Emergent

Emergent (emergent.sh) is an AI app builder that makes web and mobile apps from a chat, runs them on a MongoDB backend and publishes them to a live URL. The pricing page lists Free ($0, 10 monthly credits), Standard ($20 a month, 100 credits) and Pro ($200 a month, 750 credits). Hosting a published app costs credits every month. We checked everything below on 31 October 2026 from Emergent's own site and help centre. We did not test it ourselves.

At a glance

What Emergent is

The home page says Emergent turns ideas into working applications and that you chat with agents that "design, code, and deploy" your app. The help centre says you pick an app type on the home screen, then describe the app. The app type is fixed for that job.

The vocabulary is its own, and it helps to learn four words:

• Job: one app or task, with its own chat, code and preview.
• Preview: your private working copy, which sleeps after about 30 minutes of inactivity.
• Publish: the button that takes the app live. Other tools call it deploy.
• Credits: what powers everything, with a monthly fee on top for keeping an app live.

It competes with Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit Agent and Base44. The glossary entry on vibe coding covers the idea. What sets Emergent apart on paper is native mobile output, a built-in agent choice (E-1, E-2, E-3) and a published-app fee priced in credits.

Who it suits

Emergent suits people who want a full-stack web app or a mobile app from a prompt and who accept a credit meter. The site lists web apps, mobile apps, dashboards, e-commerce sites, portfolio sites, SaaS tools, internal tools, landing pages, forms, surveys, quizzes, CRMs and automations as targets.

It also suits people who want the code. GitHub sync on paid plans, a code view and database exports mean you can leave.

It suits you less if you want a flat price. The monthly hosting fee comes out of the same credit pool as the building work, so a live app and an active build compete for credits.

Pricing

The pricing page has an Individual tab and an Enterprise tab.

The page shows "Annual" next to the Standard and Pro prices. One read of the page showed Standard at $17 a month billed annually and Pro at $167 a month billed annually, with $20 and $200 as the monthly rates. A second read showed $20 and $200 beside the word Annual and no switch we could operate. We could not settle which figure applies to which billing choice, so confirm at checkout.

The help centre describes the free plan slightly differently from the pricing page. It says the Free tier gives "10 credits on your first day," where the pricing page says 10 free monthly credits. We report both and cannot say which is current.

The plans page in the help centre also says:

• Custom domains and production publishing need Standard or Pro.
• Maxx mode (deeper reasoning) is a Pro-only feature.
• Both Standard and Pro support custom agents and AI media generation.
• Free has community support, Standard has standard support and Pro has priority support.

How credits work

Credits measure the work the platform does. The help centre lists what draws them:

A single prompt can cost anywhere from a handful of credits to hundreds, according to the help centre. You can set a per-session budget on the task form, and the agent pauses when it hits it. You get an email when the balance falls under 20% of your monthly allowance.

Subscription credits refill each cycle and do not roll over. One-time top-ups never expire, and Emergent spends expiring credits first.

Publishing tiers

A published app costs a fixed monthly credit fee set by its tier.

The docs warn that Starter is "tightly resource-constrained" and not meant for production apps under meaningful load. Do the sum: on Standard, a Starter-tier published app takes half of your 100 monthly credits before any build work.

Shutting down a published app stops the charge at once and keeps your code and history. It does not delete the databases your app used.

What it builds

The help centre describes three families of output.

Web apps. The agent picks the stack for you. The help pages mention React and MongoDB. The first publish can take about 15 minutes. Published apps get a URL such as your-app-name.emergent.host, run 24 hours a day, and sit behind a CDN.

Mobile apps. The docs cover a web-to-mobile conversion, a pre-publish health check, package name and bundle ID setup, publishing to the app stores, in-app purchases and subscriptions, and push notifications. They also cover generating a build for a pre-existing Play Store app. You can also build from the Emergent mobile app on your phone.

Agents and automations. Standard and Pro support custom agents. The docs nav lists a feature called Wingman with channels including web, Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage and Slack, and scheduled tasks. We did not read those pages in full.

The workflow has a Build and a Plan switcher, so you can think first and build second. A checkpoint feature lets you undo changes.

Agents and models

Emergent gives you three build agents. The model is a separate selector.

You choose the agent when you create the job. It cannot change mid-conversation, even in a fork. Maxx mode is a deeper reasoning toggle on Pro.

The help centre does not name which language models sit behind the agents. Its AI training page says Emergent uses third-party language models and points to a published sub-processor list. The homepage also does not name them. Integration pages exist for OpenAI, Claude and Gemini, which are for models your own app calls, through what the docs call the Universal LLM Key.

Integrations, database, auth and deploy

Database

Apps use MongoDB. By default it sits on a shared cluster Emergent manages. A Dedicated Database is a paid upgrade, and you can bring your own MongoDB, such as Atlas.

Preview and production databases are separate. On the first publish, Emergent migrates preview data to production. After that they diverge, which is a common gotcha. When you push an update you choose Re-publish, which keeps the production database, or Replace, which swaps in a fresh job and lets you copy the preview database across.

