AI MVP Builder Showdown

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AI MVP Builder

AI MVP Builder Showdown

Created: February 14, 2025 1:01 PM

Stand-alone, Browser Based

These are ones that you can use directly through the browser, and spin up full-stack web-apps. I’m going to focus my blog post today on breaking down my favorites here and who’s currently winning.

  1. Lovable
    1. Top pick to build actual MVPs
    2. Very easy to use
    3. Integrations mostly work great
  2. Bolt
    1. Fastest to get up and running with given generous free tier.
    2. Integrations kind of suck (only Supabase and barely works).
    3. My second favorite pick.
  3. V0.Dev
    1. Front-end focused. Makes slick UIs
    2. Harder to make end-to-end products.
  4. a0.dev
    1. Only for frontend, but very quick
    2. 2 different ‘mode’s (UI Expert, Advanced Logic)
  5. co.dev
    1. Basically unusable, super slow
    2. Pay to eject code 😞
  6. Replit
    1. Not impressed, pretty unusable
    2. No free tier

IDE-based

These are ones that are more useful for existing, mature products. For this post, I’m going to avoid diving deep here.

  1. Cursor Chat - My top pick for IDE-based builders. Extremely reliable and can make targeted changes quite well.
  2. Cursor Agent/Composer - The multi-file version of Cursor (Starting to work better now as long as scope of change is small.)
  3. Webstorm (not there yet, not really functionally usable)
  4. Github Co-Pilot (not there yet either)
  5. Windsurf (not tested)

Other

These ones take entirely different form factors. For example, Devin communicates entirely over Slack. While aider is terminal-based. I haven’t used either of these extensively but have included articles from others with experience.

  1. Devin (Slack/Github based)
    1. https://www.answer.ai/posts/2025-01-08-devin.html
  2. Aider (Entirely terminal based)

Dimensions Evaluated:

  • Framework/UI Library Flexibility
    • Are you locked into React/ShadCn?
  • Ease of Deployment
    • Is it 1-click to deploy?
  • Integrations
    • Authentication, Databases, Payment Providers, etc.
  • Ease of Ejection
    • Is it free to get your code?
  • Collaboration
    • Can you invite others?

Let’s get into it, shall we?

The Useful Ones

Lovable.dev

➕ Super easy to eject to Github, code worked out of the box

➕ Github changes reflect in Lovable project

➕ Framework must be React/Tailwind/Shadcn/Tanstack (which is fine by me!)

➕ Good integration with Supabase (though migration support isn’t 100% there yet https://lovable.featurebase.app/p/better-support-for-supabase-migrations

🟰 Easy to deploy

➖ No integration with Stripe (but able to prompt it to integrate)

➖ No collaboration

Built:

Overall: My top pick. Extremely fast and easy to eject and continue production-izing once you hit the limit.

Bolt.new

➕ Pick any framework or UI library (Remix, Next, Radix, MUI)

🟰 Easy to deploy

➖ No integration with Stripe

➖ Code did not work after ejecting, needed to make manual adjustments

➖ No Collaboration

Built:

TL;DR: Use Bolt for mostly client-side production apps. Integrations aren’t quite there yet but it has a more generous free tier than Lovable.

Useful but Niche

v0.dev

➕ Very fast

➕ Easy to deploy

➕ Framework must be shadcn/React

➕ Integration with Figma!

🟰 Easy to deploy

➖ Tendency to mess up even simple changes on existing pages

➖ No other integrations

➖ Need a bit more technical knowledge than the others to eject

TLDR: Super quick and easy to use. Great for prototyping and building isolated front-end components. Isn’t meant for production use-cases.

Built: Basic mockups for a consulting client

a0.dev

➕ Collaboration features

➕ Wicked Fast

➕ Multiple modes - UI Expert for UI changes, Advanced Logic for complex code

➖ Only for mobile (but that’s the point)

➖ No integrations

➖ No collaboration

TL;DR: If you need a mobile app builder, go for a0.dev.

Built: Basic recording app prototype for Fireside.

Useless (for now)

Not going to say too much about these. More of a warning to keep away and use some of the others in this list.

repl.it

➕ Collaboration features

➕ Lots of integrations

➖ Tendency to mess up

➖ No Free Tier

TL;DR: Use any of the others for now.

Built: Tried to build a basic landing site but wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. General sentiment on web is pretty bad.

co.dev

➕ Good integration with Supabase/Github

➖ Horrifically slow, to the point of being unusable.

➖ Pay to eject code

TL;DR: Use any of the others.

Conclusion

The space is rapidly evolving and I think things will only get better from here. Shoot me a DM if

My advice for anyone building AI code builders out there -

  1. Get way more integrations and make sure they work!
    1. Stripe, Databases, Authentication
  2. Add collaboration features
  3. Control sweeping changes -
    1. Half the time one change breaks 2-3 other features. If changes were more targeted or had a confirmation step where you could approve the approach, it would help a lot.
  4. Plan changes before execution
  5. Multiple ‘modes’ - I love what a0.dev with this. I envision an ‘architect’ that plans out work before continuing.
  6. Index developer docs for the technologies you’re using