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Building & Product

How much does vibe coding really cost, and how do I stop burning credits?

Plan on $20-100 a month while building seriously: Lovable and Bolt charge in credits per message (a real SaaS feature burns 30-60 credits), while Claude Code and Cursor sell $20 plans that beat pay-per-token API bills by a wide margin. The hidden cost is sloppy prompting; measured comparisons show unplanned vibe sessions cost 3-4x more than spec-first ones for the same feature. Start on the cheapest tier, plan before you prompt, and upgrade only when you consistently hit limits.

Go deeper

18 resources.

More in Vibe Coding

Why can non-technical founders now build software with AI? 18 → What tools should I start with (Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, v0)? 19 → How do real founders ship an MVP with AI in days instead of months? 18 → What are the limits, when do I still need a real engineer? 20 → What actually counts as vibe coding, and how is it different from serious AI-assisted engineering? 18 → How do I plan and prompt so the AI builds what I actually want? 18 → How do I keep my vibe-coded app from getting hacked? 19 → How do I get my vibe-coded prototype ready for real users? 18 → How do I add accounts, a database, and payments to my vibe-coded app? 18 → What do I do when the AI gets stuck, loops, or breaks things it already built? 18 → Do I still need to learn to code, or is prompting enough? 17 → Can vibe-coded products become real businesses? 19 → Can I vibe code a mobile app and get it into the App Store? 18 → How do I avoid losing work? Version control for founders who don't code 19 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Build the product, our Starting Up track.

What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with? 20 → Which no-code tool should I use to build my first product? 20 →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →