How much does it cost to keep a Lovable app online?
Keeping a Lovable app online costs the sum of three items: the plan (Pro starts at US$ 25 a month in October 2026), the Run credits the app spends on Lovable Cloud and AI, and the domain. On your own VPS, Run credits turn into a server bill, and the maintenance time becomes yours.
Heartscale’s recommendation: before leaving Lovable to save money, compare your actual 90-day spend under More → Usage with the VPS, the database and the maintenance hours you would take on. If the app has real users or personal data, also count the time to test backups and respond to failures.
Third-party prices change. Every figure below was checked on the official pages in October 2026.
Lovable plans in October 2026
Figures from the Subscription plans page, in US dollars:
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Credits | Custom domain | Download code |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | US$ 0 | n/a | 5 a day, up to 30 a month | No | No |
| Pro | from US$ 25 | US$ 250 (US$ 21/mo) | from 100 a month | Yes | Yes |
| Business | from US$ 50 | US$ 500 (US$ 42/mo) | from 100 a month | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise | contact sales | contact sales | volume-based | Yes | Yes |
Pro and Business have tiers up to 10,000 credits a month, and the price rises with each tier. On the first Pro tier, 100 credits for US$ 25 works out to US$ 0.25 per credit.
GitHub sync works on every plan (Lovable, GitHub), so even on Free you keep the code.
Publishing on lovable.app
Publishing to a lovable.app address is free on every plan, and a live site does not use credits on its own (How Lovable hosts your app). What spends credits is the app’s backend and AI.
Limits depend on the plan:
- Paid plans: the plan does not cap visitors or bandwidth.
- Free, apps created from May 13, 2026: up to 1,000 server requests per project every 10 seconds. Above that, visitors see an “App temporarily unavailable” page. Static files do not count.
- Inactive Free projects: Lovable may unpublish a project when the app has had no visits for 12 months, the owner has not logged in for 12 months and no custom domain is connected (Publish).
What the app spends once it is live
Lovable uses one credit balance for building, hosting, the built-in backend and the app’s AI features (Lovable Cloud). A live app’s spend shows up as Run credits, which cover (Plans and credits):
- Cloud: database server size and uptime, database storage, network, file storage, compute and realtime.
- AI gateway: every AI model call the app makes, charged by model and tokens at provider cost.
- Connectors managed by Lovable: at the rate shown on each connector’s page.
What is included
Free, Pro and Business workspaces get 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits a month for the deployed app (Project usage). These grants do not roll over, and the docs describe them as temporary and subject to change.
Where to see your spend
Lovable does not publish per-hour database rates or per-GB prices. To find your own number:
- More → Usage, inside the project, shows what the project spent in credits over the last 30 or 90 days.
- More → Database → Manage → Settings compares the estimated monthly cost of each database instance size. A larger instance uses more credits per hour.
- In the project chat, you can ask what drives your Run credit usage and how to lower it.
In our reviews, before comparing scenarios, we list everything the app calls on Lovable: database, files, functions, AI and connectors. Every item that stays on Lovable keeps spending Run credits, even with the front end hosted elsewhere.
If you run out of credits
According to the Project usage docs:
- the published site stays online;
- the app’s AI features stop;
- apps that rely on Cloud can pause until you add credits;
- stored files keep using credits, even while the project is paused.
Pro and Business accept one-time or automatic top-ups. Top-up credits last 12 months.
The domain
A custom domain requires a paid Lovable plan. If you downgrade to Free, you cannot connect new domains until you upgrade again (Lovable, Custom domain).
There are two ways to get one:
- Buy it inside Lovable with Buy new domain. It is billed separately from the subscription, in US dollars, and the renewal price may differ from the purchase price. Both show at checkout.
- Buy it from a registrar and point the DNS. Prices depend on the registrar and the extension. To connect it to Lovable, create an A record for
185.158.133.1and a_lovableTXT verification record.
The second path keeps the domain in your own account, which makes a later hosting move easier.
