Guide · 6 minute read · 21 October 2026
Who hosts your site, and what it costs once it's live
The builder that made your site will also host it, and for many sites that is the right answer. The confusion starts with the bill: building credits and running costs come out of the same pot, your own address sits behind a plan, and nobody says in one sentence what happens when you stop paying. Four builders, the same four questions for each.
The four questions
Is the builder's own address free? What does a domain of your own cost? What do you pay while the site runs? What stops when you stop paying? Prices are the ones on each company's pricing page on 21 October 2026, and they change often.
Lovable
The address is free on every plan. Publishing puts a snapshot of your project at a lovable.app link with HTTPS included, and Lovable's FAQ says “On the Free plan you can build and publish without paying.”
Your own domain needs a paid plan. Lovable's docs say “Custom domains are available on paid plans”, and Pro is the first of them, listed at $25 a month. You can buy a domain through Lovable or connect one you own.
While it runs, one credit balance pays for everything: building, hosting, the built-in backend and the AI features inside your app. Lovable's docs say that for most smaller apps hosting “does not cost anything”, and every plan gets a monthly grant for the backend. A busy app with a database uses credits while you sleep; the Usage view under the Cloud tab shows the run credits an app uses per day. If the balance hits zero the published site stays live, AI features in the app stop, and an app that relies on the built-in backend can pause until credits are added.
When you stop paying, the plan runs to the end of the billing period and the workspace becomes Free. The published app stays live and a connected domain keeps serving it. Connecting a new domain needs a paid plan again, and the next time you publish on Free the app switches to invite only, with a warning in the dialog first. Lovable's rule: “Features that are not included in your new plan stop working.”
Bolt
The address is free. Bolt's hosting page: “All Bolt users, both Free and Pro, can publish their projects to a .bolt.host domain.”
Your own domain needs Pro, $18 a month billed yearly on Bolt's pricing page and more month to month. The Free column says custom domains are not included. Domains can be bought through Bolt or connected.
While it runs, hosting is part of the plan. Bolt's hosting page says each plan includes “a certain amount of hosting usage”, and when a site reaches its limit it stops showing publicly until the next billing cycle; paid plans raise the limit. The pricing page gives no figure for the amount, so it is a limit you learn about by hitting it.
When you stop paying, the free address keeps working. Your custom domains stay in your account, but on Free you can't publish to them or reconnect them until you upgrade again.
Replit
The address is free and instant, at a replit.app name, with a condition. Replit's deployment pricing page says the Starter plan “Includes 1 free published app. The deployment expires after 30 days but can be re-published.” A free Replit site is a site you republish once a month.
Your own domain has no separate price. You link it from the publishing tool's Domains tab; Replit asks for an A record and a TXT record and says to allow up to 48 hours. It wants one A record and no AAAA records on the name, and Cloudflare's proxy gets in the way of certificates.
While it runs, the cost depends on the kind of deployment you chose when you published. Static hosting is free, with data transfer at $0.05 per GB. Autoscale, for an app with a server that can sleep, is $2 a month base plus $0.60 per million compute units and $0.40 per million requests. A Reserved VM, always on, starts at $15 a month. On a paid plan these come out of the monthly credits first; Core is $20 a month, or $18 billed yearly, and once the credits are spent you pay the usage.
When you stop paying, you are back to Starter's one free app with its 30-day clock. Anything beyond that stops when the credits that paid for it stop.
v0
The address is free. Every v0 deployment gets a vercel.app link.
Your own domain is added from Publish, then Customize Domain, or from the project menu under Domains, with the records set at your registrar. v0's docs put no price on it; what you pay follows Vercel's plans. Vercel's Hobby plan is $0 and “for personal, non-commercial use”; Pro is $20 a month.
While it runs, a v0 site runs on Vercel, so Vercel's limits apply, and v0's credits pay for building, not hosting.
When you stop paying for v0, the site is still on Vercel, which bills on its own. Two accounts and two bills, which is a help on the day you leave v0.
The other routes
If the builder's address isn't enough and the plan is the only reason you would pay, there are three other ways to get your own name on the site. A static host, for files only, often with a free tier. A server host, for an app that needs one, from a few dollars a month. Or a host that takes either kind and reads the folder itself. How much does it cost to run an app made with AI? walks through the parts of the bill, and How to get your code out of Lovable, Bolt, Replit or v0 covers the export, which is the first step on any of them.