Lovable turns a plain-language description into a working, deployed web application. You describe what you want in chat, and it generates a full front end plus the backend pieces most prototypes need — a database, user sign-up and login, file storage — either on its own managed Lovable Cloud backend or on a Supabase project you connect.
The generated code is a conventional React/TypeScript codebase that syncs two-way with GitHub, so a project can start as a prompt and later be picked up by developers in a normal editor. Beyond chat there is Visual Edits for clicking an element and changing it directly, Plan Mode for reviewing the AI's intended approach before it writes anything, and Agent Mode for autonomous multi-step work.
The intended user is a founder, designer, product manager or solo developer who wants a functioning MVP in hours rather than a design mockup. Its main differentiator against prompt-to-UI tools like v0 is that authentication, data and deployment are wired up by default rather than left as follow-up work.
How cost actually works: usage is metered in credits consumed per message, not per project, so spend tracks how much back-and-forth a build takes. Lovable's own published examples run from 0.50 credits for "Make the button gray" to 2.00 for "Build a landing page with images". Plan Mode is a flat 1 credit per message, against the variable rate of Build mode. Credits expire — monthly plan credits two months after issue — so a large unused allowance is money lost rather than banked.
