Basable vs Lovable, in detail
“How is this different from Lovable?” is the question we hear most, and it deserves a longer answer than a row in a table. The comparison table puts Basable next to seven builders, one row per feature. This post takes one of them, Lovable, and goes through the whole life of an app: what gets built, where the code and the data live, what preview means, what you pay, how you leave, and the places where Lovable is simply the better choice.
Every claim about Lovable below comes from its own documentation and pricing pages, read on 19 October 2026. Where its documentation says nothing, we say so rather than guess. Lovable ships changes often; if something here is out of date, write to legal@basable.com and we will correct it.
The short version
Lovable is the fastest way we know to put a polished React app with a login and a database in front of people, and it has had years of use to smooth the path: design systems, templates, drafts, a mobile app, a Slack app, a security scan before you publish. It makes one set of choices for you. The frontend is React (TanStack Start for apps created since May 2026), the backend is PostgreSQL on Lovable Cloud or your own Supabase, the host is Lovable, and credits are the currency for everything from a chat message to the database your app runs on.
Basable makes fewer choices for you and hands you more of the machine. It writes whatever stack the project calls for into your own repository, builds it in your own CI, and runs each environment in a Kubernetes cluster of its own that you can administer. It is in alpha, it runs one vendor’s models, and nothing about it is as polished as Lovable’s editor. If you want a working app this afternoon and never want to think about infrastructure, choose Lovable. If you expect the app to become a product, with a backend, data and operating requirements of its own, read on.
What each one builds
Lovable’s FAQ says it plainly: “Lovable does not offer a choice of framework or database.” Apps created from 13 May 2026 use TanStack Start, which renders pages on the server; older apps are React with Vite and render in the browser. The database is PostgreSQL, through Lovable Cloud, which is built on Supabase’s open-source foundation and bundles a database, authentication, storage, realtime and edge functions, or through a Supabase project of your own. To use a different stack, the documentation suggests syncing the code to Git and continuing outside Lovable. Lovable does not build native apps; its answer is a progressive web app or a wrapper such as Capacitor, outside Lovable.
Basable builds anything that runs in a container and speaks HTTP. A website in React or in plain HTML, served straight from the environment’s bucket. An API in Go, Node.js or Python. A full-stack app with a PostgreSQL cluster of its own, migrations that run before the new version starts, and backups into the environment’s private bucket. Software you did not write, as a published image or a Helm chart, as long as it runs without root. For a backend with orders, invoices and integrations, Rust plan mode designs the system before any code is written. Native apps are not there yet on Basable either.
The single stack is one of Lovable’s strengths in the first week: fewer decisions, more polish, a path that thousands have walked. It becomes the ceiling in the second month, when a job needs Python, a service must be Go, or a vendor’s product only ships as a container image.
Where the code lives
Lovable syncs your project to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket on every plan. The
sync is two-way: changes made in Lovable are pushed, and pushes to the synced
branch flow back into Lovable. You can clone the repository and work in your
own editor. When both sides have commits the other lacks, Lovable pushes its
changes to a lovable-sync branch and the next sync from GitHub replaces its
copy of the synced branch. If you disconnect, the repository stays on GitHub
with its history, your project stays in Lovable, and “future changes are
stored only there.” A download of the whole project as a zip file needs a paid
plan.
On Basable the repository is the only copy. There is no sync and nothing to
diverge, because the assistant commits to the same repository your laptop
pushes to. Every change it makes is built before it lands: on a branch, in your
own CI, merged into dev only when the build is green, and reviewed by the
agent for stray build output first. A push to main from your laptop deploys
the same way a change from the assistant does, and dev follows it.
Where it runs, and who holds the keys
Lovable hosts the published app for you, “no servers to set up, and HTTPS included”, delivered from locations around the world. Its documentation names no provider. Lovable Cloud runs in one of three regions, Americas, Europe or Asia Pacific, chosen when Cloud is enabled for the project and not changeable afterwards. You get a dashboard over the database and storage, and SQL, in the editor and through the MCP server. You do not get the machine below.
