Base44 pricing in 2026 runs from a free plan at $0 to an Elite plan at $200 per month, or $160 per month when you pay for a year up front. Every paid tier buys you two separate pools of credits: message credits, which you burn while prompting the AI to build, and integration credits, which your app burns every time a real user triggers an email, an image, an LLM call, or an in-app agent. Almost every published guide stops at that plan table. This one goes further and works out what the credits actually buy, using Base44's own published burn rates, because the plan price is the smaller half of the answer.
Quick Answer
- Base44 pricing has five self-serve tiers: Free ($0), Starter ($20/mo or $16/mo billed annually), Builder ($50 or $40), Pro ($100 or $80), and Elite ($200 or $160). Enterprise is custom. Annual billing saves 20% and is charged once, up front.
- The price per message credit is flat at $0.20 across Starter, Builder and Pro ($0.16 annually). Upgrading buys you more credits, not cheaper ones. Only Elite breaks the pattern at about $0.167 per credit monthly.
- Integration credits are the pool that usually runs out first. An in-app agent running on GPT-5.6 Sol costs about 40 credits per message, so Starter's 2,000 integration credits cover roughly 50 chat messages a month.
- The free plan has a daily cap, not just a monthly one: 5 credits per day, 25 per month, and a maximum of 5 apps.
- When integration credits run out, your end users see errors, not you. Base44's docs confirm the action fails with a generic error message for the person using your app.
Base44 pricing plans in 2026
Base44 is a no-code AI app builder, owned by Wix since 2025, that generates full apps with frontend, backend, database and auth from plain-language prompts. Here is the live plan table, checked against the Base44 pricing page on August 21, 2026.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | Charged yearly | Message credits/mo | Integration credits/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 | 25 (max 5/day) | 100 |
| Starter | $20 | $16 | $192 | 100 | 2,000 |
| Builder | $50 | $40 | $480 | 250 | 10,000 |
| Pro | $100 | $80 | $960 | 500 | 20,000 |
| Elite | $200 | $160 | $1,920 | 1,200 | 50,000 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Free is capped at 5 apps. Every paid tier advertises unlimited apps, in-app code edits and a connected custom domain. Builder adds GitHub integration and a free domain for one year, Pro adds early access to beta features, and Elite adds premium support. Elite is the highest plan you can buy without talking to sales.
The two credit types, and which one runs out first
This is the part the plan page compresses into two numbers, and it is where most Base44 budgets go wrong.
Message credits are spent when you prompt the AI while building: adding a feature, fixing logic, rewriting copy, applying a suggested change. They are consumed by you, during development.
Integration credits are spent when your app calls one of Base44's built-in services at runtime: sending an email, generating an image, running an LLM call, or answering a message with an in-app agent. They are consumed by your users, in production, for as long as the app is live.
Notice the ratio shift across the tiers. Free gives you 100 integration credits against 25 message credits, a ratio of 4 to 1. Starter jumps to 20 to 1, and Builder, Pro and Elite all sit around 40 to 1. The free plan is shaped for building something and looking at it, not for running it. The moment an app has real users doing real things, the integration pool is the constraint.
What Base44 actually costs per credit
Divide each plan price by its message credit allowance and a pattern appears that no pricing page states out loud.
| Plan | Monthly $/message credit | Annual $/message credit |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0.200 | $0.160 |
| Builder | $0.200 | $0.160 |
| Pro | $0.200 | $0.160 |
| Elite | $0.167 | $0.133 |
Starter, Builder and Pro price message credits identically. Moving from Starter to Pro multiplies your allowance by five and your bill by five. There is no volume discount until Elite, which lands about 17% cheaper per credit. If your only reason to upgrade is a cheaper unit rate, the upgrade does nothing until you reach $200 a month.
That flat rate is useful because it converts Base44's published effort table into money directly.
| Scope of change | Typical message credits | Cost at $0.20/credit |
|---|---|---|
| Simple visual or text change | ~0.5 | ~$0.10 |
| Improving a small feature | ~1 | ~$0.20 |
| Adding a complex module | ~2 | ~$0.40 |
| Large-scale or app-wide change | ~3 to 4 | ~$0.60 to $0.80 |
So Starter's 100 message credits buy roughly 200 small text tweaks, or 100 feature refinements, or 50 complex modules, or about 25 to 33 app-wide rewrites in a month. A real build mixes all four. Base44 is explicit that these are estimates, that the true figure is calculated after the action runs, and that the rates are subject to change at its discretion.
One genuinely useful detail: manual visual edits, dragging elements, changing layouts, and editing text directly in the editor, do not consume credits at all. Anything you can do by hand in the editor is free. Prompting the AI to do the same thing is not.
