Base44 costs $0 on the Free plan, then $20, $50, $100 or $200 a month for Starter, Builder, Pro and Elite, or $16, $40, $80 and $160 a month billed yearly. Every plan comes with two kinds of credits: message credits for building with the AI, and integration credits for what your app does after launch. Most solo builders and small businesses only need Starter or Builder.
What is Base44? Base44 is a Wix-owned AI app builder, often called a vibe coding tool, that turns a text prompt into a full web app with a built-in database, user logins and hosting, so you don’t need any other service to launch.
The headline price is the easy part. What actually decides your bill is how many credits your prompts use, how much your app does once people use it, and a few limits that only show up in Base44’s documentation. This guide covers all three, with a worked example of what a real small-business app costs.
How we researched this: We checked the Base44 pricing page, billing and plans documentation and credits documentation on November 2, 2026. We haven’t paid for a Base44 plan ourselves, so the worked example uses Base44’s own published credit estimates, and we explain every count we assume. SmartWorkflowLab has no sponsorship or affiliate deal with Base44.
Base44 Pricing at a Glance
Price per plan (billed monthly / billed yearly):
- Free: $0
- Starter: $20 a month, or $16 a month billed yearly
- Builder: $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly
- Pro: $100 a month, or $80 a month billed yearly
- Elite: $200 a month, or $160 a month billed yearly
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Message credits | Integration credits | Database per app |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 25 (max 5 a day) | 100 | 200 MB |
| Starter | $20 | $16/mo ($192/yr) | 100 | 2,000 | 2 GB |
| Builder | $50 | $40/mo ($480/yr) | 250 | 10,000 | 5 GB |
| Pro | $100 | $80/mo ($960/yr) | 500 | 20,000 | 10 GB |
| Elite | $200 | $160/mo ($1,920/yr) | 1,200 | 50,000 | 25 GB |
| Business | By size | By size | 2,400 to 5,400 | 96,000 to 216,000 | 50 GB |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | No limit |
Monthly prices come from Base44’s own cost guide, last updated November 1, 2026. Elite also comes in larger sizes, up to 8,200 message credits and 300,000 integration credits, and Business comes in six sizes. Base44 doesn’t publish prices for those larger sizes on its pricing page. Database limits come from Base44’s app data documentation and apply to apps created from October 18, 2026.
What a credit costs: On Starter, $20 buys 100 message credits ($0.20 each) plus 2,000 integration credits. Builder, at $50, buys 250 message credits (still $0.20 each) plus 10,000 integration credits, five times Starter’s for two and a half times the price. Pro keeps the same rates as Builder, and Elite lowers the message-credit price to about $0.17.
Prices are in US dollars for most buyers and exclude taxes: Base44’s terms of service say fees are exclusive of tax, which is added where the law requires it. Base44’s billing docs say the currency depends on your location, and your plan stays in the currency you first paid in.
What Each Base44 Plan Includes
Every plan, including Free, includes the AI builder, a database, user logins, a visual editor, analytics, file storage, collaboration and hosting. The differences are credits, limits and a few features:
- Free: up to 5 apps, 25 message credits a month with a cap of 5 a day, and 100 integration credits. No custom domain.
- Starter ($20): unlimited apps, in-app code edits and a custom domain. Yearly plans include a free domain for the first year, which you must claim within 60 days.
- Builder ($50): adds backend functions, two-way GitHub sync, a choice of AI model, built-in payments and App Store or Google Play files for your app. Yearly Builder plans also include 25 credits to share with a friend.
- Pro ($100): adds early access to new features and doubles Builder’s credits.
- Elite ($200): adds priority support and comes in six sizes for heavy builders.
- Business (by size): adds SSO, data residency, 30-day backup and restore, IP allowlisting, role-based permissions and per-member credit limits.
- Enterprise (custom): adds SCIM user provisioning, static outbound IP addresses, audit logs and a dedicated account manager.
Seats and Collaborators
Base44 doesn’t charge per seat. On every plan, including Free, you can invite unlimited members to a workspace without buying extra seats, according to Base44’s plans and workspaces documentation. Everyone draws from the workspace’s shared credit pool: when an owner, admin or editor asks the AI for a change, those message credits come from the same monthly allowance. Each workspace has its own plan and credits, and credits can’t be moved between workspaces. Only Business adds per-member credit limits.
