Is Lovable Worth It? Here's What to Use Instead
Is Lovable worth it if you already pay for Claude or ChatGPT? Usually not: Lovable Pro adds $25 a month (billed monthly) for a builder that picks the AI model for you, while your existing plan can build a site you own for roughly the price of a domain.
Is Lovable Worth It? Aaron and I Argue It Out
On October 14 I posted on X that Lovable is a scam, and so is every other AI website builder. It went viral, and Aaron Makelky came back on AI Rabbit Holes to argue with me about the word.
Fair warning on bias: I sell Claude Code products. One of them is my Claude Code Skills Stack, the skill files I run my own business on.
The post itself came from a Lovable ad I saw on the couch, sitting next to my two-month-old son. The pitch, as I read it: one prompt, one magical website.
My problem was everything the ad skipped. Does the site rank, get organic traffic or show up in AI answers?
Is Lovable a Scam? My Verdict After the Episode
Scam was too strong, and I said so on the recording.
Lovable takes your money and hands you working software. What fired me up was the marketing, which sells a magic button.
Aaron found the better word in the first two minutes. In his words, people can argue about "scam," but "you at least must admit you pay a tax if you use a tool like Lovable."
So is Lovable worth it? Here's my answer, with the conditions attached:
- Worth it: you pay for no AI plan today, you want a clickable prototype this afternoon, and you would rather not touch code at all.
- Not worth it: a Claude or ChatGPT subscription is already on your card, and the site has a job to do, like leads, sales or bookings.
On sticker price alone, the gap is small. Lovable Pro is $25 a month and Claude Pro is $20 (both billed monthly), so someone with no AI plan at all isn't overpaying by much.
That also corrects my own post, which said people pay "a premium for less usage." Usage per dollar can't be proven from either company's published numbers, so I'm dropping that line.
The Lovable Tax: Paying for AI Twice
The tax gets real when Lovable sits on top of a plan you already have. Aaron's read on the buyer: "the kind of person who pays for Lovable also has a GPT subscription or a Claude."
That's the point where the answer to "is Lovable worth it" flips, because you'd be paying for AI twice. Lovable's guide says it runs on Claude, and its August post on why it dropped the model picker says its own post-trained models now handle "a meaningful share of app-building work" too.
Either way, you don't choose. Its FAQ says Lovable picks the model behind every mode, "so you cannot pick a specific model for building."
What the extra $25 buys is the builder: the chat window, hosting and a backend wired up for you. For a site with a job to do, your existing AI plan plus free GitHub and Cloudflare accounts covers that work too.
One correction to my viral post: I guessed Lovable used "shittier models." Its guide names Claude, the same family I use every day, so my real complaint is that you can't pick the model.
Then there are credits. The Pro plan buys 100 monthly credits, and Lovable's pricing FAQ says credits "are not necessarily equal in value across different plans."
Different tasks also burn a different number of credits. So I asked the obvious question on the episode: what's a credit actually worth?
Why Aaron Quit Lovable
Aaron is the switch story here, not me. In summer 2025 he used Lovable as part of a group the company gave access to, and it was his first real taste of vibe coding.
A friend a few steps ahead of him kept texting: "Dude, just use Claude Code. What are you doing?" Then came the questions Aaron couldn't answer.
Where's the back end of your website? And where's the code at?
His honest answer was "I don't know, it's in Lovable."
Pretty soon he had a GitHub repo with his code, the site deployed on Cloudflare, and his Lovable account canceled.
Is Lovable worth it for someone who wants to keep building? Aaron's answer is to learn to build with the AI tool already on your card.
To be fair to Lovable, it offers two-way GitHub sync on every plan today. Its docs also say the backend and your data stay on Lovable Cloud until you move them yourself.
Aaron's other point is the one I'd steal. If he canceled Claude Code tomorrow and switched to Codex, his websites wouldn't care, because the code lives in his own repo, which is the whole case we made in our episode on using GitHub as a non-coder.
Lovable vs Claude Code: The Alternative We Both Use
Aaron and I landed on the same setup without copying each other. Neither of us is technical, and I didn't start using Claude Code or Codex until the beginning of 2026.
- Claude Code (included with Claude Pro) or Codex (included with ChatGPT Plus) writes the site.
- GitHub stores the code for free, with unlimited private repos.
- Cloudflare Pages hosts it on the free plan, which allows business sites.
- For a site like ours, a domain is the only new bill. Cloudflare sells a .com at cost, about $10.46 a year right now, and that rises a little when the .com registry raises its fee on November 1.
Aaron's math: "The only cost is the AI sub you already have." He does pay $5 a month for Cloudflare extras he barely uses, and figures 99% of his work would run on the free plan.
One limit worth knowing: Cloudflare's free services can't process card payments on the site itself, so send checkout to your payment processor's hosted page.
That screen is my Des Moines septic rank and rent site, which gets about three to five leads a week on this exact stack. The full walkthrough is in how I build a website with Claude.
So is Lovable worth it next to Claude Code? For a one-off prototype, maybe.
A site you'll keep editing for years is a different job. It's easier when the code and the backend are yours, and you can swap the AI agent anytime.
Show Me a Lovable Site That Makes Money
Aaron said the part Lovable's ads leave out: "no one builds a website to look at it on their own screen." A site exists to get leads, sales or bookings.
Google renders JavaScript, so a builder site can still rank there. Whether ChatGPT can read the page is a different story.
In my 749-site test of AI website builders on October 14, ChatGPT could quote 17 of 222 older-stack Lovable homepages (7.7%) when asked to read them, against 85.0% of 80 on Lovable's newer stack. Of the 302 Lovable sites sampled, 73.5% were still on the older stack.
If your project is on the newer one, that particular problem mostly goes away.
My challenge from the end of the episode still stands. Prove me wrong and send me a Lovable site generating a lot of money from organic traffic, though I doubt I'm wrong there.
Either way, my answer to "is Lovable worth it" doesn't depend on that challenge. If you already pay for Claude or ChatGPT, open that plan, ask it to build the site, and keep the code in your own GitHub account.
Is Lovable Worth It FAQs
Is Lovable a scam?
No. Lovable is a real product, and what you pay for gets you working web apps. The fair criticism is cost and control: Pro is $25 a month billed monthly, Lovable picks the AI model for you, and if you already pay for Claude or ChatGPT you may be paying for AI twice. Aaron Makelky's word for that is a tax.
Is Lovable worth it for beginners?
It can be, if you pay for no AI plan and want a clickable prototype fast. For a business site meant to bring in leads, a beginner can use Claude Code or Codex from the plan they already have. Expect the first build and deploy to take a while, and when a step fails, paste the error back into the AI and ask what to do next. Neither Aaron nor I came from a technical background.
What AI model does Lovable use?
Lovable's own guide says it runs on Claude, and its August 2026 blog post says its own post-trained models now handle a meaningful share of app-building work too. You can't choose: Lovable's FAQ says it picks the model behind each mode, so you cannot pick a specific model for building.
Can you move a Lovable site to GitHub?
Yes. Lovable offers two-way GitHub sync on every plan, so your code can live in your own repo. The catch is the backend: Lovable's docs say your data and anything still using Lovable Cloud keep running through Lovable until you migrate them yourself. Check that part before you cancel.