You’ve narrowed it to two, and both promise the same first hour: describe an app, watch it appear. On September 4, 2026 we handed both the same brief, and both got a hard calculation right to the cent. So what you’re choosing is what you hold a month later, once something has to email your users, keep one person’s records out of another’s, or run every Friday on its own.
A no-code platform where the app you describe arrives with its own back office. The database, the logins, the mailer, the model calls and the automations are Base44's, already paid for inside the plan.
The back office is what keeps you on Base44. Base44 hosts single-page apps only, its own docs rule out server-side rendering, and the stack is React on Vite with Deno functions. Eject hands you the code and an empty database, under a new app id.
Fine while you stay on the platform. If the app has to run somewhere else one day, that day costs you the data layer.
A cloud computer with an agent on it. It builds the app, and underneath sits a shell, any language, your existing repos, Postgres you can reach with a connection string, and hosting with every price printed.
What the app does after launch is yours to assemble. Replit ships no mailer, no workflow builder, no permission rules over your data and no session replay. Its own comparison page hands the visual builder to n8n.
Fine if the app is the product and you’ll connect the rest yourself. If you wanted the follow-ups running by Friday, that’s the half Base44 sells.
| Commercial signal | base44.com | replit.com |
|---|---|---|
|
Same on both
Free tier✓
Self-serve signup✓
Their own mobile appiOS & Android
| ||
| Billing cycles | Monthly & annual (annual saves 20%) | Monthly & annual (annual saves up to 10%) |
| Entry paid price | $20/mo (Starter, or $16/mo billed annually) | $20/mo (Core, or $18/mo billed annually) |
| What the meter counts | Two pools that don’t mix. Message credits while you build, integration credits for what the live app does | One pool. Effort-based checkpoints for the agent, then metered compute, requests & storage for hosting |
| What the free tier actually holds | 25 message credits/mo, capped at 5 a day, plus 100 integration credits. Up to 5 apps, published and reachable, no expiry | Daily agent credits to an unpublished monthly cap. 1 published app carrying a Replit badge, and its link goes down after 30 days |
| Full price list | Free $0 → Starter $20 → Builder $50 → Pro $100 → Elite $200 → Enterprise (sales) | Starter $0 → Core $20 → Pro $100 → Enterprise (sales) |
| Team pricing | No seat price published. Collaboration is on every plan, including free | No seat fees: 5 collaborators on Core, 15 plus 50 viewers on Pro |
| Published hosting rate card | None. Hosting is included in the plan, and every app gets a base44.app address from the moment it exists | Printed in full: Autoscale $2/mo + $0.60 per 1M compute units, Reserved VM from $15/mo, static free |
| What the app's own AI costs | Nothing extra. Model calls, images and video draw on the plan's integration credits, 100/mo on free | Public API prices, billed to your credits, and the whole feature needs a paid plan |
| Security posture (stated) | SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 + GDPR, all stated as Base44's own | SOC 2 Type 2 is Replit's own. ISO 27001 is claimed for its cloud provider, not for Replit |
| Your work as training data | Yes, by default. The terms reserve the right to train on customer data, and no self-serve opt-out is published below Enterprise | Private projects are excluded, and Pro and Enterprise are excluded by contract. Free and Core sit under the Terms of Service |
| Named integrations found | 76 connectors in the catalog, from the Builder plan at $50/mo | 450+ advertised, 501 on the directory's own counter. Most need Core |
| Their own desktop app | ✗ | Mac & Windows |
| Generated output you own | Code & backend functions (GitHub or ZIP) + collections as CSV, from Builder $50/mo | The whole file tree as a ZIP, git history included, on any plan |
| Who runs it | Wix.com Ltd. | Replit, Inc. |
Both price lists have a $0, a $20 and a $100 tier. Base44 runs two meters that don’t mix, one for building and one for what the live app does, and folds hosting, the mailer and the model calls into the tier. Replit runs one, and everything the app serves is billed on top of it.
