Bolt

The choice comes down to three profiles: see which one fits you.

Who it is for. Bolt is made for people with an idea but no code: an entrepreneur with a service concept, a marketer with a landing page, a designer with a mockup. Describe it — get a working prototype with a database and payments, show it to people, test demand. The free plan is enough to try it out: a million tokens per month.

Who it is not for. If your project already lives in its own code — Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex are the right genre: they work in your repository, while Bolt builds in its sandbox. It honestly gives you the code — GitHub sync and full export — but the project still lives in its home.

Launching a business on generated code? Then someone who reads code is essential between “it built” and “it shipped”: apps in this category have common security vulnerabilities — exposed keys, an unsecured database. What to check is in section 6.

Just getting started? Have not built projects yet — start with the page “What is vibecoding”, Bolt will come in due time.

A good fit — start with section 3. If you are choosing between it and Lovable, see the decision point in 7.

Plans before building. Since August 2026, Bolt has had Plan Mode: discuss the concept and build plan without spending tokens on generation — then tell it to build.

Builds from words. Write what you need: "a studio site with class bookings and payments." Bolt generates the code, starts the environment, and immediately shows a live preview — you see the first version in a couple of minutes.

Handles the database and login. Since fall 2025, databases, user registration, and file storage have been built in: you do not need to build a separate backend for a prototype.

Builds from a mockup. Paste a link to a Figma frame — Bolt turns the mockup into a working page with the same grid and styles (a January 2026 feature).

Builds mobile too. From the same project — a React Native app: point your phone camera at the QR code and view it on your screen. Bolt does not create a finished binary for app stores — only a preview.

Publishes it itself. Press Publish — and the site goes live on built-in hosting with an address like name.bolt.host; you can connect your own domain on a paid plan. Before launch — a built-in security check (added in August 2026).

In our project. An honest note: this site is built by Claude Code and Codex coding agents, Bolt is not part of our workflow. This card is based on fresh research: every number was checked against primary sources on August 18.

Browser. Chrome and compatible browsers; Safari joined in summer 2026. Your computer can be weak — everything runs in the tab, no heavy hardware needed.

Mobile. Mobile preview is through the Expo Go app: Bolt shows a QR code, point your camera at it, and see your app on your screen.

Exit route. Your code is not locked in: two-way GitHub sync or archive export means the project can continue in any editor.

Record rise. Launched in October 2024, then $40 million in annual revenue within five months with a team of fewer than twenty people (founder Eric Simons, March 2025). It also reached three million sign-ups. No software company had ever grown faster.

Silence after the rise. Since March 2025, the company has not shared fresh figures, while the genre moved ahead: Lovable reached $500 million in annual revenue by June 2026, and Replit raised a round at a $9 billion valuation. Bolt went from race leader to playing catch-up.

A bold move - Microsoft. In May 2026, Bolt joined Microsoft Marketplace: enterprises buy it through their existing Microsoft agreements, and the agent can be called directly from Teams. The company says 75% of the Fortune 500 use the platform - its own figure, with no methodology.

Plans. Free gives a million tokens a month (no more than 300 thousand a day) and a "Made in Bolt" badge on the published site. Pro costs $25 a month for 10 million tokens, higher Pro tiers give more. Teams pay $30 per seat. Annual billing is up to 28% cheaper. Since September there is Lite at $9: the Forge agent only, seats handed out by waitlist.

Token math. Every generation eats tokens, and usage grows with the size of the project: a landing page costs tens of thousands of tokens per turn, a large app - hundreds of thousands. Unspent tokens on a paid plan live another month. Extra tokens can be bought only on the higher monthly Pro or on an annual plan.

The genre's main complaint. Bolt fixes its own mistakes with your tokens: you ask it to fix a small detail, it rewrites half the file, breaks something nearby, then fixes that too. On large projects, this cycle consumes millions of tokens. There is one remedy: discuss the plan in Plan Mode before building and ask for targeted changes.

payment page

Your code. Everything Bolt builds belongs to you - commercial use is explicitly allowed in its terms. You can take it all: GitHub or an archive.

What about privacy. The company policy collects prompts and code, but for the Standard and Max agents it does not say whether this goes into model training. An independent transparency index scored its disclosure 36 out of 100 (August 2026) - that is a score for how honest the documents are, not for a breach. The platform has no certifications like SOC 2.

Generated-code holes are the genre's main risk. Researchers scanned thousands of vibe-coding apps: common findings included access keys directly in page code and databases open for anyone to read. For a neighboring tool in the genre, this resulted in a 9.3 out of 10 vulnerability: other people's data could be read from 170 apps. In August 2026, Bolt added a security check before publishing - but it does not replace a person reviewing the code.

Third-party models. Bolt has no model of its own, and the service picks one itself: you choose the Standard or Max agent, not a model. From Sep 14 to Oct 14, 2026, the Forge agent is in preview on open models GLM 5.3, Kimi K3 and DeepSeek V4 Pro. Code from Forge is anonymized and shared with partners to train these models.

Insurance policy - open source. Bolt has an open-source version, bolt.diy (19.9 thousand stars on GitHub): the same mechanics, your own keys, any models. If the platform changes, the mechanics stay with the community. The last changes landed in the repository in February 2026.

If the backend has to run on Python, compare Bolt with the Emergent platform. Its card separately covers build and hosting credits.

Twins in concept, different fates. Both build an app from a description in words, and both start at $25. But in 2026 Lovable pulled ahead: $500 million in annual revenue by June and a $13.3 billion valuation after its August round, versus Bolt's last stated $40 million in revenue back in spring 2025.

Where Bolt is stronger. Everything runs in the browser without cloud sandboxes - hence the speed and support for weak hardware. The code is visible and editable throughout the process - for a developer, it is home rather than a black box. And only Bolt has the open bolt.diy version and mobile apps through Expo.

Where Lovable is stronger. The normie's path is smoother: fewer buttons, less code in sight, and a larger community and more templates. For a first prototype without ambitions to dig deeper, Lovable is the more beaten path today.

For a landing page or portfolio, you can compare Bolt with the Framer builder: there AI edits the site on a canvas, and publishing stays on Framer hosting. It is a different choice if you do not need downloadable code.

If you need a Python server and industrial ERP data, look at the fork in the Databutton card: its successor Riff uses FastAPI and targets manufacturing teams.