You're reading this on kliv.dev, so yes, we have a horse in this race: Kliv competes with these builders, and we'd like you to try it. Prices and limits come from each vendor's own pages, fetched on November 3, 2026 and linked under Sources.
Which one to try first
You need a native iOS or Android app, or you want to work inside its cloud development environment alongside the Agent.
You want a web app, and you care about Git sync on Free, a managed backend, and one credit balance for the whole workspace.
You are building a web business tool and either would do. Measure one finished task, one correction, and the cost of keeping it running.
A customer portal and an app-store product are different decisions; make that call first. The portal needs a browser, sign-in, data and someone to keep changing it; a native product needs all that plus a mobile development and release path. Settle which you are building before you compare prices or count credits.
The prices
| Plan | Month-to-month | Annual option | What the allowance means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Replit Starter | $0 | — | Daily Agent credits and limited publishing |
| Replit Core | $20 | $18/month equivalent | Free Mode allowance plus $20 toward paid usage |
| Replit Pro, base tier | $100 | $90/month equivalent | $100 credits and additional capacity |
| Lovable Free | $0 | — | Daily build credits, capped at 30/month |
| Lovable Pro 100 | $25 | $250/year | 100 monthly subscription credits |
| Lovable Business 100 | $50 | $500/year | 100 credits; governance; fewer credits spent on hosting and in-app AI |
Replit Core is $20 month-to-month, or $18 a month equivalent if you pay for the year. Lovable Pro 100 is $25 a month, or $250 upfront for the year, which Lovable lists as $21/month. Compare monthly with monthly or annual with annual, never one vendor's annual equivalent against the other's monthly price. For a project still finding its shape, the month-to-month numbers are the real commitment.
The two allowances are not the same kind of thing. Replit credits offset dollar-priced paid services; Lovable credits are Lovable's own unit, and $20 of one and 100 of the other are not comparable. What you can compare is the job: a finished sign-in, booking and admin change, plus what the published app uses each month.
How Replit bills the Agent
Free Mode covers everyday Agent work at no extra cost within its allowance. Power and Max modes, and any paid work you confirm, are priced by effort, one checkpoint per request, with simple fixes generally cheaper than complex builds. Replit says it asks before paid actions. On the paid path, planning can use billable reasoning even when no code changes.
Replit credits also pay for published apps, network transfer, storage, databases and AI integrations, and some Agent services that call third-party models charge the provider's public API rate through those same credits. Keep Agent spending and cloud spending apart in your estimate.
There are usage alerts and hard budget limits, and the dashboard can lag by up to 30 minutes, so the request you just made may not be there yet. When you review a build session, read the checkpoint charges next to the cloud total, with Free Mode work and paid tasks on separate lines.
How Lovable bills the same work
Lovable charges Build mode by what it completed and how complex the request was. Plan mode is one credit a message plus any subagent research. The examples it gives are roughly 0.5 credits for a button color change and 1.2 for authentication, and real charges vary. After the usage-specific grants, general credits cover building, Cloud, AI features inside the app and some connector requests, all from one pot.
Pro and Business get five daily build credits without Free's standard monthly cap, though the pricing FAQ notes regional caps on some paid plans. Temporary monthly grants for Cloud, AI and connectors cover their own kind of usage first. Daily grants expire the same day, which favors maintenance spread across the month.
What the free plans are good for
Replit Starter gives daily Agent credits up to a monthly cap, monthly cloud credits, and Lite build. You can publish one free app, and its link goes down automatically after 30 days. Full build, Plan Mode, third-party connectors and Replit AI Integrations all need a paid plan. Starter is fine for a focused trial and wrong for a business site that has to stay up; the 30-day link settles that.
Lovable Free has five daily build credits up to 30 a calendar month, publishing, workspace-private projects, and Git sync. Custom domains, direct code edits, downloads and badge removal wait for Pro. So you can start a web project and connect it to GitHub without paying, then upgrade the day it needs a domain or a hand edit.
Native apps, and who maintains the thing
Replit documents building native iOS and Android apps with the Agent. The preview can simulate iOS, Android and web, and Expo Go gets the app onto a phone for a look. The guide itself warns that packages can behave differently across platforms, so put real-device checks in the plan from the start.
Lovable builds web apps and says plainly that it does not generate React Native projects. For a portal customers open in a phone browser, web is usually enough; for an app that has to live in an app store, Replit is the documented route of these two, full stop.
Replit Core comes with a cloud development environment, secrets management, several publishing choices, and an Agent that builds and debugs. Lovable's version of developer access is Git sync on every plan and direct editing and downloads on the paid ones. Before you choose, have whoever will maintain the app open the project and make one small change, and time it.
A month, costed
Say the app is a customer portal with login, a database, and a feature change every few weeks. Replit Core starts at $20 a month, with paid Agent tasks and cloud usage coming out of the included credits first. Lovable Pro starts at $25, with building and running sharing general credits once the grants are gone. Either way, keep development and running as two separate estimates.
On Lovable, a 50-credit Pro top-up is $15, so a $25 month becomes $40 if you overrun once, and Pro 200 at $50 is the answer if you overrun every month. On Replit, extra paid work is priced by effort, so there is no neat top-up number to quote. The choice is a bigger standing allowance against paying for the occasional push; only your own charges can say which is cheaper.
And then there's Kliv (yes, this site)
We're smaller and younger than Replit and Lovable, and the app we are after on this page is the browser-based portal, where Kliv has sign-in, a database, commerce and email together with Pro at $19/month. If that is what you are building, we'd like a turn.
Kliv builds web apps for phone and desktop browsers. Not native App Store or Google Play apps, and we are not going to pretend otherwise: if a native app is what brought you to Replit, take Replit's documented route and skip us. That is, we realize, an unusual way to sell something. For the browser portal, database, authentication, commerce, email, edge functions and hosting are included on every plan. Free covers up to 25 apps; paid plans add builder capacity, custom domains and removal of our branding. Put that list next to what you would need from Replit or Lovable, on the same portal.
One task decides it
Use the four-step checklist for the web-app trial; it works for this pair too, with one decision in front of it, browser or native distribution. A booking portal can be tested with the same sign-in, record-visibility and rescheduling requirements in both tools. A native app needs the device checks on top, and a release path.
“Build a web booking app for my bike repair shop that works in phone and desktop browsers. Customers sign in, choose a repair slot, and see their own bookings. Staff approve requests and update repair status. Include sample customers and bookings.”
Questions people ask
- Is Replit cheaper than Lovable?
- Replit Core starts at $20 a month and Lovable Pro at $25. Paid tasks and app operation eat into either allowance, so a lower subscription is no evidence of a lower bill.
- Which should I use for native mobile?
- Replit. It documents a native iOS and Android workflow, with Expo Go for testing on a phone. Lovable builds web apps and says outright that it does not generate React Native projects.
- Can I run a permanent free Replit app?
- Not on Starter. Its one free published app link goes down automatically after 30 days, under the docs we fetched. If the app has to stay reachable past that, plan on a paid tier.
- Does unlimited publishing mean unlimited free hosting?
- No. Core removes the cap on how many apps you publish, but publishing and cloud services still come out of your credits. Count apps and count resource use separately.
Sources
Prices and plan details come from each company’s own pages, checked on November 3, 2026.