Bubble’s Starter Plan Goes Up on 20 October. The Credits Are the Bigger Change.
TL;DR: Bubble’s web-only Starter plan rises to $39/month on 20 October (or $32/month annual, up from $29). Buying the annual plan before that date locks the old rate for a year. But the price isn’t the real story — bubble ai credits arrive as a brand-new meter on top of the workload units you already had, and the rules about what burns them are not obvious. All figures here are Bubble’s own, from its announcement.
The deadline first
Bubble announced on 6 October that the web-only Starter plan will increase to $39/month on a monthly plan, or $32/month on an annual plan, from 20 October 2026.
The current annual rate is $29/month, and Bubble says buying the annual plan before the 20th locks that in for a year. If you’re already on Starter Web or in a Starter trial, you move to the new price at your next renewal.
So there is a real, dated decision in front of anyone on that plan, and it’s five days away. The meter that arrived alongside it has no deadline at all — but Bubble AI credits will shape what the platform costs you long after this price settles.
Should you take it? Only if you were staying anyway. Locking the annual rate saves $36 over a year against the new annual price. That is worth having if Bubble is your tool. It is not worth a year’s commitment to a platform you were unsure about — and a deadline is a bad reason to answer a question you hadn’t finished thinking about.
What bubble ai credits actually are
This is the part that will still matter long after the price change.
Bubble has always metered workload units — roughly, what your live app costs to run. Bubble AI credits are a second, separate meter, and they measure what the AI does while you build. Here’s what Bubble says each plan includes in Bubble AI credits per month:
| Plan | Included AI credits per month |
|---|---|
| Free | 500 |
| Starter | 1,000 |
| Growth | 2,000 |
| Team | 4,000 |
| Agency | 1,000 |
| Enterprise | Varies — via your Account Manager |
Monthly and annual billing get the same allowance. Free-plan users must upgrade to Starter before they can buy more credits at all.
What burns credits, and what doesn’t
The split is not intuitive, and Bubble AI credits are easy to spend without noticing. From Bubble’s announcement and its manual:
| Consumes bubble ai credits | Does not |
|---|---|
| Building and iterating with the Agent | Generating a brand-new app, including the planning step |
| Generating images | Working in the visual editor by hand |
| Generating test data | Running your live app — that uses workload, as before |
| Using the Bubble MCP |
Three of those are worth saying out loud.
Generating test data costs you. It’s the kind of thing you do dozens of times without thinking, and it draws on the same pot as your actual building.
Running your app doesn’t. Credits are a build-time meter, not a runtime one. If your app gets popular, that shows up in workload, not here.
The MCP is free of credits entirely — though your own AI provider’s rate limits still apply.
The expiry rules are the trap
Bubble AI credits don’t behave the way most allowances do. Read this bit twice:
- Included monthly credits refresh on the 1st and do not roll over. Unused ones vanish.
- Purchased credits expire six months after purchase, and do roll over until then.
- Credits are spent in order of expiry, so your included allowance goes first.
- Credits belong to each app, not to you, and are shared by everyone working on that app.
That last one catches teams. Two people building in the same app are drawing from one pot.
There’s also a limited sweetener: every app that existed on 6 October gets double its plan’s usual allowance through 31 October. Apps created after the 6th, new accounts, trials, and apps that change plan during the month don’t qualify.
Why a second meter matters
We’ve watched this pattern arrive across the category. In August, Replit changed what your money buys by picking the model for you. This month we’ve covered AI tools that can spend while you sleep and, this week, a third builder absorbing the backend.
The common thread is that “how much will this cost me” is getting harder to answer, not easier. Bubble now has two meters running at once: workload for your live app, Bubble AI credits for the AI that helps you build it. Neither is wrong. But a non-developer trying to budget for a project now has to understand both, and only one of them is visible in the price on the pricing page.
The other half of the announcement
Two things shipped alongside the pricing, and one of them is genuinely interesting for this audience.
