App Builder Agent free plan: what you really get, and what $1.49 adds

At the time of writing, App Builder Agent's free plan gives you 500K AI tokens per month with every feature unlocked and no card required; a free APK download is included. That is enough to build a small app, iterate on it and install it on your phone. The Member plan costs $1.49 per 30 days and adds 5M tokens, unlimited APK builds and source export; Pro ($5.72, 10M tokens), Business ($31.12, 50M) and Max ($11.01, 90M) are the same features with bigger AI allowances for heavier building.

"Free plan" usually means a demo with the useful parts locked. This one is different in a specific way: nothing is feature-gated, only quantity-gated. You get the chat, the live preview, the code editor, the hosted backend, websites, workflows and the signed store build on the free plan; what is limited is how much AI usage you have each month and how many APK builds you can start. This guide lays out exactly what each number means in practice, what a token buys, and which plan fits which person.

What the free plan includes

• 500K AI tokens per month, refreshed monthly. Enough for a small app plus a couple of dozen rounds of changes.
• free APK download ($1.49 per 30 days) - the build runs and the file is yours the moment you subscribe. Test APKs and signed builds both count. Enough to install a finished app on your phone and share it with a few people.
• All features: mobile apps (React Native and Flutter), websites published at a link under appbuilderagent.com/p/your-name/, web and mobile games, AI workflows on a schedule or trigger, hosted backends with a database, auth and files, the code editor, checkpoints and restore, and the in-app Support panel.
• No card. Sign in with a Google account and start.

What is not on the free plan: unlimited builds and source export. Those are Member features, and every paid plan includes them.

What a token buys in practice

An AI token is a unit of model usage; roughly, a few characters of text the model reads or writes. Every message you send, every file the agent reads to understand your project, and every line of code it writes consume tokens. Numbers below are typical rather than guaranteed, because a long conversation with a big project costs more per message than a short one with a small project.

• A first version of a small app (three to five screens from one prompt): tens of thousands of tokens.
• A small change ("make the total bold and add a currency selector"): a few thousand tokens.
• A bigger feature (add accounts and a hosted backend to an existing app): tens of thousands.
• A complete small app, built and refined over an afternoon: a few hundred thousand tokens. This is why the free plan's 500K is a real first-app allowance rather than a taste.

Tokens are consumed faster when the agent has to read a large project to make a change, so keep projects focused: one app per project rather than everything in one. Also, short precise messages cost less than long rambling ones, and each restore from a checkpoint is free.

The plans side by side

Prices are in US dollars, per 30 days, as shown on the site at the time of writing; they can change. Payment is by card internationally or by UPI in India. Every paid plan includes the Member features.

Two things worth noticing. First, the jump from Free to Member is about builds and export, not tokens: $1.49 gives unlimited APK builds and lets you take the code away. Second, the paid tiers differ only in AI allowance; nobody is locked out of a feature by their plan. The AI app builder page shows the current numbers.

Who each plan is for

• Free - you want to see whether describing an app in English actually produces the app you have in mind. Build it, install it on your phone, show a friend. If it is a personal tool that only you use, you may never need more.
• Member ($1.49) - you are going to publish. Store builds, testers, version bumps and fixes need build after build, and unlimited builds cost $1.49 on the Member plan. Export is also here, which matters if you want a backup of the code or plan to build for iOS yourself.
• Pro ($5.72) - you are building something with accounts, a hosted backend, several screens and a lot of iteration, or two or three apps at once. 10M tokens is roughly twenty small apps' worth of building in a month.
• Business ($31.12) - you build for clients. 50M tokens covers a month of client work with room for rewrites when the brief changes.
• Max ($11.01) - you build all day. If you are hitting Business limits, this is the next step.

For context on what the same app would cost by other routes, the app cost guide compares agencies, freelancers and no-code tools; even the Max plan is a rounding error next to an agency quote.

How to get the most out of the free plan

1. Write five bullet points before your first message. Screens, data, the look. A clear first prompt builds the right base and saves a dozen corrective messages.
2. Use the browser preview for most iteration and save APK builds for milestones: one when the app first feels right, one after polish, and the rest for the signed store build and fixes.
3. Ask for several changes in one message when they are related, and one at a time when they are not. Both save tokens compared with a long back-and-forth.
4. Restore rather than re-explain. If a change went wrong, restore the checkpoint from the message bubble instead of describing the fix; the restore costs nothing.
5. Sign up for Google Play early if you plan to publish; the $25 fee and verification are separate from any plan here, and the signed APK and AAB guide shows what the store build needs.

An expense tracker is a good first free-plan app: it has real logic, a chart and settings, and it fits comfortably in the allowance. The expense tracker guide walks through it, and the expense apps in the gallery show what a finished one looks like. Start free, and pay the $1.49 on the day you want to ship.

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