Choose Lovable
If you want a great-looking prototype, customer logins and plenty of tools already built in.
App builders
Flex vs Lovable
Are you starting a new app or improving your existing product?
By the Flex team
Reviewed
Which should you choose?
Choose Flex
If you want your designer to improve the product you already have. They work on the real codebase, try the changes in a preview and send them to engineering for review.
You shouldn’t have to build a separate prototype, then ask engineering to build it all again.
How it works
Starting a project
Lovable
Start a new project in Lovable, then connect it to GitHub. Importing an existing repository is not supported.
Flex
Start a Hosted App for an internal tool, or connect the repository of the product you want to change.
Connecting data
Lovable
Use Lovable Cloud or a supported backend such as Supabase for the app's data and authentication.
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
Lovable
Sync with GitHub and use branches to work with developers and review changes.
Flex
Your designer or product manager tries the change in a live preview. Engineering reviews the code before it goes into your product.
Publishing
Lovable
Publish on Lovable, or host the app elsewhere using its deployment guidance.
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
Lovable
Keep editing in Lovable with GitHub sync, or continue developing the exported project elsewhere.
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
Lovable
Building in Lovable uses credits. Running the app on Lovable Cloud and using AI inside the app also incur usage costs.
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
Lovable supports code ownership and external hosting. If you move the backend too, include authentication, storage and data in the move. Flex keeps Hosted Apps source in Git; connected products continue in their existing repository.
Lovable hosting and ownership Lovable pricing Flex Hosted Apps
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.