What integration credits really buy
Base44 publishes per-action integration costs in its credits documentation, and they vary by more than an order of magnitude. This table is the single most important input to a Base44 budget, and it is missing from nearly every pricing guide on the first page of Google.
| Built-in action | Integration credit cost |
|---|---|
| SendEmail | 1 per email |
| SendEmail from your own domain | 2 per email |
| SendPushNotification | 1 per notification |
| UploadFile | 1 per upload |
| ExtractDataFromUploadedFile | 1 per call |
| GenerateImage | 1 per image |
| GenerateVideo | 5 per second of video |
| GenerateSpeech | 1 per 50 characters (max 100 per call) |
| invokeLLM (Automatic) | ~1 per call |
| invokeLLM (Gemini 3 Flash) | ~5 per call |
| invokeLLM (GPT-5.4) | ~15 per call |
| In-app agent (Automatic) | ~3 per message |
| In-app agent (Gemini 3 Flash) | ~5 per message |
| In-app agent (GPT-5.6 Sol) | ~40 per message |
| Automation run | 1 per run, plus whatever it calls |
Now run the arithmetic on three ordinary app shapes.
An AI support chatbot. On the strongest model, GPT-5.6 Sol at ~40 credits per message, Starter's 2,000 integration credits cover about 50 messages a month. Builder covers 250, Pro 500, and Elite 1,250. Drop to the Automatic model at ~3 credits and Starter stretches to roughly 666 messages. The model picker, not the plan picker, is the main cost lever here.
A scheduled automation. Base44's own documented example is an automation that calls invokeLLM and then sends an email: 1 credit for the run, ~1 for the LLM call, 1 for the email, roughly 3 credits each time it fires. Run that hourly and you get 720 fires a month at ~3 credits, about 2,160 integration credits. That single automation exceeds Starter's entire 2,000-credit monthly allowance before a single user touches the app.
Video generation. At 5 credits per second, one 30-second clip costs 150 credits. Starter's 2,000 credits are about 13 clips a month.
There is one large escape hatch, and it is worth knowing before you pick a plan: integration credits are not consumed if you call external services through your own API keys or backend functions. Bring your own SendGrid or your own OpenAI key and those calls leave the integration pool untouched. You then pay those vendors directly instead, which is usually cheaper at volume and always more predictable.
Five Base44 pricing details the plan page does not show
1. Annual billing is charged once, up front, and cancelling refunds nothing. The advertised $16 per month for Starter is $192 taken in a single charge. Base44's billing documentation states that cancelling stops future renewals but does not issue a refund for the current subscription period. Cancel an annual plan in month two and the remaining ten months are gone.
2. Downgrading re-imposes the 5-app cap. When you cancel, the workspace drops to the free plan at the end of the billing period, and the free plan allows a maximum of 5 apps. If you built eight apps on Builder, that is a problem you discover at renewal time.
3. Credits do not roll over. Unused monthly credits expire at the end of the cycle. Your reset date is the day of the month you subscribed, not the first of the month. Switching from monthly to yearly does not hand you a fresh set of credits mid-cycle either.
4. You cannot preview an integration credit cost before running the action. This is stated plainly in the docs, along with the recommended workaround: run the action once in a controlled test and read the execution logs afterwards. Budgeting is therefore retrospective by design.
5. When integration credits run out, your users see the failure. Base44 emails you, and any action requiring integration credits fails. Critically, if one of your users triggers such an action, for example signing up and triggering a welcome email, they get a generic error with no explanation. On a live product that is a production incident driven by a billing threshold, which is a good argument for keeping a buffer well above your expected usage.
A sixth, smaller trap applies only to the free plan: automatic AI error fixes and "Resolve with AI" consume message credits on Free, but are free on paid plans. The 25 free credits can drain into fixing the AI's own mistakes.
How to spend fewer Base44 credits
These follow directly from the mechanics above rather than from generic advice.
- Do layout, spacing and copy edits by hand in the visual editor. Manual edits cost zero credits; asking the AI to do them costs 0.5 to 1 each.
- Keep prompts narrow. Credits scale with how many files the AI has to read and change, not with how long your message is.
- Default your in-app agents to the Automatic model and reserve GPT-5.6 Sol for the cases that genuinely need it. That is roughly a 13x difference per message.
- Move high-volume email and LLM calls to your own API keys through backend functions, so they stop drawing on integration credits.
- Check credit usage per app in Settings before upgrading. Credits are shared across every app in the workspace, so one runaway app can starve the others.
- Test any new automation once manually and read the execution logs before you schedule it to run on a timer.
