Bolt.new Review

Bolt.new is StackBlitz's browser app builder: you describe a site or app, an agent writes the project, and Bolt Cloud can publish it without a separate host. Developers keep comparing it with Lovable, v0, and Replit in the vibe coding set.

The buying question is the monthly bill, once the token allotment, the hosting cap, and a second teammate show up. Whether the chat can scaffold a page is the wrong test.

This review prices the public cards, the higher token steps documented in Bolt's billing help, and a five-seat and twenty-seat Teams bill built from those rates. It marks where a shared-credit builder, a Vercel-shaped generator, a full IDE, or a cheaper yearly starter is the better buy.

Solo developers who want a hosted prototype are the fit, and a team that expects one pool of usage is not. Read the bill for one builder before you multiply it by seats.

Bolt.new is a browser app from StackBlitz: you prompt an agent, preview the project, edit it in Code view, and publish straight to bolt.host. Nothing to install matters when you need to share a prototype before you pick a host.

Bolt Cloud handles hosting, the domain, and the database inside that project. Bolt Database is on every plan, including free, so a first version does not need an outside database.

Connecting Supabase requires Pro or Teams when that backend is already your plan. You can publish the same project to Netlify when the domain already lives there.

The commercial-use page says the code you create is yours, including a product you charge for, so a paid app can ship. Free sites keep a Made in Bolt badge and cannot take a custom domain, so a launch on your own URL is a paid plan.

A project starts from a prompt, a Figma file, a GitHub repo, or a team template, so the first session need not be a blank chat. Standard is the only free agent, and the efficient choice when the task is already defined.

Max, for larger codebases and less defined tasks, requires a paid plan, so a vague rebuild should not stay on free. Forge is left off Teams and Enterprise, even when it sits in the picker on open-source models, so a team plan does not add that agent.

Most token use comes from Bolt reading the project files, so a larger repo costs more per message than a short landing page. Edits in Code view and restores from version history do not spend tokens, while prompts in Plan mode and in the build flow do.

Free accounts get 300,000 tokens a day plus a separate monthly grant, and neither bucket rolls forward, so an unused day is gone. Paid tokens reset on the renewal date, and unused ones stay usable for two months while the subscription remains paid.

A new account cannot start free Forge, because extra Pro access has ended and new Lite sign-ups are closed. Anyone already on Lite keeps $9/mo, a grandfathered rate a new buyer cannot start.

Prices below were read on October 17, 2026. Bolt's cards are on Bolt pricing, the higher steps on Bolt billing, and caps on Bolt Cloud hosting plans. Competitor rates are on Lovable's plan docs, v0 pricing, Replit pricing, and Base44 pricing.

One builder who pays Pro monthly for a year spends $300. Billing help prices the yearly card at $216, which is $84 less than twelve monthly payments, so month to month costs more for the same plan.

The pricing page says yearly billing saves up to 28% on that entry card, not on every higher step. Teams drops to $27 per member on the yearly card, a smaller cut, so a team saves less by prepaying.

Five people on Teams cost $150/mo monthly and $135/mo on the yearly card, a small saving that still grows with headcount. Twenty people cost $600/mo monthly, or $6,480 for a year at the yearly per-member rate, which is a team budget.

Those seats do not share tokens, so one builder is cheaper on the solo plan. Extra seats buy admin controls rather than more generation for that person.

Billing help names Pro 50 at $50/mo for a larger monthly allotment, and Pro 100 for 55M tokens at the step above it. The annual example for that Pro 50 allotment is $540/year if you will stay on the step. Pro 200 is named in a downgrade example and publishes no list price, so leave it out of a budget.

Token reloads, on the highest monthly Pro plan or any annual plan, do not expire. The price shows only inside the subscription screen, so a top-up cannot be costed from the public page.

Paid hosting can add bandwidth up to a cap you set. No per-gigabyte rate is published, so the overage stays unknown until you are already subscribed.

Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 157 app builders as of October 16, 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan is $25/mo across the 42 that publish a price, on the app builders ranking. Bolt's monthly Pro card sits on that median. Profiles: Bolt, Lovable, v0, Replit, and Base44.

Bolt.new fits a solo developer who wants a hosted prototype and will stay near the entry allotment. Yearly Pro is the clean bill for that person: a custom domain, no badge, Max, and rollover, without a second seat.

It also fits a founder shipping a campaign page who would otherwise open a separate host and a separate database for a first version. That buyer is avoiding extra accounts, not shopping for a team plan.

Skip it when the team expects one shared pool of usage. Lovable bills the workspace, not the seat, so a teammate does not add a charge the way a Bolt seat does. Skip a Next.js app that already deploys on Vercel, because v0 is built to land there.

Skip it when you want an IDE, database rollback, and hosting on one login. That is the Replit case, rather than a chat beside a preview: see Replit.

Cursor and GitHub Copilot fit when the repo already exists, since they sit in the editor and do not publish a Bolt site. The Cursor and GitHub Copilot reviews cover that editing job.

An annual downgrade, including a move from yearly Pro back to monthly, waits until the renewal. That wait can leave you on the higher price for most of a year after you have already decided to step down.