How Yearly Plans Hand Out Credits
A yearly plan doesn’t give you a year of credits at once. Base44’s terms of service say AI credits are granted on a recurring monthly basis, so yearly Starter gets 100 message credits each month, not 1,200 up front, and unused credits still expire at each monthly reset. Yearly billing saves 20% on price, not on the credit rules.
Verdict: Builder is the plan where Base44 becomes a full business tool, because it unlocks backend functions, payments, GitHub sync and app store files. Starter is enough for internal tools that only need a database, logins and email.
How Base44 Credits Work
Message Credits: The Cost of Building
You spend message credits every time you ask the AI to build or change something. Base44’s credits documentation says there is no fixed cost per message, and gives these rough guides:
| What you ask for | Message credits |
|---|---|
| Discuss-mode message (planning, questions) | About 0.3 |
| Small visual or text change | About 0.5 |
| Improving a small feature | About 1 |
| Building a complex module | About 2 |
| App-wide change | About 3 to 4 |
Choosing an AI model by hand can cost more than the Automatic setting. If you stop a reply partway, you pay for the work already done. Editing code yourself in the editor uses no credits.
Integration Credits: The Cost of Running Your App
Integration credits pay for Base44’s built-in services when your app uses them:
| Action | Integration credits |
|---|---|
| Email sent | About 1 (about 2 from your own domain) |
| AI model call, Automatic model | About 1 (about 3 or more on other models) |
| In-app AI agent message, Automatic model | About 3 |
| AI image | About 1 |
| AI video | About 5 per second |
| Workflow | About 1 per 10 steps, plus what each step does |
| Backend function calls | About 1 per 100 calls |
| Database reads and writes | Free |
| Outside services using your own API key | Free |
That last row matters: if your app calls OpenAI or another service with your own API key, Base44 doesn’t charge integration credits for it. You pay that provider directly instead.
Free Plan Daily Cap
The Free plan gives 25 message credits a month but no more than 5 a day. Once you hit 5, building pauses until the next day. Paid plans have no daily cap.
What a Real App Costs: A Worked Example
Plan prices don’t tell you what your app will cost, so here is one small-business example worked through with Base44’s own estimates. The numbers are an illustration, not a measurement, and your prompts will differ.
The app: a booking and client tracker for a small service business, with a booking form, a client list, an admin dashboard, email confirmations and a short AI summary of each new booking.
Month 1: Building It
| Work in the first month | Count | Credits each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| App-wide builds and big changes | 10 | About 3 | 30 |
| New features (booking form, client list, dashboard) | 30 | About 1 | 30 |
| Small fixes and visual tweaks | 40 | About 0.5 | 20 |
| Discuss-mode planning messages | 30 | About 0.3 | 9 |
| Total message credits | 89 |
Where these counts come from: 10 big changes covers the first full app generation, adding user logins, setting up roles, a redesign and a handful of app-wide fixes. 30 features is about 10 for each of the three main screens. 40 small tweaks covers wording, colors and layout fixes, and 30 Discuss-mode messages assumes you plan each feature before building it.
That fits inside Starter’s 100 message credits, with little room to spare. A builder who experiments a lot, or asks for many app-wide changes, would need Builder’s 250.
Every Month After Launch: Running It
| Monthly activity | Count | Credits each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking emails from your own domain | 600 | About 2 | 1,200 |
| AI summaries of bookings (Automatic model) | 200 | About 1 | 200 |
| Workflow steps (reminders, status updates) | 1,000 | About 1 per 10 | 100 |
| Backend function calls | 3,000 | About 1 per 100 | 30 |
| Database reads and writes | Any | Free | 0 |
| Total integration credits | 1,530 |
Where these counts come from: We assume 200 bookings a month. Each booking sends 3 emails (a confirmation to the client, a reminder the day before and an alert to the owner), so 200 × 3 = 600 emails. Each booking gets 1 AI summary, so 200 AI calls. Each booking runs a 5-step workflow (save the booking, set its status, schedule the reminder, notify the owner, update the dashboard), so 200 × 5 = 1,000 steps. Backend function calls assume about 1,000 visits to the booking page a month, each checking available slots, validating the form and saving it, so 1,000 × 3 = 3,000 calls.
That also fits inside Starter’s 2,000 integration credits. The biggest cost is email from a custom domain: at 1,000 emails a month the total passes 2,000 and the app needs Builder, unless you send the emails through your own email provider’s API key instead.
Verdict: A simple small-business app can run on Starter at $16 to $20 a month. Email volume and AI features are what push you to Builder, not the size of the app.