Base44 pricing compared with Totalum
If you are pricing Base44 you are probably pricing its alternatives at the same time. Here is an honest side-by-side. One caveat first, and it matters: the credit units are not interchangeable. Base44 splits credits into build-time and run-time pools; Totalum uses a single credit pool and includes hosting, database and admin panel in the plan. Compare the shape of the plans, not credit against credit.
| Base44 | Totalum | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0, 25 message + 100 integration credits, max 5 apps, 5 credits/day cap | $0, 50 credits/mo, limited database (100 rows) |
| Entry paid | $20/mo ($16 annual), 100 message + 2,000 integration credits | $29/mo, 300 credits, 50k-row database, admin CMS panel |
| Mid tier | Builder $50/mo ($40 annual), 250 + 10,000 credits | Business $59/mo, 600 credits, 150k rows, deploy, hosting and custom domain |
| Upper tier | Pro $100 ($80), Elite $200 ($160) | Professional $99/mo, 1,200 credits, 500k rows, priority support |
| Credit model | Two pools; runtime usage billed to integration credits | Single credit pool |
| Custom domain | From Starter ($16/mo annual) | From Business ($59/mo) |
| Code export | Two-way GitHub sync | Download full Next.js + TotalumSDK source at any time, built-in editor |
| Data location | Wix infrastructure | European Union, hourly automatic backups |
| Programmatic access | Not offered as a public builder API | REST API and MCP, so agencies and SaaS products can drive or embed the builder |
Where Base44 is genuinely cheaper: the entry paid tier, and connecting a custom domain, which Base44 includes from $16 a month while Totalum puts it on the $59 Business plan. If a custom domain on the cheapest possible paid plan is your requirement, Base44 wins that comparison outright.
Where the shape differs most: Base44 meters your app's runtime behaviour through integration credits, so a successful app costs more to run as it succeeds, and an unsuccessful billing threshold surfaces as an error to your users. Totalum's plan includes hosting, the database and the data admin panel, and the output is a real Next.js project you can download and run anywhere. For a deeper feature-by-feature view, see our Base44 vs Totalum comparison, and if you are actively evaluating a switch, the Base44 alternative guide covers migration.
For pricing on the rest of the category, we maintain the same style of breakdown for Lovable pricing and Bolt.new pricing, and there is a roundup of what you can actually ship without paying anything in our free AI app builder guide.
Is Base44 worth it in 2026?
For building and shipping a first app, the Starter plan at $16 to $20 a month is fair value, and the free plan is genuinely usable for evaluation as long as you accept the 5-credits-per-day pacing. Base44's build quality and the breadth of its built-in services are real, and two-way GitHub sync means you are not locked in at the code level.
The judgement call sits entirely on the runtime side. If your app sends a lot of email, generates media, or puts an AI agent in front of users, model your integration credit consumption before you commit to an annual plan, because that is the number that decides your real bill, and it is the number the pricing page does not help you estimate. Start monthly, measure a full cycle with the per-app usage dashboard, and only then take the 20% annual discount, since that discount is charged up front and is not refundable.
If you would rather not meter runtime behaviour at all, or you need to own and host the generated source yourself, that is the point at which it is worth comparing builders on architecture rather than on price.
FAQ
How much does Base44 cost per month in 2026?
Base44 costs $0 on the free plan, $20 for Starter, $50 for Builder, $100 for Pro, and $200 for Elite on monthly billing. Annual billing cuts each paid tier by 20%, to $16, $40, $80 and $160 per month respectively, charged as a single yearly payment. Enterprise pricing is custom.
What is the difference between message credits and integration credits?
Message credits are spent by you while prompting the AI to build or change your app. Integration credits are spent by your app at runtime whenever it uses a Base44 built-in service such as sending an email, generating an image, running an LLM call, or answering with an in-app agent. They are separate pools and both reset monthly.
Does Base44 have a free plan, and what are its limits?
Yes. The free plan costs $0 and includes 25 message credits and 100 integration credits per month, with a maximum of 5 apps. It also enforces a daily limit of 5 credits, so you cannot spend the monthly allowance in one session. On the free plan, automatic AI error fixes also consume message credits.
Do unused Base44 credits roll over to the next month?
No. Unused monthly credits expire at the end of your credit cycle and do not carry over. Your reset date is the same day of the month you subscribed on, not the first of the month.
Can I get a refund if I cancel Base44?
No. Base44's documentation states that cancelling stops future renewals but does not refund the current subscription period. Because annual plans are charged once up front, cancelling an annual plan early forfeits the remaining months. Your workspace stays active until the end of the paid period, then drops to the free plan and its 5-app limit.
How do I avoid burning integration credits?
Call external services through your own API keys or backend functions, which Base44 confirms does not consume integration credits. Beyond that, default in-app agents to the Automatic model rather than GPT-5.6 Sol, test automations once manually before scheduling them, and watch the per-app usage dashboard, since credits are shared across every app in the workspace.
Start building at Totalum
If this breakdown made you want a builder where hosting, the database and an admin panel are inside the plan, and where you can download the full Next.js source whenever you like, you can try Totalum free. The free plan gives you 50 credits a month with no daily cap, which is enough to build and look at something real before you decide anything.
Start building free at totalum.app
Base44 plan prices, credit allowances and per-action integration costs in this article were read from base44.com/pricing and docs.base44.com on August 21, 2026. Base44 states that credit figures are estimates, are calculated after an action runs, and may change at its discretion. Totalum pricing is per project and shown in USD. Verify both before committing to an annual plan.