Base44 is easy to like in the first hour. You describe an app, and a working version with a database, sign-in and hosting appears while you watch. The harder questions come later, when a month of credits is gone in a week or the app's emails quietly stop sending. This review covers Base44's pricing as it stood on 22 October 2026, where the credits go, and who it suits.
If you're choosing a builder for an app you'll run for years, the last section also looks at Refinar, which builds new apps as ordinary code that ends up in your own GitHub account.
Base44 pricing in October 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Message credits | Integration credits | Database per app |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 25 a month, 5 a day at most | 100 | 200 MB |
| Starter | $20 | $16 a month | 100 | 2,000 | 2 GB |
| Builder | $50 | $40 a month | 250 | 10,000 | 5 GB |
| Pro | $100 | $80 a month | 500 | 20,000 | 10 GB |
| Elite | from $200 | from $160 a month | 1,200 to 8,200 | 50,000 to 300,000 | 25 GB |
| Business | in the app | in the app | 2,400 to 5,400 | 96,000 to 216,000 | 50 GB |
| Enterprise | contact sales | contact sales | by contract | by contract | no limit |
Prices are from Base44's pricing page, credits and storage from its billing docs. Yearly billing takes 20% off and charges the year up front. Credits belong to the workspace, so every person and every app in it draws on one balance.
Starter adds unlimited and private apps, your own domain and code editing inside Base44. Builder, the plan Base44 marks as popular, is where the serious features begin: backend functions, GitHub sync and code download, a choice of AI model, and a test database so the preview can stop writing to live records. Pro and Elite mostly add credits.
The database column is new. Apps created from 18 October stop accepting new records once they hit their plan's cap, until you delete some or upgrade (database limits). Older apps aren't capped, and uploaded files don't count.
What one credit costs
Divide each price by its message credits and something odd shows up.
From Starter to Pro, a credit costs 20 cents billed monthly and 16 yearly, and only Elite gets cheaper. Upgrade for Builder's features or because you keep running out, not to make building cheaper.
How Base44 credits get spent
There are two meters, and they stop different things when they reach zero.
Message credits pay for building, and no prompt has a fixed price. Base44's credits guide works out the charge after each message runs, by how much of the app the AI had to touch. Edits made by hand in the visual editor cost nothing, so do small changes there.
Integration credits pay for what the live app does with Base44's built-in services, and calls to an outside service with your own API key skip the meter. Base44 admits you can't preview an integration cost before it runs, so watch the usage page in workspace settings.
Is Base44 free?
Yes, with no time limit. Free gives your personal workspace 25 message credits a month, at most 5 a day, plus 100 integration credits and up to five apps. That's enough to see whether Base44 understands your idea, and little more, since automatic error fixes on Free come out of the same 25. Private apps have been paid-only since February 2026, and Free can't connect a domain or download the code.
Running out, rollover and refunds
When message credits run out, building pauses until the monthly reset. The docs offer no top-up, only a bigger plan. A monthly-to-monthly upgrade carries unused credits over for one more cycle; any upgrade involving a yearly plan is prorated, and the leftovers expire as usual. Fees are non-refundable.
When integration credits run out, your users notice first. Base44 emails you, and every feature that needs those credits fails with a generic error that never mentions credits, so a signup email simply doesn't arrive. Workflows are the usual culprit. One builder on r/Base44 described a workflow that looped on 9 October and ate nearly a month of 10,000 integration credits.
Cancel, and the workspace drops to Free when the period ends, and you pick which five apps stay published.
What Base44 does well
Speed to a first version is the main draw. Reviewers keep reporting a working prototype within minutes, and with the backend bundled there's nothing to sign up for elsewhere. Payments are built in too, through Base44 Payments powered by Wix on Builder and above, with Stripe still supported.
It also ships quickly. The past few weeks brought a Mac app and Base Code, a separate product for changing an existing GitHub repository through pull requests. Product Hunt reviewers give it 4.4 out of 5.
Where Base44 falls short
Most complaints are about credits spent on fixing. Base44's Trustpilot page stood at about 2.8 out of 5 from roughly 900 reviews in October 2026, and its summary mentions an agent that "gets stuck in repetitive loops and rapidly exhausts credits". On Reddit, some people burn through a Starter month in an afternoon while others on Builder rarely run short, so prompting habits matter.
For an app you mean to keep, the bigger issue is where it lives. The code you can sync from Builder still sends every data, sign-in and integration call to Base44's servers, and Base44's docs list hosting, sign-in and the database as things you can't export. Under terms in force since 21 June 2026, Base44 holds a perpetual licence to your data and generated code, which on every plan below Enterprise includes training AI models, and it may delete both after a subscription ends. Wix has owned Base44 since June 2025. The Base44 export guide lists what comes with the code and what stays behind.
Who Base44 is for, and who should skip it
A good fit if you:
- want a prototype or an internal tool this week, with nothing to set up
- are comfortable with the app's data and sign-in living on Base44 for good
- work in short, focused prompts and make small changes in the visual editor
Probably skip it if you:
- handle health data, which the terms bar without a separate written agreement, or customer data that mustn't train AI models
- expect long debugging stretches, where an unpredictable credit bill hurts most
- may one day need the app on your own database and hosting
Is Base44 worth it?
For a prototype, a client demo or an internal tool, yes, and Builder at $40 a month billed yearly is the plan to budget for. For an app you'll run as a business for years, the subscription is the smaller cost. You're also accepting a backend you can't take with you and terms that let Base44 train on your work, and both get harder to undo as the data grows.
If you're starting fresh or leaving
Already on Base44? Base44 alternatives for the app you already built compares the routes out, and leaving Base44 sets out what to export, in order, before a subscription ends.
For a new app, Refinar takes the opposite view of ownership. Describe the app on its builder page and it builds one with sign-in, pages and a standard Postgres database, as ordinary code that moves to your GitHub account at go-live. You keep changing it by describing what you want, and anything risky waits for a developer's approval (how it works). Its plans begin at $25 a month, which covers roughly 50 requests and includes 20 teammates, and unspent credits stay yours while you're subscribed (pricing). Refinar hasn't been proven on a standard Base44 export, whose data and sign-in still come from Base44, so moving an existing app means rebuilding it and importing the records.
The Lovable pricing and Emergent pricing guides run the same sums for two other builders.
If the next app should be one you own outright, start it on Refinar and judge the first build for yourself.