You’ve watched the same demo twice: type a sentence, get an app. Both do that part. What you’re picking is everything around the app afterwards. So on August 29, 2026 we typed the same booking app into both and recorded what each one did next. Base44 kept the backend, the automations and the agents on its platform. Lovable handed us the codebase and stopped. Pick wrong and you either rebuild or you assemble.
00:00 the empty composer
00:13 the sentence, typed
00:20 sent. The 1m30s build is cut here
00:27 the app: form, date picker, slot grid
00:47 its Bookings page: three records in
00:09 the same sentence, typed
00:11 sent. The wait to its question is cut here
00:26 it asks which design to build. We take the first
00:35 building. The 9m21s is cut here
01:10 /bookings, open — its own test rows inside
A no-code AI platform. Describe the app and it builds the screens, the data and the logins. Backend, payments, hosting and AI agents are already on the platform.
The two-way GitHub sync hands you code, and that code runs against Base44’s managed backend. Auth, data and hosting stay on their platform, and their pages show no way to run it anywhere else.
Fine if you plan to stay. If engineers taking the app over is the plan, Lovable’s repo is the one you can take and still run.
An AI software engineer. Chat, and it builds and publishes full-stack web software. The code syncs to GitHub or GitLab, with full ownership stated on its pages.
It builds the software and stops there. Its own guide says workflow triggers need an external automation platform, messaging runs on connector services like Brevo and Twilio, and the app stores take a wrapper you add yourself.
Fine when the product is the point. If you wanted the tool to run the follow-ups too, that’s the part Base44 sells.
| Commercial signal | base44.com | lovable.dev |
|---|---|---|
|
Same on both
Free tier✓
Self-serve signup✓
Billing cyclesMonthly & annual
Public API✓
| ||
| Entry paid price | $16/mo (Starter, billed annually) | $25/mo (Pro) |
| The monthly meter at entry | 100 messages + 2,000 integration actions /mo | 100 credits /mo — building, hosting & AI share it |
| Full price list | Free $0 → Starter $16 → Builder $40 → Pro $80 → Elite $160 | Free $0 → Pro $25 → Business $50 → Enterprise (sales) |
| Team pricing | By tier — no seat model published | By credits — unlimited members on every plan |
| Security posture (stated) | SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 + GDPR | SOC 2 + ISO 27001 + GDPR |
| Stated data residency | Selectable (enterprise) | EU, US or Asia Pacific — no cross-region movement by default |
| Named integrations found | Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Stripe, Zapier + 33 more | GitHub, GitLab, Supabase, Okta + 15 more |
| Their own mobile app | Android | iOS & Android |
| Who runs it | Wix.com Ltd. | Lovable |
Free tiers, self-serve signup, monthly and annual billing, a public API — the same on both. Base44 and Lovable stop matching at the meter. Base44’s $16 buys 100 AI messages a month. Lovable’s $25 buys 100 credits, and building, hosting and your app’s AI features all draw on that one pool.
Checked September 4, 2026, after this scan: Base44’s claim on what you build doesn’t run out. Lovable’s has an off switch. Base44’s terms take a perpetual licence over your data and everything the platform generates for you, and training their models is one of the uses it lists. We found no way to decline it. Lovable trains on Free and Pro work from September 9, 2026 unless you turn it off in Account settings → AI model training, which is free. Turn it off before that date and none of your work is used at all. Turn it off later and it’s excluded from the day you do, which their own page says is fine. Lovable’s own page ↗
| Question | Base44 | Lovable |
|---|---|---|
| What makes the price go up | You building. Message credits meter the AI, integration credits meter the connectors, and the tiers sell bigger allowances. | You building and running. One pool of credits covers the AI, the hosting and your app’s own AI features. |
| What the free tier holds back | The meter and the domain. 25 messages a month, five apps, and custom domains are paid. | The code and the domain. Source editing and custom domains are both paid, and the credits are limited. |
| What you can take with you | The code, not the backend. Two-way GitHub sync is real. Auth, data and hosting stay on Base44. | The code, in full. GitHub or GitLab sync, with full ownership stated on their pages. |
Both start free. After that both meter monthly. Pick your stage and pace and we match them to the plan each vendor’s own list would put you on — the prices are theirs, the matching is ours.
Base44 is the cheaper or equal option until growing fast. There Lovable becomes the cheaper one, so the stage you’re at decides it.