You can export with mongodump, Compass or per-collection CSV from the Database Viewer. The viewer can edit and delete live production data, and the docs warn that edits are immediate and cannot be undone.

Auth and integrations

The docs list a built-in Emergent Auth. The integration catalogue names:

Secrets and environment variables have their own page. A pre-publish health check exists for web and mobile.

Custom domain and SEO

Every published web app gets a free emergent.host subdomain. Custom domains are for web apps only and need Standard or above. An Auto-link option configures DNS for you, or you can add two A records to Emergent's shared IPs and a www CNAME. SSL comes through Cloudflare Custom Hostnames and can take up to 24 hours. A crawler pre-rendering option exists for SEO.

GitHub and export

Standard and above can use Save, then Save to GitHub, and clone locally. A code view lets you copy files. A code export does not include environment variables and secrets, database contents or node_modules.

MCP support

Two directions, per the help centre.

MCP into the build agent. You register MCP servers, and the agent can read resources, call tools and use server prompts while it builds, tests and runs. You add them under Account Settings, Manage Agents, MCP, using a JSON mcpServers config.

Emergent as an MCP server. The docs say Emergent exposes an MCP interface that other clients, such as Claude Desktop and Cursor, can call, with example tools to start an app, trigger a publish and fetch logs. The page also talks about a local port and a config file for self-hosting users, which does not match how the hosted product is described elsewhere, so treat the details as unclear and read the page before relying on it.

Our MCP tools page and the glossary entry on MCP servers give background.

Privacy and data handling

The "Data and Trust" section of the help centre is detailed.

• Training. Emergent says it does not use Customer Personal Data to train, retrain or fine-tune any AI model, and contractually bars its AI sub-processors from doing so. Operational Service Data may be used to train or tune models that deliver the service, and the docs say you cannot opt out of that.
• What model providers see. Prompts, conversation history, uploaded files, generated code and files, and the database schema where it is part of the build context, plus voice audio and hosted-browser content where you use those features.
• Where data lives. The United States, the EU and India. You choose your published app's hosting region in the Manage Publishing panel, and the EU region costs more than the US region.
• Sub-processors. A public list names each one, and customers have 20 business days to object to a new one.
• Deletion. Within 45 days of expiry or termination Emergent deletes your data in irreversible steps. Cancelling does not take published apps offline, and it does not delete your account.
• Ownership. Under Section 3.4 of its Terms you keep ownership of your Content, including AI-generated output. Output from similar prompts may resemble other users' output.
• Backups. Emergent keeps routine backups for resilience. They are not a self-serve restore service, so export your own copy.

Limits and gotchas

• Free cannot publish. A publish needs at least 50 credits.
• Hosting eats credits. Every live app has a monthly fee, even with no traffic changes.
• Starter tier is tiny. 0.05 vCPU and 200 MB, by the docs' own warning.
• Preview and production data diverge after the first publish.
• Agent choice is fixed per job.
• Maxx has no published multiplier.
• Preview sleeps after about 30 minutes.
• Exports leave out secrets and data. Move those yourself.
• Prices conflict across surfaces. We saw two Standard and Pro figures and two descriptions of the free credits.

How it compares with peers

Our head-to-heads are Bolt vs Lovable, Lovable vs v0 and Replit vs Lovable. The shortlists are in best vibe coding tools and best vibe coding platform, and prices side by side are on the pricing comparison.

Who should pick something else

• People who want predictable monthly cost. The credit pool covers building and hosting together.
• Teams that need a SQL database. Emergent apps use MongoDB, although you can bring your own.
• Developers who want to work inside an editor. See Cursor or Claude Code, and our guide to choosing a coding agent.
• Anyone who must keep all data in one region. Sub-processors process data in several countries.
• People rescuing a stuck build. See vibe code rescue services.

Before you launch anything, read deploy a vibe-coded app and secure a vibe-coded app.

First-week plan

• Day one: build a small app on Free and note how many credits the first prompt used.
• Day two: use Plan mode to scope a bigger feature before you build it.
• Day three: set a per-session budget and test it.
• Day four: on Standard, push the code to GitHub and clone it.
• Day five: publish on the Starter tier and check what it does to your balance.
• Days six and seven: export the database and confirm you can restore it elsewhere.

Our take

This is an editorial reading of Emergent's site and help centre, not a hands-on test. The facts were checked on 31 October 2026 from the vendor's own pages.

The help centre is the strongest part. It publishes the publishing tiers, the credit categories, the data-region rules and the training statement in plain language, which is more than most builders do. The weak spot is the pricing page, which leaves the annual and monthly figures unclear and describes the free credits differently from the docs.

If your goal is a mobile app or a full-stack app from one prompt, it earns a trial on the free plan. If your goal is a cheap, always-on app, work out the hosting fee in credits first.

Checklist

• Work out monthly cost: build credits plus the publishing tier fee
• Confirm the Standard and Pro price and billing period at checkout
• Set a per-session budget before long agent runs
• Remember preview and production databases are separate
• Push to GitHub early on Standard
• Export your database and secrets yourself
• Choose a hosting region before you publish
• Re-check pricing on emergent.sh on the day you subscribe