CodeMonster.ai · by Knomatic One license. Everyone builds.
One organization license covers every builder, every app and every environment. No tokens. No credits. No meter. You bring the AI subscription you already pay for.
The organization license
The license is priced per organization and settled on a call, because the shape that fits depends on your teams and tenants rather than on anything a meter could count. It is the only usage-related charge we bill: nothing is metered, tiered or counted. Anything else — onboarding, support terms — is named in your agreement rather than discovered on an invoice.
Your AI cost is the subscription you already hold with your AI provider, driven through an MCP-capable agent. We never meter it, mark it up or resell it. Enter your quote in the calculator to put it beside a modelled year on a metered tool — built from each vendor's published rates, with every estimate labelled and dated.
What you pay for. What you never pay for.
- One organization license. Quoted per organization; covers every builder, every app, every environment.
- Your AI subscription. Paid to your provider, not to us. You bring the AI subscription you already pay for.
- Tokens or credits to build. A prompt is a prompt, not a purchasing decision.
- Credits to debug. The tenth fix-it message costs what the first did: nothing extra.
- Runtime metering. Your live apps serve users without spending anything down.
- Per-seat charges. Every builder in your organization is covered; adding one changes nothing on the invoice.
- Per-app or per-environment charges. Dev, staging and production come with every app.
- Tier auto-upgrades. There is no tier to run out of.
What is included
| Item | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Platform primitives | Objects backed by real tables, forms, workflows, grids, screens and screenflows — the governed rails your agent builds on. | Included |
| Environments | Dev, staging and production for custom frontends with one-way, role-gated promotion and non-destructive rollback; platform apps publish Current → Testing → Production in one step, with frozen Bench backups. | Included |
| Governance | Owner / editor / viewer roles, groups and permissions, row-level tenant isolation, an append-only deployment audit log, and a per-solution flag that freezes AI edits. | Included |
| MCP control surface | approximately 100 named operations, authenticated on every request; staged, previewable, reversible edits. Works with any MCP-compatible agent. | Included |
| Hosting | Apps run on managed cloud infrastructure we operate, built primarily on AWS. Every app gets HTTPS on a platform subdomain; custom domains are not available yet. Nothing to provision, no pipelines to write. The backend is not self-hostable. | Included |
| Support | Onboarding and support terms are confirmed in your agreement. | In your agreement |
| AI provider | The subscription you already hold with your AI provider, driven through an MCP-capable agent — Claude Code is the path we test and document first. Not included; never metered by us. | You bring it |
What a year of building actually costs
Enter your team and usage. Vendor rows apply each vendor’s published billing mechanics; the CodeMonster row is one organization license plus the AI subscription you already pay for, with nothing metered.
| Vendor | Build (metered) | Runtime (metered) | Seats / tiers | Your AI subscription | Total, 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base44 1,2,3 Runtime is metered: your live app spends credits/usage. Unused credits do not roll over. | $2,880 | $180 | tier priced in build | rented via credits | $3,060 |
| Lovable 4,5,6 Runtime is metered: your live app spends credits/usage. | $6,750 | $90 | tier priced in build | rented via credits | $6,840 |
| Bolt 7,8,9 Runtime hosting/usage billed separately; not modelled here. Billed per seat: $30/builder/mo including 13M tokens each. | $230 | $0 | $1,800 | rented via credits | $2,030 |
| v0 10,11,12 Runtime hosting/usage billed separately; not modelled here. Billed per seat: $30/builder/mo including $30 of credit each. | $0 | $0 | $1,800 | rented via credits | $1,800 |
| Hercules 13,14,15,16 Runtime hosting/usage billed separately; not modelled here. Credit auto-billing can move you up a tier automatically. Free tier is non-commercial; commercial use requires a paid plan. | $5,994 | $0 | tier priced in build | rented via credits | $5,994 |
| CodeMonster not metered One organization license, every builder and app. You bring the AI subscription you already pay for. | $0 | $0 | your quote | $1,200 | your quote + $1,200 |
Estimates from published billing mechanics as of 2026-08-14; your real bill will differ. Sources on this page. Vendor rows exclude any AI subscription because those tools rent AI to you through credits or tokens. One exception: drive Hercules from your own agent over MCP and you pay your AI provider and Hercules credits. We do not add that to the Hercules row, so read it as an underestimate. Where a seat note quotes an allowance the vendor does not publish — Bolt's Teams token figure — the number is our assumption, spelled out below.