What Changed in Base44 Pricing in 2026
Plan prices haven’t changed, but several billing rules have. From the Base44 product changelog:
- August 27: Emails sent from workflows started using integration credits, the same as emails sent from app code.
- August 30: In-app AI agent replies started being charged by how much they actually use, with a small minimum per model.
- September 6: Every plan got the same AI model lineup, with credits as the only cost control.
- October 1: App SSO for workspaces created from this date needs a Business or Enterprise plan, according to Base44’s SSO documentation.
- October 4: Yearly plans started including a free domain for the first year.
- October 18: Database size limits by plan started applying to new apps, and stopping the AI mid-reply now still charges for replies it already finished.
Limits and Rules to Know Before You Pay
These details are in Base44’s billing documentation but not on the pricing page:
- Credits don’t roll over. Unused credits expire at each monthly reset, and bonus credits never carry over. The one exception: if you upgrade from one monthly plan to a higher one, unused credits carry over for one more cycle, up to one month’s worth.
- No top-ups. The docs list no way to buy extra credits. You wait for the reset or upgrade.
- Running out breaks things quietly. When integration credits run out, Base44 emails you, and features that need credits fail with a generic error your users can see.
- Database size limits. New apps are capped at 200 MB on Free, 2 GB on Starter, 5 GB on Builder, 10 GB on Pro and 25 GB on Elite. Uploaded files don’t count. At the limit, the app can’t add new records until you delete data or upgrade.
- Upgrades are instant, downgrades wait. An upgrade takes effect immediately and charges you the difference. A downgrade takes effect at the end of your billing period.
- No switching from yearly to monthly. You can move from monthly to yearly, but not back by yourself.
- Cancelling drops you to Free. You keep your plan until the end of the period. After that, if you have more than 5 apps, you pick which 5 stay published and the rest are unpublished.
- No refunds. Base44’s terms say payments are non-refundable. If you bought the wrong plan by mistake, contact Customer Care quickly: approved cases get a prorated refund minus processing fees.
- Cards only. Base44 accepts major credit and debit cards. It doesn’t accept PayPal, bank transfers, virtual cards or crypto.
Hidden Costs Outside Your Base44 Plan
A Base44 plan covers building and hosting, but some costs sit outside it:
- Your domain after year one. Yearly plans include a free domain for the first year. After that, the domain renews at the registrar’s price, and domains bought inside Base44 come from Wix.
- App store accounts. To publish your app on the App Store or Google Play, you need your own Apple Developer Program membership ($99 a year) and a Google Play developer account ($25 one-time), plus the Builder plan to download the store files.
- Payment fees. Base44 Payments and Stripe charge their own processing fees on each sale, and Base44 Payments is only available to businesses in the US, UK, Switzerland and nine EU countries, according to Base44’s payments documentation.
- Outside AI and email services. Using your own API keys saves integration credits, but you pay those providers instead.
- A developer if you outgrow it. Base44’s code depends on its own backend, so moving off Base44 later means rebuilding the database, functions and logins. We cover this in our Base44 vs Lovable comparison.
Ways to Pay Less for Base44
- Pay yearly. It saves 20%, and Starter and above include a free domain for the first year.
- Student discount. Students and staff at accredited schools get 50% off Starter or Builder with a verified school email, once per account.
- Share your project. Base44’s credits documentation says you can claim 20 message credits by sharing your project on LinkedIn or X.
- Use Discuss mode first. Planning messages cost about 0.3 credits, against 1 to 4 for building, so plan a change before you build it.
- Stay on the Automatic model. Picking a model by hand can cost more credits.
- Make small edits yourself. Editing text or code in the editor uses no credits.
- Use your own API keys for heavy email or AI use, so they don’t use integration credits.
Base44 Pricing Pros and Cons
Pros
- A real free plan that includes the database, logins and hosting.
- Building and running use separate credit pools, so a busy app doesn’t eat your build budget.
- Database reads and writes are free on every plan.
- Integration credits get cheaper as you move up: 100 per dollar on Starter and 200 per dollar on Builder. Message credits cost the same $0.20 from Starter to Pro, and only Elite is cheaper at about $0.17.
- 20% off for yearly billing and 50% off for students.
Cons
- Unused credits expire every month, even on yearly plans.
- There’s no way to buy a few extra credits without upgrading.
- GitHub sync, payments and backend functions all need Builder at $40 a month or more.
- Business and larger Elite sizes have no public prices.
- No refunds, and no switching from yearly back to monthly.
Is Base44 Worth the Price?
