Lovable turns a description into a working application, and it is very good at it. What confuses people is the billing, because you are not buying pages or sites — you are buying credits, and a credit is spent every time you ask for a change. The hosting question has a similarly non-obvious answer, and it changed in May 2026. Figures below are from Lovable’s own pricing and documentation pages, checked on 8 September 2026.
The plans and what they include
| Plan | Price | Credits | Notable limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5 build credits per day, capped at 30 per month | No custom domain, no code download |
| Pro | $25 / month (or $250 / year) | 100 per month at entry; up to 10,000 on higher tiers | Custom domains, code download, top-ups at $0.30 per credit |
| Business | $50 / month (or $500 / year) | 100 per month at entry | Top-ups at $0.60 per credit |
| Enterprise | By contract | Volume-based | No public pricing |
Every plan includes a monthly allowance of 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits on top of the build credits. The free plan is the constrained one: 5 build credits a day, and no more than 30 in a month.
What a credit actually buys
A credit is a request, not a feature. Lovable publishes its own examples of what typical instructions cost:
“Make the button gray” costs 0.5 credits. “Remove the footer” costs 0.9. “Add authentication with sign up and login” costs 1.2. “Build me a landing page, use images” costs 1.7.
At $25 a month for 100 credits, that puts an average instruction around 25 cents. The number that surprises people is not the price per credit — it is how many instructions a real project takes. Iterating on a design is dozens of small requests, and the free plan’s 30 a month disappears in one session.
Credits are also consumed by three different things: generating and editing your app, running the hosted backend, and any AI features inside the app you built. They come from one balance.
The hosting that comes with it
Lovable hosts what it builds. Publishing deploys to an address in the form yourproject.lovable.app, with HTTPS included and no server to configure. For getting something in front of someone quickly, that is exactly right.
Three details are worth knowing before you rely on it:
Custom domains are on paid plans only, so a real address starts at $25 a month. The SSL certificate is generated automatically once the domain is connected.
The lovable.app address cannot be removed. Lovable’s documentation states there is currently no way to take the project URL off a project, so it remains reachable alongside your own domain.
Downgrading has consequences. After a downgrade to the free plan you can no longer buy or connect domains to projects.
Getting your code out
This part is better than its reputation. Lovable does not hold your code hostage.
GitHub sync is available on every plan, including free. It is two-way: changes in Lovable appear in the repository, and pushes to the connected branch flow back in. Only one branch syncs at a time. If you disconnect, the repository stays on GitHub with its full history, and you can clone it and continue in any editor.
Direct download of the codebase is a paid feature. On the free plan, GitHub is the export route.
So ownership of the source is not the lock-in. The lock-in, when it exists, is the backend — which is the next question.
Can you host a Lovable project somewhere else?
It depends on when the project was created and whether it uses a backend. This is the one section worth reading carefully, because the answer changed recently.
Lovable’s documentation states that new apps created from 13 May 2026 use TanStack Start with server-side rendering. Apps created before that date use React with Vite. Server-side rendering needs a running server, so a plain static host is not a drop-in destination for the newer generation.
A project created before 13 May 2026 with no backend is a React and Vite application. Running the standard Vite build produces a dist folder of static files that any static host will serve, sofast included. One trap: Vite replaces environment variables at build time, so anything the app needs must be present when you build, not when it runs.
A project created after 13 May 2026 uses server-side rendering by default, which a static host cannot execute. Lovable does not document a static export path for these, so treat this as needing a developer rather than an afternoon.
Any project using Lovable Cloud or Supabase keeps its database, authentication and storage where they are. Exporting the front end gives you the interface; it still calls a backend hosted elsewhere. That is the real dependency, and no amount of file copying removes it.
The practical rule: if Lovable built you an interface with no login and no database, it can very likely live on a static host for a few dollars a month. If it built you an application, it is an application, and it needs somewhere that runs code.
Common questions
The answers below cover free-plan limits, ownership, domains, static export, and how Lovable compares to other AI builders for a simple site.
There is a free plan, and it is a trial in practice rather than a working tier: 5 build credits a day capped at 30 a month, no custom domain, and no direct code download. It is enough to see whether the tool suits you. A real project needs the Pro plan at $25 a month.
You can get the source out on any plan through GitHub sync, and if you disconnect, the repository and its history stay with you. Direct download is a paid feature. What does not travel is the backend — a database or authentication running on Lovable Cloud stays there.
Yes, on a paid plan. Connect the domain and the SSL certificate is issued automatically. Two things to know: the original lovable.app address stays reachable and cannot be removed, and if you downgrade to the free plan you lose the ability to connect domains.
Only for a project created before 13 May 2026 that has no backend. Connect GitHub, clone the repository, install the dependencies and run the Vite build; the dist folder it produces is a static site you can upload anywhere. Newer projects use server-side rendering and will not work this way without a developer reconfiguring them.
Often it is more tool than the job needs. Lovable is built for applications — state, authentication, data. For a portfolio or a landing page, ask Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini for plain HTML and CSS instead. You get a folder you own outright, with no credits and nothing running on a server. Any static host will serve it for a few dollars a month.
At minimum the $25 monthly Pro plan if you want a custom domain, plus credits for changes and for the hosted backend, plus the domain registration. Budget for the changes: the credit cost of a live application is not the build cost, it is the twenty small edits you make in the six months after launch.
If your Lovable project is a front end with no backend, here is how to get the built files online at your own address.