Assumptions
- Base44 — One message credit per builder prompt (Base44 bills per AI message). Price per credit derived from the Builder tier: $40 / 250 message credits = $0.16. Team floor is one Builder plan ($40/mo). Runtime: one integration credit per app action, priced at an ESTIMATED $1.00 per 1,000 integration credits, deliberately below the all-in tier ratio (Elite: $160 / 50,000 = $3.20 per 1,000) because a tier price also buys message credits. Base44 sells no top-ups, so a team that needs more credits than one tier includes would in practice buy multiple accounts or a higher tier; the calculator prices the credit-equivalent instead. Annual prices; monthly billing is higher. (verified 2026-08-14)
- Lovable — 1.5 credits per builder prompt: an ESTIMATE between Lovable's published 0.5-1.7 credit examples and the 2-3+ credits the brief records for complex changes; third-party analyses put a working app at $90-130+/mo against the $25 sticker. Price per credit from the Pro tier: $25 / 100 = $0.25. Team floor is one Pro plan ($25/mo); Business ($50/mo) adds SSO and governance. Runtime: the brief documents a usage-based Cloud/AI bill but no public rate, so we assume an ESTIMATED $0.50 per 1,000 runtime actions as a deliberately low placeholder. Rollover is ignored (it lowers waste, not the rate). Annual billing gives 2 months free; not applied. (verified 2026-08-14)
- Bolt — Teams of builders are modelled on the Teams plan at $30/member/mo (a solo builder would pay Pro, $25). Each seat is assumed to include the Pro allowance of 13M tokens/mo. Tokens per prompt: an ESTIMATE of 50,000 (0.05M) for a small-to-medium project; the brief notes token cost per edit rises with codebase size, so mature apps exceed this. Overage priced at the Pro rate, $25 / 13M = $1.92 per 1M tokens (Bolt's separate reload pricing is not in our sources). Bolt Cloud hosting usage is not modelled, so runtime shows $0. (verified 2026-08-14)
- v0 — Teams are modelled on the $30/user/mo Plus plan with $30 of credits per user pooled. Credit consumption per prompt is an ESTIMATE of $0.10 on the mid model tier; v0 publishes per-token model prices rather than a per-message figure, and Max-tier messages cost more. Overage is bought at face value ($1 per $1 of credit). Vercel hosting/usage for the deployed app is billed separately and not modelled, so runtime shows $0. Roundups from earlier in 2026 list a $20 Premium tier; the pricing page we captured on 2026-08-14 lists Plus at $30 per user, which is the figure used here and on the comparison page. (verified 2026-08-14)
- Hercules — One AI credit per builder prompt (an ESTIMATE: Hercules meters every agent interaction and the per-interaction cost varies). Price per credit from the Pro tier: $25 / about 75 credits = $0.333. Team floor is one Pro plan ($25/mo); Business ($50/mo) adds RBAC and SSO. Runtime Cloud Credits and in-app AI credits are not modelled, so runtime shows $0 (an underestimate). If you drive Hercules from Claude Code over MCP you also keep paying your own AI subscription; that is not added here. Auto-billing into the next tier is not modelled. (verified 2026-08-14)
- CodeMonster — The license is quoted per organization, so the calculator takes it as an input rather than publishing a figure. The only AI cost is the subscription you already hold with your AI provider (entered per builder per month; the default of $20 matches common individual plans). Metered build, debug and runtime cost is $0 by construction of the pricing model, not an estimate: apps run on managed infrastructure we operate and nothing is metered per action.
Sources · last verified 2026-08-14
- Base44 pricing page — verified 2026-08-14
- Jet Admin: Base44 pricing explained (roundup) — verified 2026-08-14
- NoCode.mba: Base44 review and pricing — verified 2026-08-14
- Lovable pricing page — verified 2026-08-14
- eesel AI: Lovable pricing breakdown (roundup) — verified 2026-08-14
- Totalum: Lovable credits and real cost analysis — verified 2026-08-14
- Bolt pricing page — verified 2026-08-14
- eesel AI: Bolt.new pricing and token limits (roundup) — verified 2026-08-14
- CostBench: AI app builder cost comparison — verified 2026-08-14
- v0 pricing page — verified 2026-08-14
- v0 pricing docs (credits and model tiers) — verified 2026-08-14
- Banani: v0 pricing explained (roundup) — verified 2026-08-14
- Hercules pricing page — verified 2026-08-14
- Hercules docs: AI credits — verified 2026-08-14
- Hercules docs: plans — verified 2026-08-14
- Hercules terms of service (free-tier commercial use) — verified 2026-08-14
This category reprices often. Comparative claims carry a one-quarter shelf life; if a date above is older than that, treat the row as unverified and check the vendor page.