| Question | Base44 | Replit |
|---|---|---|
| What makes the price go up | Two things, counted apart. Building spends message credits; what your users do spends integration credits. Run out of either and you move up a tier or top up. | One pool, then usage. Agent work bills by effort per checkpoint, and the published app is billed again for compute, requests and storage. |
| What the free tier holds back | Pace. 25 build messages a month, and no more than 5 in a day, so a long session waits until tomorrow. The published app itself stays up. | Permanence. One published app, and its link goes down after 30 days. Third-party connectors wait for Core. |
| What you can take with you | The code, not the data. Eject clones the project and copies the schemas, and the copy starts empty. Two-way GitHub sync waits for Builder at $50. | Both. A zip from the file tree on any plan, git history included, and the database is standard PostgreSQL you can dump through a connection string. |
The list prices match, so the question is what each one still bills you for. Base44 sells a tier that already contains the mailer, the model calls and the hosting. Replit sells a tier plus a meter. The plans below are the vendors’ own price lists. Their numbers, our matching.
The two list prices are the same at every stage on this pace. What the money buys isn’t: Base44’s tier already contains the hosting, the mailer and the model calls, and Replit bills those on top.
Both are $0 where you are now, and the two $0s are not the same $0: Base44’s published app stays up, and Replit’s link goes down after 30 days.
Plan prices as their pages list them on September 4, 2026, at the monthly rate. Paying for the year takes Base44’s Starter to $16 and Replit’s Core to $18. Base44 counts two allowances that don’t mix, and Replit’s hosting is billed past the plan, so the live pages have the numbers that move: base44.com/pricing · replit.com/pricing.
Every figure matches the hand-worked answer.
The leftover cent is the part that catches an implementation out, and it lands where the brief said: Cass owes $199.99 against Ana’s $199.98, because Cass paid the petrol. Nets sum to zero on screen. The settle-up is three lines for four people, which is the most the brief allows.
The same three payments, for the same amounts.
Dev pays Ana $162.48, Cass pays Ana $117.54, Cass pays Ben $30.30. Put the two settle-up screens side by side and nothing differs but the typeface. Replit also explains itself above the list, and writes each balance as GETS BACK or OWES rather than a signed number.
Each row says how many people actually share it.
Split 2 on the kayak, split 3 on the petrol, split 4 on the rest. The form to add another sits open above the list rather than behind a button, so the page you land on is also the page you type into.
The badge on every row reads 4, and two of them are wrong.
The line underneath is right: For 2 people on the kayak, For 3 on the petrol. The badge beside it prints the trip’s headcount instead of the split, so the same row states two different numbers. The money is unaffected, and the balances prove it. It is the label that is wrong, on the screen a reader checks first.
The hard part came out identical, so the split is everything around it. Both handled the rounding rule, the zero-sum check and the minimum-transfer list without us prompting again. Base44 put its add-expense form on the page and labelled every row correctly. Replit designed the better-looking screen and mislabelled two rows on it.
From our September 4, 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 | Replit |
|---|---|---|
| Build it by describing it | ||
| Build apps & websites from plain language | ✓ | ✓ |
| Point at an element and change it in plain words (neither spends AI credits on it: Base44's Edit mode saves as you work and undoes 50 steps, and Replit's visual editor writes simple text, colour and spacing changes straight to the source) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hand it an image as input (Base44 also reads PDFs and spreadsheets at the first prompt, taking columns and sample data from a CSV) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plan the product with AI before you build (Base44's Discuss mode is 0.3 credits a message on every plan and builds nothing until you approve. Replit's Plan mode starts at Core) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Community templates to start from (Base44's marketplace prints a clone count on every entry, and its most-cloned free template stands at 44,282. Replit retired its starter-template library and points new projects at its Gallery instead) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The agent tests the app in a real browser (Base44's runs on every plan at 1 to 4 credits a test but can’t fill a login form. Replit's covers full-stack JavaScript and Streamlit only, and switches off in its cheapest agent mode) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hours-long unattended agent runs (Replit states Agent 3 runs up to 200 minutes on its own. Base44's builder takes turns: it queues up to 7 messages, and the queue stops when you close the editor. Its unattended agents are Superagents, which run inside the app you built, and don’t build it) | ✗ | ✓ |
| The backend it gives you | ||
