Lovable alternatives that keep your app private (2026)
By Will Evans · Published
Most lists of Lovable alternatives compare build features. This one compares the thing that sends many people looking in the first place: on Lovable, keeping a published app private starts on the Business plan at about $50 a month. Here are seven alternatives, ranked by what it costs to keep the app invite-only.
What does private actually cost?
| Tool | Cheapest way to keep it private | How people get in |
|---|---|---|
| Podda | Free | You invite them by name |
| Replit | Free | Invited people sign in with a Replit account |
| Base44 | Starter, $16 a month billed annually | Email invites with roles |
| Bolt | Pro, $25 a month | Invited emails or your team |
| Whacka | Pro, $32 a month billed annually | Invite-only access |
| Lovable | Business, about $50 a month | Workspace, groups or invited emails |
| Charming | Free, but see below | A link, in our testing |
| v0 by Vercel | No per-person option | Your Vercel team, or a shared password |
Podda
Podda is a private home for personal software, and invite-only is the default on every plan, including free. You build by describing the app to ChatGPT or Claude, and the app lives on the phones of the people you invite, with no public link and no search listing. Every app keeps its own data and files, so a tracker or a league table remembers everything between visits, and access is by named invite that you can remove at any time. The limit: Podda is deliberately small. If you are building a product for customers, with public sign-up and thousands of users, Podda is the wrong tool and Lovable is a good one. The full head-to-head is in Podda vs Lovable.
Replit
Replit is a developer platform first, pitched at work, and its free plan does include invite-only publishing. Its agent builds full apps, and it can even ship to the app stores. The friction shows up when the app is for a group of friends rather than a team. Everyone you invite has to create a Replit account before they can open anything, and build credits are spent per change, running out faster than you expect. Changing who can access a published app means unpublishing and republishing it, and on the free plan the project behind your app stays public even while the published app is private.
Base44
Base44 is the cheapest of the big builders to make an app properly private, at $16 a month billed annually. It builds full apps with login, database, storage and hosting included, and private visibility means only invited people can open the app, with sign-in required. Two things to know: the free plan has no private apps at all, and the whole platform is aimed at business apps rather than personal ones.
Bolt
Bolt is the developer's pick: you can watch and edit the code as it builds, and on the Pro plan at $25 a month a published app can be restricted to invited email addresses or your team. Two catches: custom domains only work for public sites, and the whole experience assumes you are comfortable near code.
Whacka
Whacka packs the broadest toolkit here, from push notifications and payments to a pipeline into the app stores, with private apps on its Pro plan at $32 a month billed annually. The catch on the free plan is blunt: apps go offline 14 days after you publish them. It makes most sense for a club or a small business that wants everything in one place.
What about staying on Lovable?
Honestly reasonable if you are launching to customers. Lovable builds a full product with its own database and room to grow to thousands of users, and its Business plan gives a published app a proper audience picker, from your workspace to specific invited people. You are paying about $50 a month for that. The question is whether you need the product headroom, or just the privacy.
Charming
Charming is the closest thing to Podda on this list: you build by talking to ChatGPT or Claude, and it is free. Its site says apps are private by default and shared by invite. When we tried it, sharing an app came down to passing a link around. It is also very new, with little sign of real-world use yet, so it is really one to watch rather than one to rely on just yet.
v0 by Vercel
v0 is Vercel's builder, and it is very good at production-grade websites, but there is no invite-this-person option for a published app. Keeping something private means putting it behind your Vercel team's login or a shared password. Where it wins is real production infrastructure and code you keep, so it is a developer's tool for shipping something public, not a private app for a group.
Which alternative should I pick?
If the app is for people you can name, Podda keeps it invite-only for free, built from the chat you already use. Replit is free too if you want maximum capability and your group will put up with creating Replit accounts. Base44 is the smallest bill among the business-grade builders, and Bolt is the pick when you want the code itself. For the wider picture, here is Podda vs Wabi vs Lovable vs Replit.
Connect Podda to ChatGPT or Claude. The free plan keeps your first apps invite-only from the start.
Last updated 22 August 2026.