On Basable every environment is a Kubernetes cluster of its own, on servers in
Europe. You download its kubeconfig from the editor and kubectl works as on a
cluster you run yourself, Helm included. Underneath, the servers are shared,
and the walls between tenants are built at the kernel: every pod runs in a
sandbox, cannot become root, reaches the outside only through the gateway and
the public internet, and lives inside a quota you declared. Your own
environment, explained goes through
those walls one by one.
Preview and live
A Lovable project has a preview inside the editor and a published app. Publishing deploys a snapshot (“Only the current version is deployed”), later edits go live when you publish again, and drafts let you try a change in a copy of the project before accepting it. The preview and the published app share the project’s one Cloud backend and its data: there is no second database for trying things out.
A Basable project has two environments, preview and live, and each is a
cluster with its own database, its own buckets and its own address. Work lands
on dev and deploys to preview, which you can send to a colleague or a
customer before anything is public. Merge & Deploy takes it live, and the
button opens only once the code has run on preview at least once. A preview
nobody touches for thirty minutes goes to sleep and stops costing anything.
Data, secrets and security
On Lovable Cloud the database is PostgreSQL with a fixed set of extensions (pg_cron, pg_net, vector and postgis among them), access rules are row-level security policies, and a Quick scan when you open the publish dialog checks those policies, your dependencies and MCP exposure. Workspace admins can block publishing while critical findings are open. Secrets go in a Secrets feature, and Lovable detects an API key pasted into the chat and steers it there. The Business plan adds a Security Center and a Deep scan of the application code; Enterprise adds audit logs, SCIM and EU-only inference. Lovable’s documentation lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 certifications.
On Basable the database is a container you own, with its schema in migrations in your repository and its backups in your bucket. Secrets live in the environment’s own cluster: the deployment waits until you have set them, we never store a copy, and they never pass through the chat. Security is enforced by the cluster rather than by a scan: the restricted Pod Security Standard, the kernel sandbox, the network rules and the quotas apply to every pod, the assistant’s and yours. What Basable does not have is a scanner for your own code, or a certification. ISO 27001 is on our enterprise page as an option we are exploring, not something we hold today.
Your own AI agent
Both have an MCP server, and they do different things. Lovable’s, available on all plans, lets an outside client such as Claude Code or Cursor create and deploy projects, send messages to Lovable’s agent and read its answers, browse files and diffs, run SQL against the Cloud database with full permissions, and read analytics. Creating a project and sending a message cost credits; the other tools do not.
Basable’s MCP server is built so that your agent can replace ours. Connected to
Claude Code, Claude in the browser or Cursor, your agent reads the same rules
our own agent follows, creates projects, writes the code itself, builds it (in
a clone, or through the platform when it has no shell), deploys it and reads
the result: build logs, deployment status, kubectl on the running
environment. There is no “send a message to the assistant”, because the point
is that the thinking happens in the agent you already pay for. The MCP
guide has the setup.
What the money buys
Lovable sells credits. The Free plan gives 5 build credits a day, capped at 30 a month, plus monthly grants of 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits, and publishes to a lovable.app address with the Lovable badge. Pro starts at $25 a month for 100 credits and runs to $2,250 for 10,000; Business starts at $50 for the same 100 credits and adds roles, SSO and the security tooling; annual billing takes two months off. One balance pays for everything: building (a Plan mode message is 1 credit, a Build mode request between about 0.5 and 1.7 credits in Lovable’s own examples), hosting and the Cloud backend (database, storage, compute, bandwidth), and the AI calls your deployed app makes. Top-ups cost $0.30 a credit on Pro and $0.60 on Business, monthly credits expire two months after they are issued, and when the balance reaches zero, “Built-in backend services will pause”: the published pages keep serving, the database behind them does not.