| A database it sets up for you (different shapes: Base44's is a MongoDB-compatible document store with no schema enforced, Replit's is managed PostgreSQL with 20GB an app and rollback to any agent checkpoint) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sign-up, login & accounts for your app's users (on Replit the default signs your users in with their Replit accounts, and app-native accounts take its Clerk option. Base44's are the app's own from the free plan, with email, password and four social providers) | ✓ | ✓ |
| File storage & uploads (Base44 caps one upload at 50MB, or 100MB for video, and publishes no per-app storage limit. Replit's object storage bills $0.015 per GiB a month) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Server-side code (Base44's are Deno functions that stop at 5 minutes a run. Replit also runs always-on machines as Reserved VMs, from $15 a month) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live updates for connected users (Base44 documents entities.subscribe(), firing on create, update and delete. Nothing on Replit's side states a managed realtime service either way) | ✓ | — |
| Checkout & subscriptions (paid on both, at different tiers: Base44's Stripe route needs Builder at $50 a month, Replit's needs Core at $20 and is off on the free plan) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The built app calls an AI model with no API key of yours (both do it and they bill it differently. Base44's InvokeLLM is preinstalled and draws on the plan's integration credits, 100 a month on the free plan. Replit's AI Integrations need a paid plan and charge public API prices against your credits) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The automation inside | ||
| Scheduled jobs the platform runs for you (Base44's automations need Builder at $50 a month and run no closer together than 5 minutes. Replit's scheduled deployments cost $2 a month plus compute, and take the schedule in plain words) | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI agents that act across your connected tools (Base44's Superagents run on a schedule or an event and will drive a browser you’re signed into. Replit's Routines need Core, cap at 5 active, run no oftener than hourly, and live in a conversation, not in your app) | ✓ | ✓ |
| A visual trigger-and-action workflow builder in the product (Base44's Workflows chain steps and branches off six kinds of trigger, from the Builder plan at $50 a month. Replit's own comparison page says n8n is the one with the visual builder and describes Replit's way as asking the agent to build the automation as an app you then publish) | ✓ | ✗ |
| The app sends email with no mail account of yours (Base44's SendEmail is preinstalled in every app and sends from its own address. The free plan reaches people who signed up, and outside addresses need a paid plan and a verified domain. Every Replit email route is a mail vendor you sign into: AgentMail, Resend or SendGrid) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Emails & SMS sent by the app (SMS is the same on both sides, Twilio on an account you bring. Email is where they part, on the row above) | ✓ | ✓ |
| The computer underneath | ||
| A real shell & terminal in the workspace (Base44's own npm page states the boundary: no terminal, no manual install commands. From outside the editor its CLI can run shell commands against the cloud environment holding the app's code, on Builder at $50 a month) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Run any language or framework (Base44 apps are React on Vite with Deno functions, and its hosting takes single-page apps only, with server-side rendering ruled out in its own docs. Replit's docs say any framework or stack, and the run command is yours to edit) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Install any package (on Base44 you name it in chat and click Approve. On Replit you run the package manager, ask the agent, or let it install what your code imports) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Import an existing repo and keep working on it (Base44 clones it and keeps the repo as the source of truth, but an imported project has no Base44 pages, entities or built-in login, and two-way sync needs Builder at $50 a month. Replit imports from GitHub, Bitbucket, a zip or a spreadsheet) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choose the AI model behind the builder (Base44 lists six models and needs Builder at $50 a month. Replit lists 13 and needs Core at $20, in its Power or Max modes) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Edit the code inside the product (Base44's Code tab needs Starter at $20 a month. Replit's editor is free on every plan) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ship it & own it | ||
