Lovable credits explained: free plan, costs and how to save

This page only uses facts from Lovable’s official pricing page and its plan documentation, checked on October 14, 2026. Plans and credits change often, so check those pages before you subscribe to anything.

What does Lovable’s free plan include?

Lovable is free to start. On the free plan you get:

• 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month. These are the ones you use to build the app by sending messages.
• 20 Cloud credits a month, for Cloud hosting.
• 4 credits for AI features inside the apps you build.

It’s a way to try Lovable with a small first app before you decide anything else. If you’ve never built anything, the first app in 30 minutes guide shows the way.

What do credits pay for?

Credits cover three things:

1. Building, that is, the messages you send to the AI.
2. Cloud hosting for your app.
3. AI features inside the apps you build.

How many credits does a message use?

It depends on the mode you’re using.

In Default Mode, the cost varies with how complex the task is. These are the examples on Lovable’s pricing page:

Request	Credits
Make the button gray	0.50
Remove the footer	0.90
Add authentication with sign up and login	1.20
Build me a landing page, use images	1.70

In Plan Mode, each message costs 1 credit, whatever you ask.

Notice what that means: a tiny edit in Default Mode can cost less than a Plan Mode message, while a bigger task costs more. Plan Mode is useful when you want to think, ask questions or plan before building, because you know the price of each message in advance.

Where can you see what each message cost?

In the message history. Lovable shows the cost of each message through the three-dot menu. Checking it for a few days teaches you which kinds of requests are expensive.

Do Lovable credits expire?

Yes, and the rule depends on the kind of credit:

• Daily build credits expire at the end of the day. They don’t roll over.
• Monthly plan credits (paid plans) expire 2 months after they’re issued.
• Annual plan credits expire 1 month after the end of the annual period.
• Top-up credits last 12 months.

Credits are not refundable.

What changes on a paid plan?

Lovable has Pro, Business and Enterprise plans. On them, plan credits are added every month, and you also keep the daily 5 build credits and the 20 monthly Cloud credits.

• Pro starts at $25 a month for 100 monthly credits. On annual billing it’s $250 a year, about $21 a month. You can pick bigger credit tiers, up to 10,000 credits.
• Business starts at $50 a month for 100 credits. On annual billing it’s $500 a year, about $42 a month.

These prices come from Lovable’s pricing page and its plan documentation, checked on October 14, 2026. They change, so confirm there before you subscribe.

A few other points from the same page:

• There’s no per-seat pricing. Any number of workspace members can join, and they share the credits.
• There’s a student discount at lovable.dev/students.
• You own your code.

How do you make your credits last longer?

1. Write the whole request before sending it. Say what to change, where, and what must stay the same. A vague request often leads to a second and a third message.
2. Ask for one change at a time and test after each one. When five things change at once and something breaks, you pay to find out which one it was.
3. Use Plan Mode to plan and ask questions. It costs 1 credit per message, so you know the price before you start. For a tiny edit, Default Mode can be cheaper.
4. Check the cost in the message history. After a few days you’ll know which requests are expensive.
5. Remember that daily credits don’t wait. The ones you don’t use are gone at the end of the day; they don’t carry over to the next.
6. Stop after two or three failed attempts. Go back to the last version that worked and ask again in smaller steps. The common errors section has the text to paste for each problem, and Lovable build errors, fixed without burning credits covers build errors step by step.
7. If you’re a student, check the discount at lovable.dev/students before paying for a plan.