Vibe coding: who is building software without engineers, and what they buy

A founder with an idea, an operations lead with a spreadsheet, a designer with a prototype: none of them needs an engineering team to get working software any more. They describe what they want, and an AI app builder writes it, hosts it and puts a database behind it. That buyer is new, and a crowded field of vendors is chasing it.

This piece covers the vendors, not the apps built with them. We checked 21 app builders against their own websites and pricing pages on 25 September 2026, and profile 20 of them here, grouped by what each one sells.

The short version

• →The field splits into four groups: prompt-to-app builders, no-code and hosting platforms adding AI, a builder for design teams, and internal tool builders.
• →What you buy is the stack, not the code. Many builders here bundle hosting, a database and user sign-in, so the product is a running app rather than a file of code.
• →Most charge by usage, not by person. Credits, messages or tokens are the common unit, and two vendors say outright that they have moved away from per-seat pricing.
• →The field is consolidating and pruning itself. Wix acquired Base44, Create renamed itself Anything, and Google is shutting down Firebase Studio.

Prompt-to-app builders

These are the products most people mean by vibe coding: you describe the app in a chat and the builder produces it, usually with hosting included.

Lovable says "Describe what you want in plain language and Lovable builds it: full-stack apps, websites and internal tools", with a database and user login available through Lovable Cloud. It has been buying too: it acquired Molnett in November 2025 and acquired Sutro in September 2026. Bolt.new, from StackBlitz, invites you to "create stunning apps & websites by chatting with AI", and its Bolt Cloud adds hosting, databases and authentication. Replit says "Describe what you want. Replit builds it." and builds in authentication, database, hosting and monitoring. v0, from Vercel, moved from v0.dev to v0.app in August 2025 and deploys to Vercel.

Base44 builds apps "with backend, auth, payments, and hosting already built in", and was acquired by Wix in June 2025. Anything, which launched in August 2025 as the new name for the builder previously called Create, builds mobile apps and websites and can submit to the App Store. Emergent builds full-stack web and mobile apps. Rocket calls itself a "Vibe Solutioning platform" and sells market research and competitor tracking alongside the builder. Softgen includes managed Supabase and one-click Vercel deployment. Same builds websites by chat. Dualite, whose registered office is in Jodhpur, India, builds web and mobile apps with authentication and a backend database.

Google offers AI Studio, which builds apps with Gemini and, per its documentation, deploys them to Cloud Run. It is also shutting down Firebase Studio: new sign-ups stopped on 22 June 2026, and the product sunsets on 22 March 2027, with users pointed to Google AI Studio or Google Antigravity.

No-code and hosting platforms adding AI

Some of the most established names arrived from no-code or web hosting, and now put an AI builder in front of what they already had.

Bubble describes itself as "the only no-code AI app builder" and generates the interface, backend and logic, with submission to the iOS and Android stores. WeWeb, whose registered office is in Paris, builds production web apps with a backend builder and its own hosting. Hostinger, headquartered in Vilnius, launched its AI Builder in August 2026, merging its Website Builder and Horizons into one product. Macaly, made by Langtail, sells "the all-in-one AI platform for founders and small businesses".

A builder for design teams

Figma Make sells to a design team inside a company rather than to a founder on their own. It turns prompts into prototypes and web apps that stay visually editable, and says shipping straight to production is coming soon.

Internal tool builders

The oldest version of this idea is software for a company's own staff. Retool builds internal tools on live production data, with a self-hosting option. Glide turns spreadsheets into "apps & agents you can trust to run your business", sold to operators.

How these companies charge

Across these builders, you will meet three pricing patterns:

• →Subscription with credits, messages or tokens. The most common pattern. Lovable, Base44, Emergent, Anything, Softgen, Same, Glide and others include a monthly allowance of credits, messages or tokens. Lovable says it prices "not by seats", and Rocket says "No more per-seat pricing".
• →Per person, with AI on top. Figma charges per seat with bundled AI credits. Retool charges per builder and per internal user. v0 charges per user with included credits.
• →Usage-based. Replit offers effort-based, pay-as-you-go pricing alongside its plans, and Bubble bundles workload units that scale with how much an app does.

The practical effect is that your bill follows how much you build and how much your app is used, not how many people are on the team. That is easier to start with and harder to forecast.

What to ask before you build on one

1. 1.Can you take the code with you? If the builder hosts the app, the database and the sign-in, ask what leaving looks like before you have customers on it.
2. 2.What does a busy month cost? Credits spent while building and usage from real users can both grow. Ask for the pricing at ten times your current use.
3. 3.Who owns this builder, and will it still be here? Base44 now belongs to Wix, and Google is sunsetting Firebase Studio. Neither is a reason to avoid a vendor. Both are reasons to ask.
4. 4.Who fixes it when it breaks? The builder writes the code. Someone still has to understand it when a customer finds a bug.

If you sell one of these products, those are the questions a founder asks before choosing, and the ones an operator's IT team asks later.

How we did this

We checked 21 builders against their own websites and pricing pages on 25 September 2026 and profile 20, described the way each describes itself. We left out Tempo, which now sells to teams that already have engineers and a codebase. Ownership changes and renames come from the companies' own announcements. The list covers the builders we examined, not the whole market.

If something here is out of date or wrong about your company, tell us and we will correct it with the source.