Start here

App builders (Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Base44) take a description and try to hand you a running app. Start here if you have not written code.

AI editors (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Devin Desktop — the product formerly called Windsurf) assume you are already in a codebase. Start here if you can read a file and you want the agent beside you.

Coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Aider, Cline) take a task and edit the repo, often from a terminal. Start here only after the first version exists and you can review a diff.

Write one sentence: who it is for, what they do, and what “done” looks like on a phone. If you cannot say that, no tool will save the weekend.

Pick one app builder and give it that sentence. Do not open a second builder until you have clicked through the first result. The Starter kit on this site is a longer version of this path, and it is not for sale yet.

Add one piece of real data only after the screens make sense. Supabase is the usual first backend in this directory when you want accounts and a database. Firebase is the other mature option, especially for mobile.

Publish it. Vercel if the project is a web app from v0 or Next.js. Netlify or Cloudflare Pages are the other straightforward hosts. A link you can send is the point.

Move into Cursor or Copilot when you need to change many files, connect a key, or understand a bug the builder keeps reintroducing. Devin Desktop is the same kind of move if you were already on Windsurf.

Use a terminal agent when you can read the diff it proposes. If you cannot, you are not saving time. You are collecting a codebase you cannot repair.

Each tool has four marks from 1 to 10: ease of use, power, free tier, and community. The published score is the average. A 5 on free tier means we could not confirm a public plan, not that the tool is expensive.

We do not list a price in dollars. A pricing model appears only when it was confirmed — free, freemium, or open source. Everything else says “not confirmed”.