Base44 is worth it for small businesses and solo founders who want a working internal tool or simple customer app without hiring a developer, because $16 to $40 a month covers the builder, database, logins and hosting together. It’s less good value if you need to move your code elsewhere later or your build work is uneven month to month, since unused credits don’t roll over.
Base44 Pricing vs Lovable, Bolt and Replit
Each vibe coding tool measures usage differently, so their credits and tokens don’t buy the same amount of work. Compare the entry price and the rollover rules instead:
| Tool | Entry paid plan (monthly billing) | What’s included | Unused credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base44 Starter | $20 | 100 message credits plus 2,000 integration credits | Expire every month |
| Lovable Pro | $25 | 100 credits plus 5 free credits a day | Roll over on paid plans |
| Bolt Pro | $25 | From 10 million tokens | Valid for two months |
| Replit Core | $20 | $20 of monthly usage credits | Expire every billing cycle |
Sources: Lovable subscription plans, Bolt pricing and Bolt token rules, Replit pricing and plans and Replit’s Core price change, all checked November 2, 2026.
Verdict: Base44 and Replit share the lowest entry price at $20 a month. Base44’s advantage is that hosting, the database and logins are included with no separate usage meter for database work, while Lovable and Bolt let unused credits carry over. See the full feature comparison in our Base44 vs Lovable guide, and for a general way to judge any AI tool’s price, read how to choose the right AI tool.
Which Base44 Plan Should You Choose?
| If you… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Want to test an idea or build a small personal tool | Free |
| Need a custom domain and an internal tool with email | Starter |
| Need payments, backend functions, GitHub or the App Store | Builder |
| Build several apps a month or make many app-wide changes | Pro |
| Build all day or run a busy app with lots of AI calls | Elite |
| Need SSO, backups and per-member credit limits for a team | Business |
| Need audit logs, SCIM and a contract | Enterprise |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Base44 cost per month?
Base44 has a free plan, then Starter at $20 a month, Builder at $50, Pro at $100 and Elite at $200 when billed monthly. Billed yearly, the same plans cost $16, $40, $80 and $160 a month, a 20% saving. Business and Enterprise plans for larger teams are priced by size or by quote.
Is Base44 free?
Yes. The free plan costs nothing and gives 25 message credits a month, at most 5 a day, plus 100 integration credits and up to 5 apps. It includes the database, user logins and hosting, but not a custom domain, and each app’s database is limited to 200 MB.
What are message credits and integration credits on Base44?
Message credits pay for building, each time you ask the AI to create or change your app. Integration credits pay for what your app does after launch, such as sending emails, calling an AI model, running backend functions or workflows. Database reads and writes don’t use credits.
How many credits does a Base44 app use?
There is no fixed number. Base44’s documentation estimates about 0.5 credits for a small visual change, about 1 for a small feature, about 2 for a complex module and 3 to 4 for an app-wide change. In our worked example, a simple booking and client app used about 89 message credits in its first month, which fits the Starter plan.
Can I buy extra credits on Base44?
Base44’s billing documentation lists no top-up packs. When you run out, you wait for the monthly reset or upgrade to a bigger plan. If you upgrade from one monthly plan to a higher one, unused credits carry over for one more cycle, up to one month’s worth.
Does Base44 offer refunds?
Base44’s terms say payments are non-refundable, and cancelling keeps your plan active until the end of the period you paid for. If you bought the wrong plan or billing cycle by mistake, Base44 asks you to contact Customer Care quickly, and approved cases get a prorated refund minus processing fees.
Does Base44 have a student discount?
Yes. Students and staff at accredited schools and universities can get 50% off the Starter or Builder plan after verifying a school email address. The discount can be used once per account.
Do Base44 collaborators need to pay?
No. You can invite unlimited members to a workspace on every plan, including Free, without buying seats. Members use the workspace’s shared credit pool, so their building and any credit-using app activity come out of the same monthly credits as the owner’s.
Do yearly Base44 plans get all their credits up front?
No. Base44’s terms say AI credits are granted on a recurring monthly basis, so a yearly Starter plan gets 100 message credits each month, not 1,200 at once. Unused credits still expire at each monthly reset.
Sources
- Base44 pricing page and Base44 cost guide, checked November 2, 2026
- Base44 docs: billing and plans, credits, app data limits, payments and app store submission, checked November 2, 2026
- Base44 terms of service, plans and workspaces and product changelog
- Competitor pricing: Lovable, Bolt, Replit, checked November 2, 2026
