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Lovable vs Whacka

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Lovable starts at $25, Whacka at $3. Both have a free tier.

LovableDescribe an app and get a deployed full-stack projectWhackaDescribe an app in a sentence and it writes, hosts and publishes it with logins, database and payments wired

Side by side

FactLovableWhacka
CategoryVibe Coding & App GeneratorsVibe Coding & App Generators
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$25 month$3 week
Public APINoNo
PlatformsWebWeb
CompanyLovablewhacka, Inc.
Launched2023—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Lovable

The cleanest prompt-to-app experience for someone who cannot write React, and GitHub sync means you are not locked in — but 100 credits a month is less runway than it sounds once the app gets real.

Pros

  • Live preview after each change keeps iteration legible to non-developers
  • GitHub sync and Supabase mean the output is real, portable code
  • The free tier is enough to find out whether the idea works
  • Per-action credit costs are published, so estimating is possible

Cons

  • Free tier caps at 30 credits a month regardless of the daily grant
  • Debugging a bad generation can cost more credits than the original build
  • Opinionated stack — React front end, Supabase back end, little room to differ
  • No API for driving builds programmatically

Whacka

The runtime is the interesting part: auth, database, storage, push and realtime are included and never consume credits, so only code generation is metered. The end-user-pays model for in-app AI calls is genuinely unusual and keeps a popular app from bankrupting its builder. The trade-off is lock-in dressed as convenience — code export only arrives at $32/month, and free-tier apps go offline 14 days after publishing.

Pros

  • Database, storage, push, social login and realtime messaging never consume credits on any plan
  • Runtime AI calls inside published apps are billed to end users rather than the builder
  • Publishing is explicit and every version is retained and revertible
  • Pro ships native Android and iOS builds to Google Play and the App Store
  • Referral and visitor bonuses earn credits that stay valid 365 days and do not reset with the plan

Cons

  • Free-tier apps go offline 14 days after publishing, as do Weekly-tier apps
  • Code export and custom domains are gated behind the $32/month Pro tier
  • Starter's $8 is annual-only pricing; the monthly rate is higher
  • Credit cost per build round scales with change size, so budgeting is imprecise

Which one fits

Choose Lovable if you need

  • Founders and designers shipping a working prototype without a developer
  • Anyone who wants generated code exported to GitHub rather than held hostage
  • Small internal tools needing authentication and a database on day one

Choose Whacka if you need

  • Non-developers shipping a booking page, storefront or internal tool from a description
  • Testing an app idea end to end before committing to real development
  • Builders who want their app's AI usage billed to its users, not to them

More comparisons

Browse all Vibe Coding & App Generators →