Tool · Calculator
What does base44 actually cost?
Pick your plan, AI usage, users and integrations for a monthly estimate, then see the published price of getting back out.
The calculator models your own usage. For the tier-by-tier breakdown of what Base44 actually costs in 2026 — plan fees, credit overage, and the line items that move the bill — read the full pricing analysis. Whether the fee is worth paying for your app is a separate question, and our engineer’s Base44 review answers it with the platform’s strengths and failure points side by side.
01 /LIST PRICE
What does base44 cost per month?
Base44 charges $0 to $200 per month across five published plans, with a sixth priced on request (checked 23 September 2026). The plan fee buys a fixed monthly allowance of message credits — 25 on Free, 1,200 on Elite — so the tier you need is set by how hard you work the AI agent, not by how many users your app has.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | Message credits / mo | Integration credits / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Monthly billing$0 | Annual billing (per month)$0 | Message credits / mo25 | Integration credits / mo100 |
| Starter | Monthly billing$20 | Annual billing (per month)$16 | Message credits / mo100 | Integration credits / mo2,000 |
| Builder | Monthly billing$50 | Annual billing (per month)$40 | Message credits / mo250 | Integration credits / mo10,000 |
| Pro | Monthly billing$100 | Annual billing (per month)$80 | Message credits / mo500 | Integration credits / mo20,000 |
| Elite | Monthly billing$200 | Annual billing (per month)$160 | Message credits / mo1,200 | Integration credits / mo50,000 |
| Enterprise | Monthly billingCustom | Annual billing (per month)Custom | Message credits / moCustom | Integration credits / moCustom |
Read from base44.com/pricing on 23 September 2026, both billing toggles. Base44 states that annual billing saves 20% on every paid plan, charged once a year. Base44 defines credits as “your monthly usage allowance for AI messages and integration actions” and notes that “exact usage varies based on the action and the selected AI model.” Plan prices move — re-check the source before you budget against this table.
What the plan fee does not include
- 1. Third-party services. Base44’s pricing FAQ states that services you connect to your apps — it names Stripe, SendGrid and OpenAI — bill you directly on their own pricing.
- 2. Credit overage. The allowance in the table is monthly and finite, and burn tracks the action rather than the size of the change you asked for. Base44’s credits docs state that unused monthly credits “expire at the end of your credit cycle and do not carry over,” and that at the limit, actions that need credits “pause until your next reset” unless you upgrade or adjust your plan. The base44 credit system explained walks through where the allowance actually goes.
- 3. A support or uptime commitment. Base44’s published plan highlights list premium support on Elite only. No uptime figure appears on its pricing page.
One thing the fee does cover is the backend. Base44’s developer docs, read 23 September 2026, state: “The Base44 backend service is currently in beta and free to use. There is no separate backend subscription or additional charges for using backend features.” Backend operations draw on the workspace’s integration credits instead, and Base44’s credits docs put backend functions on the Builder plan and above.
The calculator below models five of the eight cost factors listed after it; the other three you budget separately. It assumes you build on the platform yourself. If you would rather hand the build off, see what a done-for-you Base44 build costs.
04 / integrations
Estimated monthly cost
$1,703 – $2,365
Cash spend plus the engineering time teams routinely forget.
- Subscription
- $50/mo
- Extra credit capacity (upgrade)
- $80/mo
- Integrations
- $60/mo
- Volume surcharge
- $13/mo
- Engineering opportunity
- $1,500–$2,000/mo
Estimate only. A $497 audit returns an exact, itemised number for your app.
The assumptions behind the estimate
Only the plan fee is a Base44 price. Every other number is a fixed Base44Devs assumption, not a vendor rate card or a measurement of your app, so swap in your own invoices where you have them.
- Subscription. The plan you pick at its monthly-billing price, Starter $20 to Elite $200. Free is not in the picker; annual billing is 20% lower.
- AI credit overage. $0, $80, $250 or $600 a month for light, moderate, heavy or constant AI-builder use. Base44’s docs point to a plan upgrade when credits run out, so read this line as the cost of the extra capacity you end up buying.
- Integrations. Flat monthly lines of ~$60 for Stripe or payments, ~$35 for email, ~$45 for SMS and ~$50 for an external API or CRM sync.
- Volume surcharge. $25 for every 1,000 monthly active users.
- Range. The high end of the cash estimate is the low end × 1.6, plus half the AI overage line; the engineering band then adds its own low and high.
- Engineering opportunity. A flat $1,500–$2,000 a month when switched on — the small-SaaS band used in our pricing analysis, not a measure of your team. What Base44 engineering time costs to hire, route by route, is in our guide to 2026 Base44 developer rates.
The estimate is calculated in your browser. Nothing is sent unless you use “Send me my estimate”, which emails your address and a one-line summary of these inputs and the result to our team.
02 /EXIT PRICE
What does it cost to leave base44?
Base44’s pricing FAQ says two-way GitHub sync exports the full source code to your own repo, a feature it lists from the Builder plan up. The code export and CLI eject hand you the code, but eject creates a new Base44 backend project with its own app ID — “Your original app remains in Base44 unchanged” (docs.base44.com). Replacing the @base44/sdk calls and the backend is the priced work, and it belongs in the same budget line as the subscription.
