How much does Emergent cost?
Every Emergent plan in dollars, plus what a credit and a live app actually cost you.
Short answer: Emergent has a free plan with 10 credits a month. Standard costs $20 a month ($17 billed annually) for 100 credits, and Pro jumps to $200 a month for 750 credits. The catch: every agent action spends credits, and each live app takes at least 50 credits a month for hosting. Publish one app on Standard and half your allowance is gone before you change a single screen.
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What each Emergent plan costs
Emergent sells credits, not projects. Each plan gives you a monthly pool, and every agent action (writing code, running tests, publishing) draws from it. To compare plans, look at the price per credit: it runs from $0.17 (Standard, annual) to $0.27 (Pro, monthly). Yes, the most expensive plan has the most expensive credit.
Monthly price in USD, before tax. Annual price first, monthly price underneath.
Free
To explore the builder
No credit card
- 10 credits a month
- Web and mobile builds, advanced models
- One-click LLM integration
- No top-ups available
Standard
For a first real project
$20 monthly ($0.20 a credit)
- 100 credits a month
- Private project hosting
- GitHub integration, task forking
- Top-ups available
Pro
For building every week
$200 monthly ($0.27 a credit)
- 750 credits a month
- 1M context window, ultra thinking
- Editable system prompt, custom agents
- Faster machines, priority support
Business
For teams
After a demo
- Everything in Pro
- Role-based access, SSO
- Shared team workspaces
- Real-time co-editing
Enterprise
For large orgs
After a demo
- Everything in Business
- Per-user credit limits
- Audit logs, self-hosted database
- Deploy in your own cloud (VPC)
Top-ups
Extra credits
Price shown in your account
- Paid plans only
- Never expire
- Spent after plan credits
- Good for launch months
Emergent's official pricing as of 2026, same figures as our full review. Annual billing saves $36 a year on Standard and $396 on Pro. The old Team plan ($300 for 1,250 shared credits), still quoted on many sites, is gone: Business, on custom pricing, replaced it. Top-up unit prices aren't on the public pricing page; you see them in your account before you buy.
Three things that inflate your bill
Emergent's sticker price sits right next to its rivals. The difference hides in the credit docs, which most pricing roundups skip. Three rules can double what you pay.
Hosting is paid in credits, every month
Publishing an app costs a flat 50 to 1,100 credits a month, depending on tier (Starter, Launch, Grow, Scale, Elite), taken from the same balance you build with. On Standard, one app on the lowest tier eats half your 100 credits. Two live apps and your plan does little more than keep them online.
Tests and fixes cost credits too
Emergent bills code generation, but also automated tests, API calls, background jobs and heavy database work. When the agent loops on a bug, every attempt costs. One customer saw a task estimated at 6 to 9 credits come in at 37. Maxx mode, which plans harder before coding, uses significantly more credits than a regular prompt.
Plan credits expire every cycle
Your monthly pool resets to the cap each billing cycle, no rollover. Top-ups never expire, and Emergent spends expiring credits first. So buying a bigger plan "for headroom" is wasted in slow months. A small plan plus occasional top-ups fits uneven usage much better.
- Count your live apps: each one costs at least 50 credits a month.
- Set a per-session budget before any big task.
- Save Maxx mode for genuinely hard bugs.
- Buy top-ups instead of jumping to Pro for one busy month.
- Watch Credit Usage yourself: the email alert only fires at 20% left.
How we work out the real cost
We start from Emergent's official pricing and its docs on credits and publishing, the same ones our full review uses. For each profile we add build credits (never from a made-up rate card) and the hosting fee for live apps. Then we pick the cheapest plan that covers the total, top-ups included. We didn't buy a subscription: we compared pricing, docs and user reports.
- BuildingCode, tests, API calls, debuggingCredits
- HostingCredits per live app per month50 to 1,100
- Credit priceDepends on plan and billing$0.17 to $0.27
- Outside costsApp stores, custom domain+ $
Estimates based on public pricing and user reports. Your usage depends on how precise your prompts are and how many fixes you need.
