Bolt.new vs FlutterFlow

Bolt.new is an AI app builder from StackBlitz, the San Francisco company founded in 2017 whose WebContainers technology runs Node.js entirely inside the browser. Bolt launched in October 2024, grew to an estimated $40 million in annual recurring revenue within months, and in January 2025 StackBlitz raised a $105.5 million Series B led by Emergence Capital and GV. Its core job: you describe an app, website or prototype in chat, and Bolt writes the code, runs it live in the browser and deploys it.

Bolt Cloud adds hosting, unlimited databases, authentication, custom domains and analytics, so small apps can ship without leaving the product. You can start from Figma, a GitHub repo or a template, connect Stripe for payments, and build mobile apps through Expo. Pricing is token-based: the free plan gives 1 million tokens a month with a 300,000 daily cap, Pro gives 10 million tokens with rollover and removes Bolt branding, Teams adds admin controls and shared capacity, and Enterprise is billed by consumption.

Bolt fits founders, designers and developers who want a working prototype or MVP in hours with real, exportable code. It is weaker on large, long-lived codebases: token usage grows with project size, and debugging loops can burn through allowances. Lovable and Replit target the same audience, Bubble and FlutterFlow are visual builders with their own runtime, and Softr fits simple internal tools.

Buying tip: start on the free plan to judge how fast your project consumes tokens; heavy users should take Pro annual, where unused tokens roll over.

FlutterFlow is a visual low-code builder for mobile, web and desktop apps that generates code for Flutter, Google's cross-platform UI framework. It was founded by former Google engineers and went through Y Combinator. Instead of locking apps inside a closed runtime, FlutterFlow outputs real Dart and Flutter code, so the same project can be published to the App Store, Google Play and the web.

You design screens with drag and drop, bind widgets to Firebase or Supabase data, call REST APIs, add authentication, push notifications and payments, and write custom functions or widgets in Dart when the visual tools are not enough. Paid plans unlock code download, GitHub sync, one-click deployment to the app stores and team collaboration with branching, while a free plan covers building and testing in the browser. FlutterFlow has also added AI features that generate pages and components from text prompts.

FlutterFlow fits startups building an MVP, agencies delivering client apps and companies creating internal field apps who need genuinely native mobile apps quickly. Complex apps still benefit from Flutter knowledge, generated code can need refactoring, and state management can become tangled in large projects. Bubble and Softr are stronger for web-only apps, Adalo and Glide are simpler for basic mobile apps, and writing Flutter or React Native by hand gives full control at the cost of speed.