Beginner guide

Pick your vibe coding stack

Written 2026-10-20. Prices below were read from vendor pages on 15 October 2026 and copied onto the tool pages. They were not re-checked for this guide. No hands-on test has been run.

You do not need five subscriptions to ship a first app. You need one door that matches the thing you are making, and you need to know what the free plan actually stops you from doing.

What you are actually choosing

A stack, here, is the smallest set of products that can take you from a sentence to a URL. Vibe coding is the loop around those products: you describe the outcome, the tool edits, you look, you ask for one smaller change. The vibe coding guide is the loop. This page is the shopping decision before you enter it.

Four jobs show up in the catalog. They are not a ranking. They are different doors, and opening the wrong one is the usual way a first afternoon gets wasted.

• App builders start a new web app from a description in the browser.
• Coding agents edit a folder, a repo, or a terminal you already have.
• Databases remember users, posts, or orders. The page in this set is Supabase.
• Hosting is the public URL. The page in this set is Vercel.

The quiz asks the same four questions and points at tool pages. It does not score quality. Use it if you would rather click than read. Use this page if you want the reason written out.

If you are brand new

Stay in the browser. You do not need Git, an editor, or a database on day one. Pick one builder that still accepts new users, describe a single page, and publish. The afternoon version of that plan is your first app with AI. The 2026 walkthrough is how to build an app without coding.

These free ceilings were on the vendor pages on 15 October 2026. A token, a credit, and a message are not the same unit. Do not convert them into each other.

• Bolt.new Free is $0, with 300,000 tokens a day and 1 million tokens a month, plus Bolt branding and no custom domain. Pricing page.
• Lovable Free grants 5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month. The docs say Free cannot download the code. Plan docs.
• v0 Free allows 7 messages a day and lists a Vercel deploy. Pricing page.
• Replit Starter is $0, with a daily Agent cap and one published app that comes down after 30 days. Starter plan.

Beginner fit on the tool cards is 5 for Bolt and Lovable, and 4 for v0 and Replit. That number is an editorial reading of how little the product assumes you already code. It is not a lab score. Bolt vs Lovable for beginners and the Bolt vs Lovable comparison stay on the published differences: Bolt meters tokens, Lovable meters workspace credits. Replit vs Bolt is the closer call when you want files and an editor in the same hosted workspace. Lovable vs v0 is the closer call when you expect a Vercel deploy and a per-user bill later.

A longer list of the free paths, including the ones that are a poor start, is Best free AI app builders (2026).

If you choose Bolt, the button below is the labeled affiliate link. Referred users get 20% off. vibestacklab may earn a commission. The prices above stay cited to Bolt's own pricing page, and the link does not change the fit. The disclosure is on the affiliate page.

If you already have a folder

Do not start over in a browser builder just because the homepage looks friendlier. A coding agent edits the project you already have. The coding agents category is Cursor, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Devin Desktop (the product formerly called Windsurf), GitHub Copilot, and Gemini CLI. Beginner fit in that set is mostly 2, with Copilot at 3, because those products assume a repo.

Match the surface you will actually open. Prices here are also from 15 October 2026.

• Cursor is a desktop editor. The vendor's list on that date starts at Free, then Plus at $8 a month for Grok models only. Third-party models are a higher tier, billed at API list price on top.
• GitHub Copilot Free is $0 with auto model selection and 2,000 completions a month. Pro is $10 a month.
• Gemini CLI is a terminal agent. A personal Google account on the individual Code Assist tier includes 1,000 model requests a day.
• Claude Code is not on the free Claude plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month when $200 is billed annually.
• Codex is included with ChatGPT plans rather than sold on its own. Plus is $20 a month.

The coding agent for Next.js page lists Cursor first because the public product is the editor, then Claude Code, then Codex. That order is a reading of product shape, not a measured winner. Copilot vs Cursor and Claude Code vs Codex are the side-by-side pages.

Database and hosting come later

A page that only shows information can be a static site. Add a database when you need to save users, posts, or orders. Supabase Free is $0, with two active projects, 500 MB of database, and a pause after one week idle. Pro starts at $25 a month. Those figures are from the pricing page on 15 October 2026. The database guide walks through the choice. Bolt's billing help, linked from the Bolt tool page, says a Supabase database on Bolt requires Pro or Teams.

Hosting is a separate question when the app already exists. Vercel Hobby is $0 for a personal, non-commercial project. Pro is $20 a month and includes a $20 usage credit. A client or business project is not the Hobby plan. App builders also publish their own URLs, with their own caps: Bolt's free plan includes hosting inside the token limit and shows Bolt branding, and Replit Starter's one published app comes down after 30 days. Those builder limits are not extra rows on the hosting page. Deploy your first app is the next read once a page exists.

One afternoon, in order

1. Write one sentence: who the page is for, and what they can do on it.
2. Write a second sentence: no login, no database, no second page.
3. Open one tool. If you are new, that tool is Bolt, Lovable, v0, or Replit. Not all four.
4. Paste the sentence. When it finishes, click every control yourself.
5. Ask for one change. Do not say "make it better."
6. Publish with the product's own button. Save the URL, the date, and the free limit you are near.
7. Keep keys out of the chat. The API key guide is the short version.

Stop when the free ceiling is in the way. Read that tool's pricing table before you buy. Switching products mid-prompt usually means starting the page over.

What to skip

Do not start in Firebase Studio. Google disabled new signup and new workspace creation on 22 June 2026. Existing workspaces keep working until 22 March 2027. The quiz will not recommend it. People still search for it, which is why the page exists.

Do not treat a benchmark as a shopping list. The benchmarks page repeats public scores, each with a source link and a read date. A model at the top of a terminal board can still be a poor first tool if the product around it assumes a repository you do not have. This guide does not use those scores to pick a stack.

Do not collect tools. One builder, or one agent, is the stack until the first URL exists. A second product is earned by a job the first one does not do: remembering rows, or hosting a repo you already have.