Bolt.new vs Lovable:
Which AI App Builder Ships Faster?

How We Tested

We wrote a single project brief: a task management dashboard with user authentication, a PostgreSQL database, CRUD operations for tasks with due dates and priority levels, and a simple analytics view showing completed vs pending tasks. About the complexity of a weekend hackathon project.

Both platforms received the same natural language prompt, word for word. We measured: time to first working preview, total time to a deployable app, number of follow-up prompts needed to fix issues, and lines of generated code. After building, we reviewed the code structure, checked for TypeScript errors, and tested the deployed version for about an hour each.

Testing happened on Lovable's Starter plan ($20/month) and Bolt.new's Pro plan ($20/month) to keep the comparison fair. We also spent a day on each platform's free tier to evaluate the onboarding experience.

Quick Comparison Table

Bolt.new: What It Does Well

Bolt.new, built by StackBlitz, runs entirely inside your browser using WebContainers technology — a full Node.js environment that doesn't need a server. That architectural choice makes it genuinely fast. Type a prompt, and you're looking at a running app in under a minute.

Speed Is the Core Advantage

In our test, Bolt.new rendered the first interactive preview in roughly 45 seconds. The dashboard had a working sidebar, task list, and form — not just a static mockup, but a functional interface you could click through. This speed comes from WebContainers: since everything runs in the browser, there's no cold start waiting for a cloud sandbox to spin up.

Framework Flexibility

Unlike Lovable's React-only approach, Bolt.new can scaffold projects in React, Vue, Svelte, Astro, and plain Node.js. If you're building a marketing site and want Astro, or a Vue-based internal tool, Bolt.new is one of the few AI builders that accommodates that. The quality varies by framework — React output is the most polished — but the option exists.

Where Bolt.new Falls Short

The code Bolt.new generates tends toward inline styles and fewer TypeScript type annotations. Our task dashboard had 3 any types and several components with 200+ lines that should have been split. Authentication was stubbed but not fully functional — we needed two additional prompts and about 15 minutes of manual fixes to get login working.

Database setup requires more manual work. Bolt.new doesn't auto-provision a database the way Lovable does with Supabase. You can connect to external services, but you're configuring environment variables and connection strings yourself. For prototypes that don't need persistence, this doesn't matter. For anything with real data, it adds 20–30 minutes.

Lovable: What It Does Well

Lovable (formerly GPT Engineer) relaunched in late 2025 with $9 million in funding and a clear focus: generate production-grade React applications, not just demos. The platform has crossed 150,000 users and maintains an active Discord community of around 15K members.

Code Quality Sets It Apart

Lovable's generated code is noticeably cleaner than Bolt.new's. Our task dashboard came out with proper TypeScript interfaces for every data model, components under 100 lines each, and consistent use of shadcn/ui for styling. The file structure followed Next.js conventions with separate directories for components, hooks, and utilities. A developer picking up this code would understand it quickly.

Supabase Integration Is Genuinely Useful

This is Lovable's real differentiator. When we asked for “user auth and a task database,” Lovable automatically created Supabase tables, wrote row-level security policies, generated the auth flow with magic links, and wired up the client-side queries. Total database setup time: zero. The RLS policies weren't perfect — one policy was overly permissive — but the foundation saved us roughly 40 minutes compared to doing it manually on Bolt.new.

Where Lovable Falls Short

Lovable is opinionated to a fault. You get React with TypeScript, shadcn/ui, and Supabase. No Vue, no Svelte, no alternative backends. If your project needs Firebase, a custom Express API, or anything outside the Lovable stack, you're fighting the tool instead of using it.

The 90-second wait for each generation adds up during iterative development. Bolt.new's near-instant previews let you experiment more freely. With Lovable, you tend to write longer, more specific prompts because each round-trip costs time (and on free tier, one of your five daily generations).

Head-to-Head: 5 Critical Dimensions

Who Should Pick Which

For a concrete example: if you're pitching investors next week and need a clickable demo, Bolt.new gets you there faster. If you're building a product you plan to iterate on for the next 6 months, Lovable's cleaner codebase pays dividends every time you (or a developer) make changes.

The Honest Downsides

Neither tool is a replacement for professional development. Both have real limitations that marketing pages won't tell you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict

Bolt.new and Lovable solve different versions of the same problem. Bolt.new optimizes for speed and breadth — get something running fast, in whatever framework you want. Lovable optimizes for quality and depth — get something maintainable, with a real backend, ready for a developer to extend.

If you can only pay for one, ask yourself: will this project live beyond next week? If yes, Lovable. If you need it today and can deal with cleanup later, Bolt.new.

The honest truth is that both tools are remarkably capable for what they cost. A year ago, neither of these experiences existed. The gap between them is smaller than the gap between either one and building from scratch. For a more detailed look at Lovable specifically, see our hands-on Lovable review. For a broader overview of the AI app builder landscape including v0, Replit, and Cursor, check our vibe coding tools comparison.