Read them in order, or jump to the one you need.
They're designed to hand off to each other: prototype an idea, graduate to a real editor, then put it online. Start anywhere.
Which builder should you start in?
A tour of the big AI app builders — Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Base44 — what each is best at, and the question most people forget: how hard is it to get your code out later?
- Pick a platform in 10 seconds
- Beginner-friendliness, side by side
- Lock-in & code portability, ranked
Editors, AI agents & what to pay
VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity — and the agents inside them: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini. Three stacked decisions, untangled, plus the part that actually costs money.
- Editor vs. agent vs. plan
- Where the $20 plans run out
- Why to mostly avoid pay-per-use
How to actually ship the apps you build
Getting a coded app out of your editor and onto the internet — where to host it, how to store data, how to lock it behind a login, and how to share files with the right people.
- The five layers of a live app
- Hosting, databases & auth, picked for you
- Files behind a login, done right
Pricing and free tiers across every tool here move fast — treat the figures as a 2026 snapshot and confirm on each platform's own site before you commit a real project. The shapes and the trade-offs hold up far longer than the dollar amounts.