- Small$6,000up to 5 tables and 10 routes2-3 weeks
- Medium$12,000up to 20 tables, multi-role auth, Stripe4-5 weeks
- Enterprise$25,000+multi-tenant, SOC 2 / HIPAA-compatiblecustom
Base44Devs quotes those prices fixed, before the work starts — the full scope behind each tier sits on the base44 migration service page, and the Base44 code export guide walks through what the rebuild itself involves. To find out whether the move pays for itself against your current bill, run the migration ROI model, or start with a $497 architecture audit if you want the exit priced against your real schema first.
03 /COST FACTORS
Eight cost factors to budget for — the calculator models five.
The total cost of a base44 app is the platform subscription plus seven other line items teams routinely forget. Each factor below says whether the calculator models it or whether you budget it separately.
- 01Base44 platform subscriptionTier-based monthly fee, $0 to $200 on monthly billing; every plan's credits are shared by everyone in the workspace.
Modelled: the plan you pick, at its monthly-billing price
- 02AI builder creditsCredit consumption per prompt, per regression loop, per agent rewrite.
Modelled: a flat monthly overage line set by build intensity
- 03Stripe / payments integrationStripe fees + base44 webhook reliability cost (retry storms).
Modelled: flat ~$60/mo when ticked
- 04Email / SendGrid / Twilio integrationsPer-message costs at projected user volume.
Modelled: flat email, SMS and API lines, plus a per-user volume surcharge
- 05Compliance and audit overheadCost of an audit (recurring) and remediation work flagged.
Not modelled — budget separately
- 06Vendor lock-in / migration cost projectionWhat it would cost to leave the platform later — the exit prices above.
Not modelled — budget separately
- 07Engineer time on credit optimisationHours spent restructuring prompts to reduce burn.
Modelled: flat $1,500–$2,000/mo band, optional
- 08Downtime cost during platform incidentsSLA gap × historical incident rate × revenue at risk.
Not modelled — budget separately
04 /QUERIES
Base44 pricing questions.
Q.01How much does Base44 cost per month?
Base44 publishes five plans: Free at $0, Starter at $20, Builder at $50, Pro at $100 and Elite at $200 per month on monthly billing, plus custom Enterprise pricing. Each plan includes a fixed monthly allowance of message credits, from 25 on Free to 1,200 on Elite. Read on base44.com/pricing on 23 September 2026 — treat any plan price older than a few weeks as unverified.
Q.02Is Base44 completely free?
The Free plan costs $0 and, in Base44's words, “you can ship complete apps on it” — up to 5 apps, with 25 message credits and 100 integration credits a month (base44.com/pricing, read 23 September 2026). Base44's credits docs add a daily cap: up to 5 credits a day within those 25. Connecting your own domain starts on Starter, and the GitHub integration and backend functions start on Builder.
Q.03Is annual billing cheaper on Base44?
Yes. Base44's pricing FAQ states that annual billing saves 20% on every paid plan, and its yearly view prices Elite at $160 per month, Pro at $80, Builder at $40 and Starter at $16, each billed once a year. The credit allowance does not change with the billing period.
Q.04What is a Base44 message credit?
Base44 defines credits as “your monthly usage allowance for AI messages and integration actions” and states that “exact usage varies based on the action and the selected AI model.” Its credits docs give rough ranges per message: about 0.5 for a simple visual or text change, about 1 for improving a small feature, about 2 for adding a complex module and 3–4 for an app-wide change, with Discuss mode at about 0.3. Unused monthly credits expire at the end of the cycle and do not carry over. Because burn depends on the action rather than the feature, the plan tier you need is set by how hard you work the AI agent, not by how many users your app has.
Q.05How much does it cost to publish an app with Base44?
Publishing to the web costs nothing beyond your plan: Base44's pricing FAQ says you can ship complete apps on the Free plan. The extras are the address and the app stores. Connecting your own domain is first listed on Starter ($20 a month, or $16 billed annually), and Builder and above add a free domain for one year on annual billing. Base44's docs state that downloading the App Store and Google Play files requires the Builder plan or higher.
Q.06How much does it cost to run a Base44 app per month?
The plan fee plus what the live app consumes. Base44's docs say integration credits “cover your app's live operations”: about 1 credit per email sent, about 1 per image generated, about 1 per automatic LLM call and about 1 per 100 backend-function invocations, while database reads and writes use none (docs.base44.com, read 23 September 2026). Third-party services you connect, such as Stripe or SendGrid, bill you directly. If the workspace runs out of integration credits, actions that need them fail until the credits reset or you upgrade. The calculator on this page turns your plan, AI usage, user count and integrations into a monthly estimate.
Q.07Is Base44 worth it?
It is worth it when your app fits what Base44 manages for you — auth, database, hosting and AI-built features — and your editing pace fits inside a plan's monthly credits, because unused credits expire and running out pauses the AI until the reset or an upgrade. It is worth less once you need what the plan fee does not buy, such as a published uptime commitment or an app that runs off the platform, which is where the exit price on this page comes in.
Q.08What does it cost to leave Base44?
Base44's pricing FAQ says two-way GitHub sync exports the full source code to your repo, and Base44 lists the GitHub integration from the Builder plan up. The code export and CLI eject hand you the code, but eject creates a new Base44 backend project with its own app ID — “Your original app remains in Base44 unchanged” (docs.base44.com). Leaving the platform still means replacing the @base44/sdk calls and the backend. Base44Devs quotes that migration at $6,000 for an app up to 5 tables and 10 routes, $12,000 up to 20 tables with multi-role auth and Stripe, and $25,000+ for multi-tenant or SOC 2 / HIPAA-compatible builds.
Plan prices verified 23 September 2026 · Page last reviewed 2026-09-23
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