What you actually pay each month
Three common setups. For each, we count build credits plus hosting, then keep the cheapest plan that holds. We only count what Emergent's docs put a number on: the hosting fee (at least 50 credits per app per month) and each plan's allowance. Build credits depend on your prompts, so we don't invent a rate card for them.
USD per month, before tax, monthly billing (annual in brackets).
Prototype
A demo to show, nothing live
- Free to explore
- Standard once you pass 10 credits
- No hosting fee while nothing is published
One live app
A published MVP, a few edits a month
- Launch month: the build can run past 100 credits, so budget a top-up
- After that: 50 hosting credits plus 50 for edits
- Standard holds if you batch your requests
Ongoing product
Several apps, new features weekly
- 750 credits, at least 100 of them for two live apps
- Top-ups on redesign months
- Past 1,000 credits a month, ask about Business
Worked out from Emergent's 2026 pricing. Top-up prices aren't public; they show in your account before you buy. App store fees (Apple $99 a year, Google Play $25 once) and your domain aren't included.
Emergent pricing vs. five rivals
Entry price of each AI app builder's first paid plan, with the rule that matters most: what happens to credits you don't use. Ratings come from our full reviews.
First paid plan, USD per month, monthly billing (annual in brackets).
Emergent
Labs rating 3.4/5
- 100 credits, lost at cycle end
- Hosting paid in credits
- Full web and mobile app, database included
Lovable
Labs rating 4.1/5
- 100 credits, valid for two months
- 5 bonus credits every day
- Most polished front end
Bolt.new
No full review yet
- 10 million tokens
- Unused tokens roll over
- Free tier: 1 million tokens a month
Replit
Labs rating 3.8/5
- Core: $20 of usage credits
- Effort-based agent billing
- Spending cap you can set
Base44
Labs rating 3.6/5
- Starter: 100 message credits
- 2,000 integration credits
- Code export from Builder up
Bubble
Labs rating 4.2/5
- Starter, web and mobile
- Billed in workload units
- No code export
Prices from official pricing pages in 2026, same figures as our full reviews. Bolt.new has no full review with us yet: official price, no rating. Emergent is the only builder here that bills hosting from the same credit pool you build with.
Six settings to cut your Emergent bill
Settings straight from Emergent's docs, plus the mistakes that keep showing up in user reviews.
Set a per-session budget before every big task
Biggest saverThe task form lets you cap credits for a session. When the agent hits the cap, it pauses instead of looping on a bug. That one setting prevents the most common horror story: a whole month's credits burned in a single debugging spiral.
- Where
- Task form
- Effect
- Pauses at the cap
Shut down apps nobody uses
Recurring savingEvery live app costs at least 50 credits a month. Shutting one down only stops its hosting fee: code, chat history and balance stay. Heads-up: the custom domain gets removed, and a republished app restarts on the base tier. Your database isn't deleted, so clean it up separately if needed.
- Saves
- 50+ credits per app
- Redo
- Custom domain
Top up instead of upgrading to Pro
There's nothing between Standard and Pro: the price goes up 10x for 7.5x the credits. If you only overshoot 100 credits now and then, a top-up costs less and never expires. Move to Pro only if you drain your balance every month or need the 1M context window.
- Standard → Pro
- 10x the price
- Credits
- 7.5x
Keep Maxx mode for hard problems
Maxx makes the agent plan longer and run deeper checks. Worth it on tricky architecture or a stubborn bug. On a color tweak or a form field it just burns credits, so leave it off by default.
- Cost
- Significantly higher
- Use for
- Bugs, architecture
Write the full spec before you prompt
A vague prompt triggers back-and-forth, and every round costs. Describe the screen, fields, rules and error cases in one go. Batch visual edits into one request instead of ten small ones. Users who work this way report far more predictable bills.
- Method
- One request, many edits
- Avoids
- Back-and-forth
Connect GitHub and finish elsewhere
From Standard up, your code syncs to GitHub. Once the app stands up, the last polish is often faster and cheaper in an AI code editor. The sync is one-way: what you change outside doesn't flow back into Emergent.
