The short answer: Emergent’s paid entry plan is $20 a month for 100 credits and Lovable’s is $25 for 100, but the credits are not the same unit and the hosting rules differ. Emergent’s help pages say each deployed app costs 50 credits a month, which takes half of the entry plan’s allowance before you build anything. Lovable draws hosting from the same balance after a 20-credit monthly Cloud grant, with no fixed per-app charge. Neither vendor publishes how many credits a given feature costs on Emergent, so the cheaper sticker price does not prove the cheaper app.
Plans side by side
| Attribute | Emergent | Lovable |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, 10 credits a month; no GitHub, no deployments, no custom domain | $0; 5 daily build credits (up to 30 a month); Git sync included |
| Entry paid | Standard $20 (or $17 a month billed annually): 100 credits | The 100-credit tier at $25 (or $21 billed annually) |
| Next step | Pro $200 ($167 billed annually): 750 credits, 1M context | The 200-credit tier at $50 |
| Team plans | Business and Enterprise, custom | Business from $50 for 100 credits |
| Extra credits | $0.20 each: 100 for $20, 500 for $100 | $0.30 each on Pro, $0.60 on Business |
| Do top-ups expire? | Never | After 12 months |
| Monthly credits unused | Reset each billing cycle | Expire 2 months after issue (monthly plans) |
Sources: Emergent pricing and Emergent’s plans and credits page for Emergent; Lovable’s credits and usage docs for Lovable; checked 2 October 2026. Our pricing index holds the same plan prices.
The hosting line that changes the sum
Emergent’s help page lists “Cloud deployments (50 credits/month per app)” among what credits pay for, and repeats it under Deployment Costs: 50 credits a month per deployed app, covering managed production infrastructure, uptime monitoring, SSL and custom domains. Credits are worth $0.20 each on Standard ($20 for 100) and on top-ups, so one live app costs 50 x $0.20 = $10 a month in credits. A Standard plan with one deployed app therefore leaves 50 credits a month for building.
Lovable has no equivalent flat rate. Its Cloud usage (database, storage, network, compute) varies with the app, and the first 20 credits each month are a grant. Lovable also says its monthly Cloud and AI grants are a temporary offering that may change. For a quiet app that makes Lovable’s hosting cheaper to start with; for a busy one it can exceed 50 credits. See our Lovable app cost calculator for the build side of the arithmetic.
Emergent adds that deployments stay active after you cancel as long as the account holds 50 credits, and that when credits reach zero you can still view code and deployments but cannot generate code, run tests, deploy or use AI debugging. Compare this with Lovable’s rule in what happens when AI builder credits run out.
Export and ownership
- Emergent: the Save to GitHub button pushes a project to a new or existing repository with automatic commit messages, and Pull from GitHub brings a repository back in; branches and pull requests work as normal GitHub flows. The help page lists GitHub integration as a Standard and Pro feature, and the free column shows none. Emergent’s homepage says users own the generated code and can host it anywhere.
- Lovable: two-way GitHub sync, where each change flows to the repository and back; see Lovable’s GitHub integration and the route map in AI app builder lock-in and export. Git sync is included on its free plan.
If staying free of lock-in matters most, note that Lovable gives you Git sync at $0 and Emergent asks for a paid plan.
What neither vendor tells you
- Credits per task on Emergent. The plans page says everything from chat prompts to full app generation consumes credits, but publishes no examples. Lovable publishes illustrative costs (0.5 credits to change a button colour, 2.0 for a landing page). Without a rate card you cannot compare the two on feature cost, only on what you pay per credit.
- The free Emergent allowance. The help page gives free users 10 credits a month and no deployments, but does not say what 10 credits buy.
- Custom domain on Emergent. Emergent’s help page marks custom domains as available on Standard and Pro and not on Free; the pricing page does not state it.
Which to pick
- You want the cheapest way to host one small app and your usage is steady: Emergent Standard, remembering that 50 of the 100 credits go to the deployment.
- You want published costs per kind of request and Git sync at no charge: Lovable.
- You prefer credits that never expire: Emergent’s top-ups.
- You are comparing more builders: see Lovable alternatives and the best AI app builders.
Method note
Researched from Emergent’s pricing and help pages and Lovable’s documentation; checked 2 October 2026. The $10 hosting figure is arithmetic on Emergent’s own numbers. We did not build the same app on both and compare credit use; no such test is claimed.