The alternative: your own VPS with Coolify
The exported app runs without a Lovable subscription when it is on your own hosting and no longer calls Lovable services (Deployment, hosting and ownership). Each provider then bills you under its own plan.
The dashboard
- Self-hosted Coolify: free. The pricing page says “Free forever” (Coolify, Pricing).
- Coolify Cloud, with the dashboard run by the Coolify team: $5 a month with 2 servers, plus $3 per extra server. The servers are still yours.
The server
Coolify needs at least 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk (Coolify, Installation). As a reference, Hetzner lists its CPX22 plan (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB) at €19.99 a month, excluding VAT, in Germany and Finland, in October 2026 (Hetzner, Regular Performance). Prices change by region and provider.
The database
This is the biggest cost decision:
- Keep the backend on Lovable Cloud and move only the front end. The docs allow it. Cloud and AI usage keeps drawing on your credits.
- Move the database to your own Supabase. In October 2026, Supabase’s Free plan has a 500 MB database and pauses projects after 1 week of inactivity. Pro starts at US$ 25 a month, with 8 GB of disk and daily backups kept for 7 days (Supabase, Pricing).
The hosting walkthrough is in How to host a Lovable app on a VPS with Coolify. The database migration is in How to leave Lovable.
The cost that never shows on an invoice: time
Lovable lists what you take on when you host elsewhere: certificates, CDN, scaling, databases, storage, backups, access control, monitoring, security audits and the release process (Deployment, hosting and ownership).
On a VPS with Coolify, that turns into recurring tasks:
- Update Coolify. You can turn on Settings → Updates → Automatic updates. The docs ask for a backup before every upgrade (Coolify, Upgrade).
- Update everything else. A Coolify update does not touch your apps, databases or servers. The operating system and the app’s dependencies are on you.
- Keep and test backups. The
/data/coolify/source/.envfile and the database need copies off the server. Restore a test copy now and then to know it works. - Watch the server. A full disk, a failed certificate renewal or a broken deployment only show up if someone looks.
- Review security. Firewall, open ports and dashboard access.
There is no single number of hours per month. It depends on the app’s size, how many integrations it has and how often you ship. Estimate your hours, multiply by what your hour is worth, and only then compare it with your Lovable bill.
Comparing the three scenarios
| Scenario | What you pay | Who maintains it |
|---|---|---|
| Everything on Lovable | Plan + Run credits above the grant + domain | Lovable runs the infrastructure |
| Front end on a VPS, backend on Lovable Cloud | Plan + Run credits + VPS + domain | You run the front-end server |
| Everything outside (VPS + Supabase) | VPS + Supabase + domain, no subscription if you stop using the editor | You run all of it |
If you keep using the Lovable editor to change the app, the subscription stays on the bill, even with the app hosted elsewhere.
To see what a deployment on your own server involves, visit our self-hosted deployment page.
Do it yourself or hire help?
Outside Lovable, the cost question becomes a time question: who makes the move and who looks after the server afterwards. Use your hour estimate from the previous section.
| Situation | Path |
|---|---|
| Small app, no real users, and someone on the team wants to run a server | Do it yourself with the guides linked above: a failure affects few people |
| Real users or personal data | Worth bringing in a team: time counts twice, in maintenance and in responding when something breaks |
| The hours of whoever would run the server are worth more on the product or on sales | Worth bringing in a team like ours: compare your estimated hours times your hourly value with a fixed price |
| You do not know which of the three scenarios is cheaper for your app | Request a Heartscale diagnostic: it maps what your app uses from Lovable and the maintenance work of each scenario before you change anything |
Request a Heartscale diagnostic
Our team maps what your app uses from Lovable Cloud, AI and connectors, and shows what changes in each scenario: stay, move only the front end, or move everything. You receive the plan and the maintenance work each option calls for.
The launch-price diagnostic costs US$ 19 (was US$ 79) and is credited toward the migration if you go ahead. We only work on apps whose owners can prove they own them.