Last updated: 2026-06-15
Bolt.new builds full-stack apps from text prompts in your browser via WebContainers. Free plan gives 1M tokens/month; Pro is $25/mo for 10M tokens, no daily cap
Bolt.new is StackBlitz's AI app builder that turns text prompts into full-stack web apps running entirely in the browser via WebContainers. The free plan includes 1 million tokens per month (300K daily cap), while Pro costs $25/month for 10 million tokens, custom domains, and AI image editing. Teams costs $30 per member per month. It supports MCP connectors for GitHub, Linear, Notion, and Jira.
Bolt.new is an AI-powered, browser-based full-stack development platform built by StackBlitz, the company behind the WebContainers technology that runs a complete Node.js environment inside a web browser tab. It launched in 2024, shortly after Anthropic released Claude 3.5 Sonnet made zero-shot code generation reliable enough to power a product like it. You describe an app in plain English, and Bolt's AI agent writes the React, Vite, or Expo code, installs dependencies, runs the dev server, and shows a live preview, all without any local setup. The platform works by combining an AI coding agent with WebContainers, so generated code does not just sit in a sandbox file tree, it actually builds and runs. Bolt v2, released in October 2025, added agentic behavior: if a build fails, the agent reads the error and attempts a fix before the user even asks. The 2026 release added Bolt Cloud, which bundles databases, authentication, file storage, edge functions, analytics, and hosting directly into the platform, plus Figma import so designs can be dropped into chat as a visual reference, and AI image editing inside the chat interface. Bolt.new is best for solo founders, students, and product designers turning an idea or a Figma file into a working demo in minutes. MCP-based Connectors give the AI live access to GitHub, Notion, Linear, Jira, Sentry, Miro, Granola, and Context7 during a build, and custom remote MCP servers can be added as Connectors too. It is less suited to teams needing production-grade backends, since complex apps often still require external services like Supabase or Firebase, and to teams shipping native iOS or Android apps, since WebContainers cannot run Xcode, Android Studio, or Expo's EAS build pipeline. Pricing starts with a free plan offering 1 million tokens per month (300,000 daily cap) with Bolt branding and a 10MB upload limit. The Pro plan costs $25 per month for 10 million tokens, no daily cap, custom domains, SEO tools, and removed branding. Teams costs $30 per member per month, and Enterprise is custom-priced with SSO and audit logs. Annual billing saves up to 28%. StackBlitz was founded in 2017 by Eric Simons and Albert Pai in San Francisco and has raised $135 million in total funding, including a $105 million Series B in January 2025 led by Emergence Capital and GV. An open-source fork, bolt.diy, lets developers run the same prompt-to-app workflow with any LLM of their choice.
Free plan: $0/month, 1M tokens/month (300K daily cap), Bolt branding, 10MB uploads. Pro: $25/month, 10M tokens/month, no daily cap, custom domains, SEO tools, AI image editing, removed branding, 100MB uploads. Teams: $30/member/month, adds centralized billing, admin controls, and private NPM registry. Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO, audit logs, and dedicated support. Annual billing saves up to 28%, and unused tokens roll over on paid plans.
Bolt.new is an AI-powered, browser-based full-stack development platform built by StackBlitz, the company behind the WebContainers technology that runs a full Node.js environment inside a web browser. Launched in 2024 shortly after Anthropic released Claude 3.5 Sonnet, it lets anyone type a plain-English description of an app and get back working React, Vite, or Expo code with a live preview. The AI agent writes the code, installs dependencies, runs the dev server, and can deploy the result to Netlify, all without leaving the browser tab. StackBlitz itself was founded in 2017 by Eric Simons and Albert Pai and has raised $135 million in total funding, including a $105 million Series B in January 2025. Bolt v2, released in October 2025, added agentic behavior so the AI can read build errors and attempt fixes on its own. It is most often used for rapid prototypes, MVPs, and learning projects rather than finished production systems.
Bolt.new has four pricing tiers. The Free plan costs $0 and includes 1 million tokens per month with a 300,000 token daily cap, Bolt branding on hosted sites, and a 10MB file upload limit. The Pro plan costs $25 per month and includes 10 million tokens per month with no daily cap, removed branding, custom domains, SEO tools, AI image editing, a 100MB upload limit, and a choice of database provider. The Teams plan costs $30 per member per month and adds centralized billing, team-level access management, granular admin controls, and private NPM registry support. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes SSO, audit logs, compliance support, a dedicated account manager, and 24/7 priority support. Annual billing on Pro and Teams plans saves up to 28% versus paying monthly. Unused tokens on paid plans roll over to the next month.
