Guide
Lovable Hosting Cost: What a Site Costs to Run
There are three ways to keep a Lovable site online, and each has a different cost shape. Lovable hosting is bundled with your Lovable plan, so the cost is the plan plus your domain. Self-hosting on a static host like Netlify, Vercel or Cloudflare Pages moves the cost to that host's plan, often a free tier for a small site. WordPress moves it to hosting plus a domain plus any paid plugins, but it does not depend on an AI builder subscription at all. For current Lovable prices, check Lovable's own pricing and docs.lovable.dev; we do not quote figures we cannot verify.
The three cost models
Hosting cost is not one number. It is a plan, a domain, and whatever you add on top. The three routes differ in which of those you pay for and who does the work.
Lovable hosting is the default. You publish from the editor, the site goes live on a Lovable URL, and you can attach a custom domain. The hosting itself is part of using Lovable, so the recurring cost is your Lovable plan plus domain registration. If you keep editing with AI prompts, that plan is something you were paying for anyway.
Self-hosting means you export the code and deploy the build output yourself. The Lovable build is static files, so any static host will serve it. Small sites often fit inside a free tier. The cost moves from a builder subscription to a host plan, and you pay with a little setup time.
WordPress is a different shape again. You pay a web host, you pay for a domain, and you may pay for plugins. Nothing is tied to Lovable. The site keeps running whether or not you ever open the Lovable editor again.
What you pay for on Lovable hosting
On Lovable hosting the line items are short.
The practical point is that hosting and building are bundled. If you stop paying for Lovable, you stop having the editor, and you need to think about where the published site lives. That is the main thing to weigh, not the monthly figure.
- Your Lovable plan — hosting comes with it. Plan tiers and limits are listed on lovable.dev; check there for the current numbers.
- A domain — bought from a registrar, renewed yearly. Custom domains are supported on Lovable hosting.
- Nothing for prerendering — Lovable prerenders older React + Vite apps on request for verified search engines, link-preview bots and AI crawlers. That is part of Lovable hosting.
- Anything your app calls — Supabase, APIs, mail services. Those bills are separate wherever you host.
What self-hosting costs
Export the code, run npm install and npm run build, and you get a dist/ folder of static files. Node 22. Any static host can serve that: Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, or an object store behind a CDN. Most have a free tier that covers a brochure site, and paid tiers start when traffic, build minutes or team seats grow.
GitHub sync works on every Lovable plan, so you can get the code out without paying for a download. The ZIP export under "Download codebase" needs a paid plan. Our export guide walks through both.
There is one cost that is not money. If your app was created before 13 May 2026, it is React + Vite and renders in the browser. Lovable's crawler prerendering is part of Lovable hosting, so a self-hosted older app is client-rendered unless you add prerendering yourself. That is developer time, or a prerendering service with its own bill. Apps created from 13 May 2026 use TanStack Start and are server-rendered, which changes the picture: they need a host that runs a server, not just static files.
Our hosting guide covers the deployment options in more detail.
What WordPress costs to run
WordPress itself is free software from wordpress.org. The recurring costs are hosting and a domain. Shared hosting is cheap; managed WordPress hosting costs more and does more for you. Prices vary enormously by host, so compare rather than assume.
On top of that, plugins. Contact Form 7 and WooCommerce are free to install. SEO plugins like Yoast, Rank Math and SEOPress all have free tiers that cover titles, descriptions and sitemaps. Paid tiers exist and are optional for a small site.
There is also maintenance. Core, theme and plugin updates, backups, and the occasional broken thing. Managed hosts fold some of that into the price. If you do it yourself, it is time rather than money.
What you get for that is independence. No builder subscription sits between you and your published site. Content edits happen in the Site Editor and the post editor, not in a prompt.
Cost drivers that catch people out
The headline plan price is rarely the whole bill. These are the items that move the total.
None of these are specific to Lovable. They apply to any site. But they are the reason two sites on the same plan can cost very different amounts.
- Traffic — free static tiers have bandwidth limits. A page that goes viral can push you onto a paid tier.