Agent 2 came out of beta and works on all apps including existing ones. Bubble claims it is “1.5X better at building exactly what the user asked” and twice as good at producing fully functional results — its own numbers, with no independent testing published. Preview now sits in the editor as its own tab with the Agent beside it, you can select an element to focus the Agent on it, and you can “run as” a specific user. Safari support is still in progress.
Bubble MCP, in beta, is the one worth knowing about: it lets you point Claude Code or Codex directly at an existing Bubble app and edit it from there. Bubble suggests turning Linear or Jira tickets into features, or building pages from design mockups. It can’t read logs, merge branches or deploy — and, as above, it doesn’t touch your credits.
That’s a real bridge between a no-code platform and the coding agents we write about constantly, and it’s the first time one of the big builders has opened that door this directly.
What to do this week
- If you’re on Starter Web and staying: decide before 20 October. The annual lock-in is $29/month for a year against $32 after. Small, but free money if you were committed anyway.
- If you’re unsure about Bubble: let the deadline pass. $36 a year is not a reason to commit to a platform.
- Look at your Bubble AI credits balance now, while the double allowance is still running to 31 October. It will tell you what a normal month costs you before the real limit applies.
- Stop generating test data casually. It’s the one credit cost that will surprise people.
- If you use Claude Code or Codex, try the MCP. It costs no credits, and connecting your existing app to an agent you already know is the most interesting thing in this release.
Who should care (and who shouldn’t)
- On Bubble’s Starter Web plan: you have a dated decision. Point 1 is today’s job.
- On Free, Growth, Team or Agency: no price change for you, but Bubble AI credits are new to you too, and the expiry rules apply all the same.
- Building in Bubble with someone else: credits are per app and shared. Agree who’s burning them before you find out.
- Using Claude Code or Codex already: the MCP is the headline, not the price.
- Not on Bubble: the second-meter pattern is the takeaway. Expect it elsewhere.
Our take
We’d give Bubble credit for how this was announced. Two weeks’ notice, an explicit lock-in option, the allowances published as a table, and a double-credit period while people work out what normal looks like. That is better behaviour than most price changes in this category, and it deserves saying before the criticism.
The criticism is about complexity, not cost. $39 is not an outrageous price for what Bubble does. But a non-developer now has to hold two meters in their head — workload for running the app, bubble ai credits for building it — with different rules about what counts, different renewal dates, and different expiry behaviour. The thing this audience buys is not having to think about infrastructure. Two meters is thinking about infrastructure.
The expiry asymmetry is the bit we’d change. Included Bubble AI credits vanish monthly; purchased ones last six months. That is the opposite of what most people assume, and it quietly rewards buying extra over using what you already pay for.
And the MCP deserved its own announcement. Letting people drive an existing Bubble app from Claude Code is a bigger deal for this audience than Agent 2 being 1.5x better at anything, and it got three paragraphs under a pricing change. We’d have led with it.
Not sure whether Bubble is the right tool for what you’re building? Take the 60-second Vibe Coding Tool Finder quiz →
FAQ
When does Bubble’s Starter price change?
On 20 October 2026. The web-only Starter plan rises to $39/month on monthly billing or $32/month on annual billing, up from a current annual rate of $29/month. Buying the annual plan before 20 October locks the $29 rate for a year. Existing Starter Web subscribers and trial users move to the new price at their next renewal.
What uses bubble ai credits?
Building and iterating with the Bubble Agent, generating images, and generating test data. Generating a brand-new app including its planning step does not, nor does working in the visual editor, nor using the Bubble MCP. Running your live app draws on workload units instead, which is a separate meter Bubble has always had.
Do unused Bubble credits roll over?
Included monthly credits do not — they refresh on the 1st of each month and anything unused is lost. Credits you buy separately expire six months after purchase and do roll over until then. Credits are spent in order of expiry, so your included allowance is always used first, and they belong to each app rather than to your account.