Both are $0 where you are now. You can prove the idea before you pay.
Plan prices as their pages list them in August 2026. Base44’s are the billed-annually rates, and month-to-month runs higher. Both meters reset monthly, with top-ups or a higher tier for the heavy months. The live pages have the current numbers: base44.com/pricing · lovable.dev/pricing.
It answered with a finished app, records included.
No questions asked. Ninety seconds after the sentence there’s a branded booking form under its own URL, a Bookings page listing three seeded records with statuses to update, and the follow-up: want a confirmation email sent automatically when someone books? That question is the platform pitch in one line.
It behaved like the engineer it says it is.
It sketched design directions and made us choose. Then it built for nine minutes, named its own design system, and ran the whole flow in a browser before reporting done — the two test rows in /bookings are its own. Slower, more thorough, and the choice it put to us is one Base44 simply made.
Base44 has the workflow engine, and Builder unlocks it.
Workflows opened on an Unlock notice: Builder plan or higher, which is $40/mo on the published list. Agents opened free, already suggesting a Booking Concierge and an Account Support Assistant for the app it had just built. Base44 runs both itself. The engine’s half costs $40.
Its answer to automation is the tools you already run.
The directory’s headline says so. 108 connectors, Cloud and AI among them, the rest reaching Stripe, Gmail, Slack and their kind. Nothing on this screen schedules anything by itself, and Lovable’s own guide sends workflow triggers to external automation platforms. That’s the matrix’s ✗, seen from inside the product.
You can read the code, and the import line names Base44.
Bookings.jsx opens on import { base44 } from “@/api/base44Client”, then lists and updates bookings through base44.entities. Real React around it, and the base44/ folder holds the entities and config it runs on. Editing in place is paid. The two-way GitHub sync is real, and their pages show no way to run any of it off Base44.
The Code view opens on a whole repo.
src/, the integrations/supabase folder open in the tree — client, auth, types — a migrations folder, configs, a lockfile. GitHub or GitLab sync pushes it to your own account, and full ownership is stated on their pages. On free you look and don’t touch — editing starts at $25.
Base44’s gallery leaves the one-star rating on the card.
Task management: free, a 43.7k count on its card, a five-star “nice” above a four-star review naming three buttons that don’t work. And out in the grid a $35 template shows its 1.0-star average beside the price. A gallery that prints that is one you can actually shop.
A remix count is Lovable’s version of that counter.
204 community templates, 69 of them apps. The count sits on each template’s own page — 6.7k on the one we opened — beside a Use template button that clones it into your workspace. From there you describe the change, point at an element, or open the code.
Base44 answered one sentence with an operations console and a follow-up offer. Lovable answered with a repo and a warning about your customers’ emails. Each one is telling you exactly what it is.
From our August 29, 2026 scan. A ✗ means the product won’t do it for you, not that it can’t be done. A — is something we couldn’t confirm either way, not a thing the vendor lacks.
| Capability | Base44 | Lovable |
|---|---|---|
| Build it by describing it | ||
| Build apps & websites from plain language | ✓ | ✓ |
| Point at an element and change it in plain words (Lovable calls it Select & Edit) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hand it an image as input | ✓ | ✓ |
| A library of prompts & use-cases to start from | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plan the product with AI before you build | ✓ | — |
| Community templates to start from | ✓ | ✓ |
| The backend it gives you | ||
| A database it sets up for you | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sign-up, login & user accounts | ✓ | ✓ |
| File storage & content delivery | ✓ | ✓ |
| Server-side code & backend functions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live updates for connected users | ✓ | ✓ |
| Checkout & subscriptions (Base44’s processing runs through Stripe) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The automation inside | ||
| A workflow engine that runs multi-step automations (in our recording the Workflows screen opened on an Unlock notice — Builder plan or higher, and Builder is $40/mo on the published list. Lovable's own guide points triggers at external automation platforms) | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI agents that act across your connected tools (Lovable’s actions are limited to what each connected tool supports. Base44’s Superagents run unattended) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Emails, SMS & notifications sent for you (Lovable delivers these through connector services like Brevo and Twilio, on accounts you bring) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ship it & own it | ||