| One-click deploy & managed hosting (Base44 hosts on every plan, and the app has a base44.app address from the moment it exists. Replit's free plan publishes one app whose link goes down after 30 days) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom domains & SSL (Base44's start at Starter, $20 a month, and that price includes the first year of a domain. Replit's are on every plan and it will sell you the domain too) | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub sync (Base44's two-way sync needs Builder at $50 a month, is automatic with no manual push, and works on main only. Replit gives a Git pane, the Git CLI and per-file history on the plan you have) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Package for the iOS & Android app stores (two different things arrive. Base44 wraps your published web app in a web view and needs Builder at $50 a month to download the files. Replit compiles native output through Expo and uploads to App Store Connect for you. Both need your own Apple and Google developer accounts) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Version history, restore & rollback (Base44 can publish an old version without disturbing your draft. Replit's checkpoints roll the code, the agent's memory and the database back together) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Download the codebase & self-host it (Base44's export is Builder at $50 a month: the code and the backend functions go to GitHub or a ZIP, and the collections come out separately as CSV. What stays behind is the managed hosting, the login system and the database itself, so the copy starts empty under a new app id. Replit zips the file tree on any plan, git history included) | ✓ | ✓ |
| An SDK & CLI for your developers (Base44 ships an npm CLI of about 50 commands and a client SDK, both labelled beta. Replit publishes no CLI of its own: the route is to SSH into the machine, on a paid plan) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data & integrations | ||
| One-click connectors to the tools you use (Base44 lists 76 and holds them for Builder at $50 a month. Replit advertises 450-plus, its own directory counts 501, and most need Core at $20 — the free plan keeps only Replit's own database, storage, auth and domains) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP), both directions (Base44's MCP server needs Builder at $50 a month, and its custom connections work in the editor only, and not in a published app. Replit's runs on the plan you have) | ✓ | ✓ |
| APIs generated for your app's data (Base44 publishes REST create, read, update and delete over every entity. Nothing on Replit's side describes generating endpoints over your data model, and its documented route out is the database connection string) | ✓ | — |
| Bring your own backend (Base44 sells the opposite swap: bring your own frontend to its backend. Its Supabase connector is read-only — browse schema, read tables, view status — and Airtable and Sheets sync rather than host, so the app's own data layer stays Base44's. Replit's connector catalog carries a plain PostgreSQL entry, and third-party connectors need Core at $20 a month) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Import a Figma design and build from it (both take a pasted frame link. Base44 needs an Editor seat in Figma, because Figma blocks the API for view-only seats) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Encrypted secrets for the app's API keys (Base44's app-level secrets are on every plan, workspace-wide ones need Business. Replit keeps development and deployment secrets separate on purpose, and static deployments get none) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Design, content & findability | ||
| Visual edits without prompting (free of AI credits on both. Base44 undoes up to 50 steps in a session; Replit's edits work on the canvas and on the running app alike) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Design systems & app-wide theming (Base44's colour roles and fonts are on every plan, but a full design system needs Builder at $50 a month and caps at one per workspace. Replit's design work is free on every plan, though starting a new app from a design frame needs Core) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Generate images & media inside the builder (Base44 generates images, video and speech against integration credits, 100 a month on the free plan. Replit generates images, video, icons and audio against the agent's own credits) | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO controls & social previews (Base44 writes the canonicals, the sitemap and robots.txt itself, but holds the score down until a custom domain is connected, which starts at $20 a month. Replit's SEO agent needs a published public deployment) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analytics for the published app (Base44 keeps free-plan data 7 days and allows 3 custom events. Replit's dashboard is free, and its custom events need Core at $20 a month) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Replay recordings of real people using the app (Base44 records up to 500 sessions an app and flags rage clicks, dead clicks and errors. Replit's Growth pane counts visitors, pages, referrers and devices, and session replay appears once in its whole documentation, as a third-party service you connect) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Working as a team | ||
| Real-time collaboration (Base44 puts it on every plan, free included. Replit seats it: 5 collaborators on Core, 15 on Pro) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teams, workspaces & roles (four roles each on every plan. Base44 holds its Admin role for Enterprise, Replit holds custom groups for the same) | ✓ | ✓ |
