Choose Base44
If you want to build a standalone app and use its managed app services. You can bring a developer in through GitHub as it grows.
App builders
Flex vs Base44
A new app, or a tool built around your business data?
By the Flex team
Reviewed
Which should you choose?
Choose Flex
If you want your customer-success team to build a renewals dashboard using your actual customer data. Engineering decides what it can access. Your team decides what they need to see.
You already have the customer data. Your team needs a useful way to work with it.
How it works
Starting a project
Base44
Create an app in Base44. Connecting GitHub creates a repository for it.
Flex
Start a Hosted App for an internal tool, or connect the repository of the product you want to change.
Connecting data
Base44
Calls to external services use integration credits, separate from the AI messages you use to build the app.
Flex
Your engineers connect the database and decide what the app can access. Your team can then build tools using that approved data.
Reviewing changes
Base44
Two-way GitHub sync requires Builder or higher. Local changes merge into main before syncing back to Base44.
Flex
Your designer or product manager tries the change in a live preview. Engineering reviews the code before it goes into your product.
Publishing
Base44
Syncing code and publishing are separate steps: use Publish to make the synced changes live.
Flex
Share your internal tool through Hosted Apps. For an existing product, use your normal release process.
Flex Hosted Apps Flex configured data access Flex product-change workflow
Maintaining it
Base44
The CLI can run the frontend and backend locally. Remote development mode connects to production data: changes there can affect the live app.
Flex
Come back to the same app or repository for the next change. Your engineers still review changes to product code and manage access to production data.
Pricing
Base44
Base44 charges separately for AI messages and integration actions. An app can keep using integration credits after you finish building it. GitHub sync requires Builder or higher.
Flex
You pay for Flex and the AI you use. With self-hosting, you bring your own model keys and pay for the servers running your previews and apps. Your engineers set up and maintain those servers. Flex hosting takes that server work off your team.
See the linked pricing pages for current prices and plan limits.
Your code and your app
You can sync Base44 code to GitHub and run a backend locally. That does not move your live users or their data to another host. Flex Hosted Apps also stores source in Git; exporting that code does not move its database or credentials.
Need an internal tool on production data?
With Hosted Apps, your team builds internal tools using production data engineering has approved. Access controls and governance are built in. You can let Flex host the environment or run it yourself.
Your engineers connect PostgreSQL or ClickHouse, supply the credentials and decide which environment an app can use. Connecting another database or service may need engineering work.
Sources
Official documentation and pricing checked on 27 September 2026. This is our view of the products, based on their documentation rather than a hands-on benchmark.