Bolt.new's core feature is prompt-to-app generation: you describe what you want and the AI writes a complete React or Vite project, installs dependencies, and shows a live preview running in WebContainers, a browser-based Node.js runtime. Bolt Cloud, added in 2026, bundles built-in databases, authentication, file storage, edge functions, analytics, and hosting so apps can go from prototype to backend-connected product without leaving Bolt. Figma import lets you drop a design file directly into the chat so the AI builds from a visual reference instead of a text description alone. MCP-based Connectors give Bolt live access to GitHub, Notion, Linear, Jira, Sentry, Miro, Granola, and Context7, plus support for custom remote MCP servers. Team Templates let teams turn an existing project into a reusable starter to standardize new builds. The agent can also read failed build errors and attempt fixes automatically before you intervene.
Yes, Bolt.new has a usable free plan that does not require a credit card to start. The free tier provides 1 million AI tokens per month with a 300,000 token daily limit, which is enough for small experiments and single-page prototypes. Free-tier projects are hosted with visible Bolt branding and are capped at 10MB file uploads, and there is no custom domain support. Heavier projects exhaust the daily token cap quickly, especially during debugging cycles where fixing a single bug can consume tens of thousands of tokens. Once the free allowance runs out, generation pauses until the daily or monthly reset, or until you upgrade. For ongoing development work, most users move to the $25 per month Pro plan, which removes the daily cap and branding. There is no separate time-limited trial beyond the recurring free monthly allowance.
Lovable is the closest direct competitor, generating React and Supabase apps from prompts with a visual editor and automatic GitHub sync from the first prompt, and its paid plan also starts around $25 per month. Choose Lovable over Bolt.new if you want built-in version control and a more polished visual editing layer for non-technical founders. V0 by Vercel is a frontend-focused generator best suited to teams already deployed on Vercel who want polished UI components rather than a full backend. Replit is a broader cloud IDE with AI Agent capabilities across more than 50 programming languages, making it a better fit for developers who want a persistent collaborative workspace rather than a disposable browser prototype. Windsurf and Cursor target professional developers who want AI assistance inside a full code editor with more control over architecture than a one-shot app generator provides. Bolt.new's advantage over all of these is WebContainers, which runs the entire dev environment in the browser with zero setup.
Bolt.new is best for solo founders, indie hackers, and students who want to turn an idea into a working demo within minutes without installing any development tools. Product designers can drop a Figma file into the chat and get a close visual match without writing code themselves. Agencies use it to spin up quick client-facing prototypes and proof-of-concepts during the pitch stage. It is not well suited to enterprise teams that need HIPAA, ISO 27001, or formal AI-Act compliance documentation, since only StackBlitz's platform-level SOC 2 certification is publicly confirmed. It is also a poor fit for teams that need to ship native iOS or Android apps, because WebContainers cannot run Xcode, Android Studio, or Expo's EAS build pipeline, so generated React Native code still needs an external build environment. Developers maintaining large, complex codebases of 15-20 or more components report degraded context retention and rising token costs, making Bolt better suited to greenfield projects than long-term maintenance.
Bolt.new does not publish a general-purpose developer API for embedding its code-generation engine into third-party products. Instead, its primary extensibility layer is MCP, the Model Context Protocol, through a feature called Connectors. Bolt ships with built-in Connectors for GitHub, Notion, Linear, Miro, Sentry, Context7, Granola, and Jira, letting the AI read pages, pull tasks, and create issues during a build. Users can also add any tool that exposes a remote MCP server as a custom Connector by supplying the server URL and transport type, either HTTP or SSE. Generated projects can be exported to GitHub as full repositories, giving developers a path to their own CI/CD and APIs outside Bolt. For teams that need API-driven backends, Bolt Cloud's edge functions and database integrations, including Supabase and Firebase options, provide the closest equivalent. There is no published Bolt.new REST API for programmatic project generation as of 2026.
Both Bolt.new and Lovable generate full-stack web apps from natural-language prompts and price their entry paid plans around $25 per month, so the choice comes down to workflow rather than cost. Lovable pushes every change to a connected GitHub repository automatically, giving non-technical founders real version control from the first prompt, while Bolt.new's GitHub export is a manual step. Bolt.new's edge is WebContainers, which runs a complete Node.js environment in the browser for instant live previews, plus its 2026 additions of Figma import, AI image editing, and Bolt Cloud's bundled database and hosting stack. Lovable's visual editor is generally considered more polished for direct UI tweaking without touching code. Both platforms share a common weakness: AI-driven edits can unexpectedly rewrite or break unrelated parts of an app, and both rely on token-based pricing that can escalate quickly on complex projects. Pick Bolt.new if you want the deepest in-browser dev environment and MCP connector support; pick Lovable if automatic GitHub sync and a visual editor matter more to you.