How the category bills
The tools most often shortlisted alongside CodeMonster share a business model: consumption. The table summarises each vendor's published mechanics as of 2026-08-14; superscripts point to the numbered sources above. Each of these vendors does something well — the full teardown concedes it and shows the arithmetic.
| Vendor | Build metered | Debug metered | Runtime metered | Auto-upgrade | Per seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base441,2,3 | Yes Message credits | Yes Same credits | Yes Integration credits | Partly No top-ups; tier jump | No Per org |
| Lovable4,5,6 | Yes Credits, variable | Yes Same credits | Yes Cloud/AI usage bill | No Self-serve selector | No Per org |
| Bolt7,8,9 | Yes Tokens | Yes Tokens, re-sent context | Partly Bolt Cloud usage | No Reloads sold separately | Yes Per member |
| v010,11,12 | Yes Credits by model tier | Yes Same credits | Partly Vercel usage | No On-demand credits | Yes Per user |
| Hercules13,14,15,16 | Yes AI credits | Yes Same credits | Partly Cloud Credits | Yes Auto-billing to next tier | No Per org |
| CodeMonster | — Nothing metered | — Nothing metered | — Live apps not metered | — No tiers | — One organization license |
"Partly" marks runtime billed through a separate hosting or cloud usage line rather than the build credit pool. Mechanics as published by each vendor, verified 2026-08-14; this category reprices often. How the meter works: the per-vendor teardown →
The bill, in plain terms
What's the catch?
You pay your AI provider directly — Claude, ChatGPT, whichever you already use. We never meter it, mark it up, or resell it. The organization license covers the platform: the backend, the environments, the governance. That is the whole arrangement.
Do my live apps cost anything to run?
No. Production traffic on your apps is not metered, and your license covers hosting on the managed cloud infrastructure we operate. Metered tools bill you while you build, and some keep billing while your app runs — the mechanics, vendor by vendor, with sources and dates, are on how the meter works. The limits that do exist are written down: the Acceptable Use Policy and your license agreement, with no usage meter behind them.
Is there a per-seat or per-builder charge?
No. One organization license covers every builder in your organization, every app they build, and every environment those apps run in. Adding a builder is an invitation, not an invoice.
What does the organization license cost?
Pricing is set per organization and confirmed on a call, because the right shape depends on how many teams and tenants you run — not on how many prompts you type. Talk to us and you will have a number quickly. Use the calculator to compare it against a realistic year on a metered tool.
Is there a trial or a pilot?
Access is invite only, and the invite conversation is the pilot conversation: request an invite and we scope a first solution around a real use case, so you evaluate working software rather than a sandbox. Bring your IT lead; the security questions get answered in the same session.
We are an agency. Can one license cover many client apps?
Yes. Unlimited apps and unlimited builders sit under one organization license, and the platform is multi-tenant: one account can serve many tenants with row-level data isolation. See agencies for how the economics work.
Where do my apps run?
On managed cloud infrastructure we operate, built primarily on AWS. You do not provision servers, write deploy pipelines, or hire DevOps — dev, staging, production: one click each. The backend is not self-hostable.
What happens if we cancel?
Your data is yours: every object is a real table you can export through the documented API, and custom frontends are ordinary repositories you already hold. Platform-built apps stop running when the license ends, because they run on the platform — so take your data out before then, and ask for the export window and the assistance we give to be written into your agreement before you sign. The full answer is on Do I own my apps?
On the agency answer, the precise line: one license covers the apps you build and run for your own clients, with row-level isolation per tenant. Reselling or sharing access to the platform itself is a separate arrangement, and agency, partner and reseller terms are being finalized before launch — the current rule is in the acceptable use policy.
Prefer to start hands-on? Request an invite — we scope your first build together and connect the AI subscription you already hold. Sending this to the person who has to say yes? Security hub.