Basable has no plan and no credits. Every new organisation gets a month free per environment. After that you pay for the capacity you reserve, by the second, AI by the token at the rates on the pricing page, and storage per GiB-month and per million requests. A sleeping preview costs nothing. An unpaid invoice is reminded and, in the end, suspends the organisation’s environments, as any hosting bill would; an organisation that never adds a payment method loses its projects two months after it was created.
The difference is not that one is cheaper; for a small app in its first months Lovable’s Free and Pro plans are hard to beat. The difference is what the money is for. On Lovable it buys messages and the backend behind them, in one pool. On Basable it buys reserved capacity in an environment that is yours, and the AI is billed as what it is.
Leaving
Lovable’s documentation is clear and fair about this. The frontend can be hosted anywhere; a TanStack Start app needs a host that runs its server, an older Vite app is static files. For the backend, the two supported destinations are managed Supabase and self-hosted Supabase: “Other backends need changes to your app’s integration code”, and moving the PostgreSQL database alone “does not move authentication, storage, realtime, or Edge Functions.” The database export does not include stored files, Edge Function code or secrets. The editor itself cannot be self-hosted.
A Basable project has nothing to export. The repository already holds the Dockerfiles or Bazel rules that build the images, the CI workflow that builds them, and the Kubernetes manifests the platform deploys; any Kubernetes cluster runs the result, and the Rust frameworks a plan mode project uses are open source on crates.io. We would rather be chosen every month than be hard to leave.
Where Lovable is better
A comparison that only lists our wins is not worth reading, so here is the other column.
- Time to a polished first version. Lovable’s editor, design systems, templates, drafts and version history are years ahead of ours, and its frontends look finished from the first prompt.
- Collaboration. Unlimited workspace members on every plan, roles on paid plans, SSO on Business, SCIM and audit logs on Enterprise. Basable has organisations and roles, and little more.
- Security tooling and paperwork. A scan before every publish, a Security Center, publishing controls, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. Basable has none of those today.
- Reach. A mobile app, a desktop app, a Slack app, a ChatGPT connector, a community and a marketplace of templates.
- AI inside the app. Lovable Cloud gives your app an AI gateway with a managed key, so a chat feature needs no provider account. On Basable you bring the key, and the app reads it from a secret.
- Maturity. Lovable is a product with a large user base. Basable is an alpha whose pipeline works end to end and still has rough edges.
Moving a Lovable app to Basable
Some people arrive from Lovable with an app that has outgrown it. The path: connect the GitHub repository Lovable synced, and start a session in Rust plan mode. A Lovable app is a Supabase app, and plan mode recognises one from its files. Before it asks anything, it writes an inventory: the tables, the row-level security policies, the functions and Edge Functions, the schedules, the buckets, the realtime channels, the sign-in providers, and every place the frontend calls Supabase. Then it plans a backend around that inventory and asks only about what the standard shape lacks. Implement renders that backend beside the existing app and records the move of the frontend into the rendered project, where it keeps its React. Your data comes across the way Lovable’s documentation describes: export it from Lovable Cloud and load it into the new PostgreSQL.
Be clear about what this is. It is a planned rebuild of the backend, not a lift and shift, plan mode is new, and you will be involved in the decisions. A Lovable site with no backend of its own is simpler: connect the repository and the assistant gets it running on preview, as a container for a TanStack Start app or straight from the bucket for a static one.
Which one
Choose Lovable if you want an app this week, your needs fit React and PostgreSQL, and you would rather never see a server. It is very good at that, and it is honest about its edges.
Choose Basable if the app is going to be a product: when you need a language Lovable does not build, software that only ships as a container, a preview with data of its own, a bill that follows use rather than messages, admin access to the environment your app runs in, or a repository that would run without us tomorrow. Sign up with just your email; every new organisation gets a month free per environment, and the first thing you can do is download the kubeconfig of your preview and look around.