- From
- Standard
- Direction
- Emergent to GitHub
Do you make a tool in this category? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
So, is Emergent expensive?
Our take after comparing the pricing, the docs and user reports: the entry price is fair, but Emergent gets expensive fast once you let the agent fix things on its own or run several apps.
Worth it if…
You want a complete app (screens, database, login, mobile build) from a description, without writing code. For one published MVP with a few edits a month, $20 Standard plus a launch-month top-up does the job. Next to a freelance developer's invoice, the gap is huge.
Too pricey if…
You iterate constantly, host several apps or debug by letting the agent spin. The jump from $20 to $200 with no tier in between hurts, and expiring credits punish uneven usage. For a polished front end used every week, Lovable often comes out cheaper.
Our advice
Start on Free to judge the builder, move to monthly Standard for your real project, and track usage for two cycles. Only commit to annual or Pro with those numbers in hand. Emergent scores 3.4/5 in our review, held back mostly by value for money.
- Free: 10 credits, enough to look around.
- Standard: $20 for 100 credits; one live app takes 50.
- Pro: $200 for 750 credits, the priciest credit on the grid.
- Top-ups: never expire, better than Pro for a one-off spike.
- Business and Enterprise: custom, for SSO and teams.
Price isn't the whole decision
Emergent pricing FAQ
How much does Emergent cost per month?
Emergent is $0 on Free (10 credits a month), $20 a month on Standard (100 credits) and $200 a month on Pro (750 credits). Billed annually, Standard drops to $17 and Pro to $167 a month. Business and Enterprise are custom quotes. The number that really sets your bill is how many credits your project burns, hosting included: one live app takes at least 50 credits a month, half of Standard.Is Emergent's free plan enough to build an app?
Not a full one. Ten credits a month lets you explore the builder and ship one or two small changes. Emergent's own docs say one full feature with tests and publishing can cost hundreds of credits. Free accounts also can't buy top-ups, so you need a paid plan the moment you run dry.Do unused Emergent credits roll over?
Plan credits don't: they reset to your plan's cap every billing cycle and the rest is gone. Top-up credits never expire, and Emergent always spends expiring credits first. One customer reported around 1,000 credits vanishing at the end of a cycle. If your usage is spiky, a small plan plus top-ups usually beats a big plan.How much does it cost to host an Emergent app?
Between 50 and 1,100 credits per app per month, depending on the publishing tier (Starter, Launch, Grow, Scale or Elite). That flat fee covers hosting, bandwidth, health checks and autoscaling, and it comes out of the same balance you build with. At the monthly Standard rate of $0.20 a credit, the lowest tier works out to about $10 per app per month.How many credits does an Emergent app need?
Emergent doesn't publish a per-feature rate: a prompt can cost a handful of credits for a visual tweak or hundreds for a full feature with tests and publishing. On the user side, one long-running project went past 3,700 credits, over $700. Set a per-session budget before any big task so the agent pauses at your cap.Can you get a refund from Emergent?
Don't count on it. Emergent doesn't publish a refund policy on its pricing page, and several customers describe refusals, even for unused credits. To stop billing, go to "Profile", "Account Settings", "Manage Plan", then "Cancel Plan", before your renewal date.Is Emergent cheaper than Lovable or Bolt?
At entry, slightly: $20 versus $25 for Lovable Pro and Bolt Pro. But Lovable credits stay usable for two months and Bolt rolls unused tokens over, while Emergent's plan credits expire each cycle and hosting is paid in credits. For steady use, Lovable or Bolt often ends up cheaper. For a full app with a database and a mobile build from one prompt, Emergent does more per request.Is Emergent's annual plan worth it?
Only if you build every month. Annual billing saves $36 a year on Standard and $396 on Pro, but your monthly credits still expire each cycle, so prepaying gives you no extra room in quiet months. Start monthly, track usage for two or three cycles, then switch if you drain your balance every time.
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