay for one thing. On the coding-agent path you put the pieces together yourself, on Cloudflare, and the free plan covers hosting and the database.

Prices change: read this first

Every price and limit below was read on the vendor’s own pricing page or docs on 23 September 2026, and each one is listed under Sources at the end. These pages change often, sometimes monthly, and several of them show a discounted price or a yearly price by default. Before you pay for anything, open the vendor’s page and check the number yourself. Prices are in US dollars and before tax.

The table

Piece	Free tier (23 Sep 2026)	When you pay, and the first price
Lovable	5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month, plus 20 Cloud credits a month for hosting and its built-in backend. No custom domain	Pro: $25 a month, or $250 a year, with 100 credits a month. Custom domains start on Pro
Bolt	300,000 tokens a day and 1 million a month, hosting, Bolt branding on the site	Pro: $25 a month billed monthly, starting at 10 million tokens a month, with custom domains and no branding
v0	$5 of credits a month, 7 messages a day, deploys to Vercel	Plus: $30 per user a month on the day we checked (shown as reduced from $90), with $30 of credits a month
Base44	25 message credits and 100 integration credits a month, up to 5 apps, no custom domain	Starter: $20 a month billed monthly (the page says paid plans start at $20 a month), or $16 a month billed yearly. 100 message credits a month, connect a domain
Replit	Daily Agent credits up to a monthly cap, and 1 published app that goes down after 30 days	Core: $20 a month billed monthly, or $18 a month billed yearly. Core removes the one-app cap and adds connectors such as Stripe
Claude Code	Not on the free Claude plan	Claude Pro: $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front). An Anthropic Console (API) account also works
Cursor	Hobby: free, no card, limited Agent requests	Pro: $20 a month
Cloudflare hosting	Workers Free: 100,000 requests a day. Static files (pages, images) are free and unlimited. Pages: 500 builds a month	Workers Paid: from $5 a month for the account, 10 million requests a month included
Cloudflare D1 database	5 million rows read and 100,000 rows written a day, 5 GB stored in total, at most 500 MB per database	Workers Paid plan, same $5 a month, with far larger monthly allowances
Domain name	None free	Cloudflare Registrar charges what the registry charges, with no markup. You see the price when you search for a name
Stripe	No monthly or setup fee	Per sale: 2.9% + 30¢ for a US card, more for international cards and currency conversion (Stripe pricing)
Email sending (Resend)	3,000 emails a month, at most 100 a day	Pro: $20 a month for 50,000 emails

What each line means for you

AI builders

The free plans are for trying things. You can build a small app on them, but the daily limits run out fast once you start fixing things, because every change is a message. Two limits are the likely reasons to pay: running out of messages or credits, and wanting their own domain (Lovable, Bolt and Base44 list custom domains on paid plans only). Replit’s free Starter plan also takes your one published app down after 30 days.

A note on v0: it deploys to Vercel, and Vercel’s free Hobby plan is for non-commercial, personal use only, according to Vercel’s own Hobby plan page. An app that takes payments is commercial, so plan for a paid Vercel plan or another host.

Coding agents

Claude Code does not work on the free Claude plan; Anthropic’s setup docs say it needs a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console account. Cursor has a free Hobby plan with limited Agent requests, which is enough to see whether you like working this way. On this path the agent is usually the only thing you pay for at the start, because the rest runs on free tiers.

Hosting and the database

Cloudflare’s free plan is where this guide hosts the coding-agent path. Requests for static files are free and unlimited, and 100,000 requests a day to your code is more than a new app sees. The D1 database gives you 5 million rows read and 100,000 rows written a day, as Cloudflare listed them on 23 September 2026. If you hit a daily D1 limit, queries return errors until the limit resets at midnight UTC, so an app that suddenly gets busy should move to the $5 Workers Paid plan. Chapter 6 covers hosting in detail.

Domain name

You can launch on the free address your tool gives you, and many people do for the first test. A domain of your own looks more trustworthy and keeps your links working if you ever change tools. Cloudflare Registrar sells domains at the price the registry charges, with no markup, and renews at the registry’s list price. The price depends on the ending (.com, .app, .dev), so check it when you search.

Payments

Stripe charges nothing until you sell. For a US card, on the US page as read on 23 September 2026, each successful payment costs 2.9% + 30¢, according to Stripe’s pricing page, with an extra 1.5% for international cards and 1% more when currency is converted (same page). If you use Stripe Billing for subscriptions on its pay-as-you-go plan, Stripe lists 0.7% of billing volume on top (Stripe pricing). Stripe shows different rates in other countries, so open the page from where your business is. Chapter 5 sets up payments.

A made-up example, to show the sum: say you sell a $10 monthly plan to a US customer with a US card. Stripe keeps 2.9% of $10 plus 30¢, which is 59¢ (Stripe pricing), and 7¢ more if the subscription runs through Stripe Billing.

Email

Your app needs to send a few emails: sign-in links, receipts, a welcome. A transactional email provider does this. Resend’s free plan allowed 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day on 23 September 2026, which is plenty until you have real traffic. The 100-a-day cap is the one to watch on launch day.

What a first version costs

On the free tiers above, a first version costs nothing until you want either more AI usage or your own domain. A realistic starting budget is one AI plan (from the table: $20 to $30 a month billed monthly on the five builders, less on some of them if you pay for a year, and $20 a month for Claude Pro or Cursor Pro) plus a domain, with Stripe’s fee only when someone pays you. Cancel the AI plan in a quiet month and the app keeps running on the free hosting.

The bigger cost is building something nobody wants. That is why the next chapter is about checking demand before you spend on anything.

Next

Read Check people want it before you build, then Pick your tools, where you choose between an AI builder and a coding agent.