Choose Emergent
If you want to build and host an app, or keep working on a project you already have in GitHub.
App builders
Flex vs Emergent
Build an app, or bring the team into your existing product?
By the Flex team
Reviewed
Which should you choose?
Choose Flex
If you want your product manager to try a change in your actual product and work through it with a designer before engineering reviews the code.
You can bring an existing repository to either tool. Flex is for bringing your designer and product manager into that work too.
How it works
Starting a project
Emergent
Start a new task or pull an existing GitHub repository and branch into a workspace.
Flex
Start a Hosted App for an internal tool, or connect the repository of the product you want to change.
Connecting data
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
Emergent
Save to feature branches and use GitHub pull requests for review and merging.
Flex
Your designer or product manager tries the change in a live preview. Engineering reviews the code before it goes into your product.
Publishing
Emergent
Standard includes private project hosting. Enterprise adds deployment into your own cloud.
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
Emergent
Pull changes from GitHub to pick up work your developers have done, then continue in Emergent.
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
Emergent
Emergent uses credits, and you can buy more. Standard includes GitHub integration and private project hosting. Deploying into your own cloud requires Enterprise.
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
Emergent can pull from and save to GitHub. Flex also keeps source behind its Hosted Apps and works with connected repositories. Cloning the repository does not copy its database or set up its connections to other services.
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.