| A shared credit pool with per-member caps (both pool, and neither caps one person short of Enterprise. Base44 at least shows what each member spent this cycle; Replit's per-member view is Enterprise as well, and its budgets move in $500 steps) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Their own desktop app (Base44 ships iOS and Android and sends desktop-only work back to a browser. What you install for Base44 is its CLI. Replit ships a native Mac and Windows app that stays in sync with the web) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Security & compliance | ||
| A security scanner built into the builder (Base44 scans from every app's Security tab on the free plan, across six kinds of check, with code-vulnerability scanning from Builder at $50 a month. Replit's agent scans are for paid builders, and its dependency scans are free) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Two-factor authentication for your builder account (Base44's authenticator app is on every plan and SMS codes are paid. Replit names it among the controls it ships but publishes no page on turning it on, so we could not follow the steps) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enterprise SSO & SCIM provisioning (Enterprise on both. Base44 documents OIDC and no SAML anywhere; Replit documents SAML with Entra, Google Workspace and Okta) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fine-grained roles & permissions (four fixed roles each, with custom groups held for Enterprise on both sides) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-record and per-field permission rules on the data (Base44's row-level rules take a condition per operation, with field-level read and write on top. Replit's own security post says row-level security works best paired with a backend doing the authorization checks rather than standing as the only layer, and it describes no built-in way to set per-record rules. Its database is standard Postgres, so the policies would be yours to write) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Control whether your work trains the models (Base44's terms reserve the right to train on customer data, and the opt-out is Enterprise, where it’s the default. On Replit the control is visibility: private projects are excluded, and Pro and Enterprise are excluded by contract) | ✓ | ✓ |
Base44. A mailer that needs no account of yours, a workflow engine with six kinds of trigger, and permission rules you set, not write. Replit ships none of the three.
Replit. A shell in every workspace, any language through Nix and a database open to any SQL client. Base44 hosts single-page apps only and rules out server rendering.
Base44. Up to 500 recorded sessions an app, with rage clicks flagged. Replit counts visitors and pages, and names session replay once in its docs, as a service you connect.
Replit. A backend you already run is a connector away. On Base44 the swap is the frontend, and the data layer stays theirs.
Replit. Agent 3 is stated at up to 200 minutes alone. Base44’s builder takes turns, queues seven messages and stops when you close the editor.
Nearly everything else. 43 of 54 rows come out the same, from the database to SSO, and the two entry plans cost the same. Only nine rows separate them, and two we couldn’t establish on one side.
The platform your app runs on is theirs, and you can’t swap it.
Five ✗ in its column are the same fact five times: no shell, one stack, single-page apps only with server rendering ruled out, no pointing at a backend you run, and a builder that stops when you close the tab. Eject hands you the code under a new app id and an empty database.
fine while the app lives there, and most do. If it has to run somewhere else one day, that day costs you the data layer.
Everything after launch is yours to assemble.
Four ✗ in its column are the same fact four times: no mailer, no workflow builder, no permission rules over your data, no session replay. Its own security post puts access checks in your app’s code, and its own comparison page hands the workflow canvas to n8n.
fine if the app is the product and you’ll connect the rest yourself. If the list of things it must do alone is already long, that list is what Base44 sells.
Base44 trains on your work unless you are Enterprise. Its terms reserve the right to train on customer data, and it documents no self-serve opt-out below Enterprise, where being opted out is the default.
Base44’s free plan is capped by the day, not the month. 25 build messages a month and no more than 5 in one day, so a long session stops and waits.
Replit’s end users sign in with Replit accounts. The built-in auth wraps Replit’s own login. Accounts that belong to your app mean setting up its Clerk option instead.
Replit’s ISO 27001 is its cloud provider’s, not its own. SOC 2 Type 2 is Replit’s. Its docs claim ISO 27001 for the platform underneath. Base44 states both as its own.
Base44 counts two allowances and Replit bills hosting past the plan, so both bills change with use, and neither is a number we can fix here. Every link here opens the vendor’s own live page and you read today’s numbers. The two “Start building free” buttons are affiliate links (disclosed below).
Readers who kept editing a Base44 or Replit app past the first build know which one stayed easy. Say what you asked for on the tenth change, and what it did to the thing that already worked.
Switching from drag-and-drop? Start here.
Base44 wins on automations and app-store publishing.
If you might open the code, read this one.
Build through AI chat, or edit your app’s rules visually.
All four, and the one question that splits them.