| One-click deploy & managed hosting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom domains & SSL (free only on Base44’s paid plans) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Two-way GitHub sync (Lovable also syncs to GitLab) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Edit the code in the app (paid on both: Base44’s in-app edits need a paid plan and Lovable’s free editor is read-only) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publish to the iOS & Android app stores from the builder (Base44 generates the store files inside the editor and you upload them from your own developer accounts. Lovable’s guide says it builds for the web and points you at a wrapper like Capacitor) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Version history, restore & rollback | ✓ | ✓ |
| An SDK & CLI for your developers | ✓ | — |
| Data & integrations | ||
| One-click connectors to the tools you use (Lovable’s in-app directory lists 108 connectors) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sync CRM data | ✓ | ✓ |
| APIs generated for your app’s data | ✓ | ✓ |
| Send email through Resend (on Lovable it takes your own Resend account, and Resend bills the sending) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Design, content & findability | ||
| Visual design & UI customization (Lovable’s visual editing can’t touch dynamic content that comes from the database) | ✓ | ✓ |
| App-wide fonts & colours set once (Base44’s pages document global colours and fonts, not a full component system) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Generate images, video & speech with AI | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO controls & social previews | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analytics & conversion tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Working as a team | ||
| Real-time collaboration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teams, workspaces & roles | ✓ | ✓ |
| Workspace design templates (Lovable’s design templates are Business and Enterprise plans only) | ✓ | ✓ |
| A shared credit pool with per-member caps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Security & compliance | ||
| Enterprise SSO & SCIM provisioning (Base44 can enforce SSO across the workspace and every app in it) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fine-grained roles & permissions | ✓ | ✓ |
| A security scanner built into the builder (Base44 scans pre-publish from the app’s Security tab and Lovable scans on every publish) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Two-factor authentication | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance, audit logs & data governance | ✓ | ✓ |
| Control whether your data trains the models (Base44’s opt-out is enterprise-only. Lovable’s Free and Pro opt out in settings, and Business and Enterprise data isn’t used for training) | ✓ | ✓ |
| When it grows | ||
| Monitor the app’s performance | ✓ | — |
| See and cap what’s using credits (Lovable shows each message's credit cost in history — its docs' own example prices a landing page with three generated images at 1.70 credits) | ✓ | ✓ |
Base44. Backend, payments, email, hosting, a workflow engine and agents — on the platform, on one subscription.
Lovable. Full ownership stated, synced to GitHub or GitLab, and demo #3 shows the repo it hands over. Base44’s code still runs against Base44’s backend.
Base44. A workflow engine with scheduled jobs from the Builder plan up, and agents suggested for the app it just built (demo #2). Lovable’s guide points at external platforms.
Lovable. Unlimited members on every plan, one credit pool, per-member caps. Base44’s pages don’t state a seat model.
Base44. It checks the app against Apple’s and Google’s rules and generates the files, inside the editor. Lovable hands you the code and leaves the packaging to you.
Nearly everything else. 39 of 44 rows land identical, auth to SSO. The two that differ are the argument above, and three we couldn’t establish on one side.
Your logins, data and hosting don’t move.
Two-way GitHub sync is real, and the SDK reaches your data from any frontend. The app those power still runs on Base44’s managed backend (auth, database, storage, hosting) and their pages show no way to run it anywhere else.
fine if you plan to stay. One platform, one bill, nothing to assemble. If engineers must own the runtime, that’s your signal for Lovable.
It builds web software, and stops there.
The two ✗ in its column: no workflow engine inside, and no way to publish to the app stores from the builder. Its own guide sends triggered automations to external platforms, and points you at a wrapper like Capacitor for the stores.
fine when a web product is the point. If the follow-ups or the stores matter, Base44’s column carries both.
Base44 free is 25 messages a month. Auth, database and integrations are all included. An evening of building can spend all 25.
Base44’s workflow engine needs Builder. On our free account the Workflows screen opened on an Unlock notice — Builder plan or higher. Builder is $40 on the published list.
Lovable free is public. Anyone can open a free project. Private work starts at $25.
Lovable’s launched app keeps drawing credits. One pool pays for building, hosting and your app’s AI features, so the meter runs after you stop building.
Prices and free tiers move, so every link here opens the vendor’s live page and you read today’s terms. The two “Start building free” buttons are affiliate links (disclosed below).
Readers who shipped on Base44 or Lovable know what the message allowance actually bought them. Say what it cost you by month three, and what you’d tell somebody standing where you were.
Switching from drag-and-drop? Start here.
If you might open the code, read this one.
One product, read across every comparison.
All four, and the one question that splits them.