Bolt.new

Bolt.new is the brainchild of StackBlitz, a company that has been obsessed with moving the development environment to the web for over seven years. The leadership is spearheaded by CEO Eric Simons, a founder known for his "scrappy" and innovative approach to tech (famously squatting at AOL's headquarters in his early days to build his first startup). Eric and his team realized that the bottleneck in software innovation wasn't just "coding skill," but the massive friction of setting up environments and managing dependencies.

The team at StackBlitz spent years perfecting the WebContainer technology that powers Bolt. When AI models finally became advanced enough to generate reliable code in late 2024, they were perfectly positioned to launch Bolt. It exploded from a side project to a platform with over $40 million in ARR in just five months. Today, the team remains small—roughly 20-30 people—focusing on making the AI more efficient and the integration with modern clouds like Netlify and Supabase even tighter.

Bolt.new is for the Entrepreneur and Solo-Maker who has a million-dollar idea but doesn't have a million-dollar engineering team. It allows a single individual to act as a CTO, Product Manager, and Developer all at once. Because you don't need to know how to "configure a server" or "manage NPM versions," it has lowered the entry bar to software creation to its lowest point in history.

It is also a massive time-saver for Product Managers and Designers. Instead of creating a static mockup in Figma, they can now create a "Live Prototype" that actually connects to a database and has real user flows to show stakeholders by the end of the day. For Experienced Developers, Bolt acts as a "Boilerplate Killer"—it handles the boring 80% of setting up a new project, allowing them to focus on the 20% of specialized code that actually matters.

• • Startup Founders: Who need to launch an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in days to test market fit.
• • Agency Teams: Who want to deliver client projects faster by automating the scaffolding of marketing sites and internal tools.
• • Students & Educators: Who want to see immediate results without getting stuck on local installation errors.

Bolt.new is essentially a Text-to-App factory. You start by giving it a prompt—anything from "Build a clone of Airbnb" to "Make me a tool that tracks my stock portfolio." The AI then generates a full project folder structure. It creates the App.tsx file, the components, the styling with Tailwind, and even the server logic. You can watch the files being created in real-time in the sidebar, and you can manually edit any line of code at any time if you want to tweak what the AI has done.

In 2026, its ability to integrate with External APIs is its biggest strength. You can tell Bolt to "connect this to Supabase for the database and use Resend for emails," and it will automatically write the integration code, leaving you only to paste in your API keys. It also features a "Prompt Enhancer," which takes your simple 5-word idea and expands it into a detailed technical specification so the AI has more context to build a better app.

Once your app is ready, Bolt handles the Deployment with a single click. It has a native integration with Netlify, but it also allows you to "Export to Zip" or "Push to GitHub" so you can host it anywhere else. It even includes a built-in terminal, allowing you to run NPM commands or install obscure packages that the AI might have missed. It is a complete development environment that happens to have a genius AI developer living inside of it.

• • AI Image Editing: You can upload a screenshot or a sketch, and Bolt will use it as a reference to build the UI.
• • Multiplayer Collaboration: Share a link to your Bolt project and code live with a partner, seeing their changes instantly.
• • Mobile Previews: Scan a QR code on your screen to see your newly built app running instantly on your phone.

Bolt.new uses a Token-Based Model, which is the new standard for AI tools in 2026. Every time the AI writes a line of code or analyzes your files, it consumes "tokens." The Free Plan is great for testing the waters, giving you about 1 million tokens per month and a 300K daily limit. This is usually enough to build one small app or a few landing pages, but you’ll hit the limit quickly if you start doing heavy debugging.

The Pro Plan is the most popular, costing $25 per month (or $20/mo if billed annually). This plan is a game-changer because it removes the daily token limit and gives you 10 million tokens to use throughout the month. It also allows you to remove the "Built with Bolt" branding from your hosted sites and gives you priority access to the latest AI models (like Claude 3.5).

For power users, Bolt offers "Pro 50" and "Pro 100" tiers (costing $50 and $100 respectively) which provide even massive token buckets for full-time developers. The Teams Plan starts at **$40 per user**, adding centralized billing and shared workspaces. One great feature in 2026 is Token Rollover—if you don't use all your Pro tokens this month, they roll over to the next (up to 2 months), so you never feel like you're losing what you paid for.

• • Free ($0): 1M tokens/mo, public projects, Bolt branding, 10MB file uploads.
• • Pro ($20/mo): 10M tokens/mo, private projects, no branding, custom domains, 100MB file uploads.
• • Teams ($30/seat): Centralized management, shared credits, priority support.

The biggest thing to watch out for is Token Consumption during Debugging. When the AI is "fixing a bug," it often has to re-read your entire project to understand the context. This can burn through millions of tokens in a single afternoon if you are stuck on a complex error. It is often smarter to fix simple typos yourself manually to save your tokens for the "heavy lifting" generation.

You should also pay attention to Project Size limits. While Bolt is magic for MVPs and small-to-medium apps, it can start to lag or become "forgetful" once a project reaches thousands of files. It’s not yet a replacement for a professional IDE like Cursor if you are building a massive enterprise platform. Lastly, remember that Hosting is tied to the Platform. While you can export your code, Bolt’s "one-click" hosting is the easiest path, so make sure you are comfortable with their hosting limits before launching a high-traffic production app.

If Bolt.new feels a bit too "browser-constrained," the primary alternative is Cursor. Cursor is a desktop app (based on VS Code) that gives you more power over your local files but requires you to handle your own hosting and environment setup. If you want a more "guided" experience where the AI does everything for you like Bolt, check out Lovable or Replit Agent. Replit is particularly strong for apps that need heavy backends or "always-on" background servers.

For those building strictly frontend UI components, v0.dev by Vercel is the gold standard, though it doesn't handle full-stack logic as well as Bolt does. If you are on a very tight budget, you can use the open-source version called bolt.diy, which allows you to run the same interface locally and use your own API keys from OpenAI or Anthropic to save on subscription costs.

• • Replit: Better for "always-on" apps like Discord bots or heavy Python backends.
• • Cursor: The best for professional developers who want AI inside a traditional desktop editor.
• • Softr: A great alternative for people who want to build apps on top of Airtable or Google Sheets without any code at all.

• Can I download the code I build on Bolt? Yes! You can download your entire project as a ZIP file at any time. You can then open it in VS Code or host it on your own server. You are the owner of the code Bolt generates for you.

• Do I need a credit card to sign up? No. You can start building on the Free plan just by signing in with your GitHub or Google account. You only need a card when you decide to upgrade to Pro for more tokens.

• Is Bolt.new part of StackBlitz? Yes. Bolt.new is built by the StackBlitz team. It uses their WebContainer technology to run the code in your browser, and your Bolt account is actually linked to your StackBlitz profile.

• Does it support mobile app development? Yes, Bolt can generate mobile-friendly web apps (PWAs) and also supports frameworks like Expo, which allow you to eventually turn your web code into a real iOS or Android app.

• What AI models does Bolt use? In 2026, Bolt primarily uses Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, but it also allows you to switch to different "Agents" depending on your plan, including models optimized for speed or deep logical reasoning.