Lovable pricing in 2026: what the credit system actually costs

Lovable's own pricing page lists three paid tiers as of this writing: Pro at $25 a month, Business at $50 a month, and Enterprise on request. Both Pro and Business include 100 credits a month. That number alone does not answer the real question, because a single message can cost anywhere from 0.5 to 1.7 credits depending on what you ask for. The subscription price is not the cost. The cost is how fast your prompts burn through that balance.

Plan prices: a table sourced straight from the pricing page

Verified against lovable.dev/pricing and docs.lovable.dev on 2026-09-16. Prices and limits change, so re-check before you commit to a plan.

Verified students get 50% off Pro. Every plan's monthly credits expire two months after they are issued. Credits bought on an annual plan expire one month after the annual period ends. Top-up credits last twelve months. None of that appears on the headline price, and none of the third-party pricing roundups on page one for this query walk through it.

How credits actually burn: real cost per action

Lovable runs on two modes. Plan mode, where you describe what you want, costs 1 credit per message plus whatever subagent research it triggers while it scopes the work; that extra part is not a fixed number. Build mode, where it writes the code, is priced by what the change actually touches. Lovable's own docs give these example prompts and their real cost:

A stopped Build mode request still gets charged, for whatever work completed before you cancelled it. Image and video generation inside a build is metered separately as its own "media generation" line, on top of the build cost. None of this is published as a single table anywhere on Lovable's site; it is scattered across the pricing page and the docs, which is exactly why it is worth pulling into one place.

What a mid-size build actually burns in a month

Nobody publishes this math, so we built it from Lovable's own per-action numbers above. Two scenarios, both with stated assumptions, neither of them a guess at Lovable's internals: every input is a documented credit cost, multiplied by a plausible count of actions.

The heavy month needs at least one 50-credit top-up to cover the 34.5-credit gap, $15 more on Pro or $30 more on Business at the official top-up rates above. The light month never touches a top-up at all. The variable that moves you from one column to the other is not features, it is how many small back-and-forth edits your plan-mode conversation takes before it lands on what you actually meant.

Pro or Business: which credit is worth more

Pro and Business hand you the same 100 monthly credits for a different price. That looks backwards until you check what a credit is worth on each plan. Business credits cost twice as much to top up, $0.60 against Pro's $0.30. In exchange, Lovable's own FAQ states that Cloud and AI-feature usage draws down fewer Business credits than the same usage would on Pro. Build-mode action costs, the table above, are identical on both plans. So the extra $25 a month does not buy cheaper landing pages. It buys cheaper Cloud and AI consumption, plus Business-tier collaboration features.

What happens when credits run out, and how top-ups work

Building stops and in-app AI features stop responding once your balance hits zero. Your published site stays live and your data stays intact either way; Lovable is explicit that shutting off credits does not take your app offline. A top-up is priced per credit at the rate your plan carries, sold in blocks, and lasts twelve months from purchase. Unused monthly plan credits expire two months after they land, so stockpiling a huge balance ahead of a big month does not work the way it would with a rollover system.

Where the credit math stops making sense

If you are past the heavy-month numbers above every single month, the math starts favoring a different arrangement than a per-credit meter. That is also usually the point where a Lovable-built app has outgrown what one person iterating in a chat window can safely maintain, especially once auth, payments, or a real user base are involved. Our walkthrough on exporting Lovable's code to GitHub is the first step if you are heading that direction; our Lovable vs Bolt.new comparison covers what changes if you switch tools instead of switching how you build. When the credit spend itself becomes the signal that a project needs a real engineering process around it, that is a handoff conversation, not a bigger plan.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Lovable cost per month?
Free is $0. Pro is $25/month for 100 credits. Business is $50/month, also 100 credits, with pricier top-ups and cheaper Cloud/AI draw. Enterprise is custom, by demo request. Sourced from lovable.dev/pricing on 2026-09-16.

How many credits do I get per day?
Every plan, including Free, grants 5 build credits a day, with some regional plans capping this at 30 a month. It does not roll over; an unused daily grant is gone at midnight.

Do unused Lovable credits roll over?
Monthly plan credits expire two months after they are issued. Annual plan credits expire one month after the annual period ends. Daily grants never roll over. Top-up credits last twelve months.

Is there a student discount for Lovable?
Yes. Verified students get 50% off the Pro plan, per Lovable's own pricing page.

Why is the Business plan more expensive if the credits are the same number?
The credits are the same count, 100 a month on both, but they are not the same value. Business credits cost double to top up and draw down less for Cloud and AI usage, on top of Business-tier collaboration features Pro does not include.

Does my published Lovable app go down if I run out of credits?
No. Lovable states the published app stays live and your data stays protected; what stops is further building and in-app AI features until you add credits.

Run the math above against your own usage before you pick a tier, since the gap between the light and heavy scenario is entirely about how many messages and edits your workflow takes, not which plan looks bigger on paper. If the credit meter turns into a monthly surprise no matter which plan you are on, that is usually a sign the project needs an engineer's process wrapped around it, which is exactly where Lumiasoft's AI project takeover work starts.