- Images — Lovable sites are often image-heavy. Large files eat bandwidth and slow pages everywhere.
- Backends — Supabase, auth, APIs and third-party widgets bill separately from hosting.
- Email — contact forms need somewhere to send mail. Shared hosting mail is unreliable; a transactional mail service is a small recurring cost.
- Domain renewal — the first year is often discounted, the renewal is not.
- Your time — the cost nobody budgets. A route that needs manual prerendering is hours, not dollars.
Moving the site to WordPress
If the reason you are reading this is that you want the site off a builder subscription, converting to WordPress is the move. Our converter runs in the browser at iqdesk.com/app. Feed it the Lovable ZIP or a GitHub repository and it produces a WordPress block theme: templates, header and footer template parts, one pattern per page, theme.json with your palette and fonts, and your images copied into the theme.
Conversion, review and the theme download are free. The review screen shows the converted site next to the original inside WordPress Playground, in your browser, before you commit to anything. Every account includes two free AI-fix attempts. Paid plans add credits and saved projects: Starter is $20 for 666 credits and one saved project, Studio is $60 for 2000 credits and five saved projects. See pricing.
Be clear about what does not come across. Custom React state and event handlers, Supabase, authentication, dashboards, API calls, iframes, canvas, Lottie and third-party widgets are not converted. Carousels, tabs, modals and animations are approximated in their default or final state. The full list is on supported features. If your site is an app rather than a set of pages, WordPress hosting will be cheaper but the app will not be there.
After conversion you still pay for WordPress hosting and a domain. The saving is the builder subscription, and the gain is that nothing about the live site depends on it.
How to choose
Pick the model that matches how the site will be used, not the one with the smallest number.
Whichever route you take, set up the basics before launch: a working domain, the right front page, and indexing allowed. On WordPress that last one is Settings → Reading and the checkbox "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Leave it checked on staging, uncheck it before launch.
- Still iterating with AI? Stay on Lovable hosting. You are paying for the editor anyway, and prerendering for crawlers is included.
- Site is finished and static? Export and self-host. Static hosts have generous free tiers, and the build output is just files.
- Want content editing without a subscription? Convert to WordPress. Hosting plus a domain, editors who are not you, and a free SEO plugin.
- Need the app logic to keep working? Keep it where it runs. Conversion gives you pages, not React state, Supabase or auth.
- Not sure? Run the free conversion and look at the side-by-side review before spending anything.
FAQ
How much does Lovable hosting cost?
Hosting is bundled with your Lovable plan rather than billed separately, so the recurring cost is the plan plus your domain registration. Plan tiers and their limits change, so check lovable.dev and docs.lovable.dev for current figures. A custom domain is bought from a registrar and renewed yearly, independently of Lovable.
Can I host a Lovable site for free?
Often yes. The build output is static files, and hosts like Netlify, Vercel and Cloudflare Pages have free tiers that cover a small site. Note that apps created from 13 May 2026 use TanStack Start and are server-rendered, so they need a host that runs a server rather than a plain static bucket.
Is WordPress cheaper than Lovable hosting?
It depends on the host you pick and whether you would otherwise keep paying for Lovable. WordPress costs hosting plus a domain, with free plugins available for forms, SEO and ecommerce. The saving is that no builder subscription sits between you and the live site; the cost is that you handle updates and backups.
Do I lose crawler prerendering if I move off Lovable hosting?
For older React + Vite apps, yes. Lovable prerenders those on request for verified search engines, link-preview bots and AI crawlers, and that is part of Lovable hosting. Hosted elsewhere, an older app is client-rendered unless you add prerendering yourself. Apps created from 13 May 2026 are server-rendered and are not affected.
Does converting a Lovable site to WordPress cost anything?
Conversion, review and the theme download are free, and every account includes two free AI-fix attempts. Paid plans add credits and saved projects: Starter is $20 for 666 credits and one saved project, Studio is $60 for 2000 credits and five saved projects. You still pay separately for WordPress hosting and a domain.