Bolt.new has a free plan, and it is usable for a first prototype: 1 million tokens a month, capped at 300,000 a day, with no card required. Paid plans start with Pro at $25 a month for 10 million tokens, and higher Pro tiers add more tokens. What drives the real bill is not the plan card but the tokens: Bolt reads your project's files on every message, so the same request costs more tokens as the project grows.
This guide covers each plan, how token billing works, rollover, what hosting, databases and custom domains cost, and three monthly budgets. Every figure comes from Bolt's pricing page and help center, checked in November 2026. Prices are in US dollars. Bolt changes its grid often, so confirm on the day you subscribe.
Bolt.new plans at a glance
Bolt sells four plans: Free, Pro, Teams and Enterprise. Free and Pro cover most solo builders.
| Plan | Price | Tokens | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1M a month, 300K a day, no rollover | Public and private projects, Bolt branding on sites, 10 MB upload limit, hosting up to 333K web requests |
| Pro | From $25 a month | From 10M a month, no daily limit, rollover | No Bolt branding, custom domains, 100 MB uploads, hosting up to 1M web requests, SEO boosting, choice of database provider, AI image editing |
| Teams | $30 per member a month | Per paid member, not shared between members | Everything in Pro, plus centralized billing, access management, admin controls, organization sharing, private NPM registry support |
| Enterprise | Custom | Not published | SSO, audit logs, compliance support, dedicated account manager, custom SLAs |
Bolt's billing help article lists higher Pro tiers: $100 a month for 55 million tokens, and a middle tier at $50 a month. Annual billing brings the entry Pro tier to $216 a year, which is $18 a month, and the pricing page says yearly billing saves up to 28 percent. Upgrades apply immediately and you receive the token difference at once; downgrades apply at the next billing date, or at the next annual renewal on a yearly plan.
How Bolt token billing works
Bolt meters its work in tokens, small pieces of text, and a token is spent whenever Bolt reads, reasons about or builds your project. The count covers both what you send and what the model writes back, so a short prompt can still be expensive if Bolt has to read a lot of code to answer it.
- Free tokens reset monthly. The 1 million tokens reset on the 1st of each calendar month, the 300K daily limit is separate, and neither rolls over.
- Paid tokens reset on your renewal date. They reset at the time of day your billing period renews, not at midnight.
- Oldest tokens go first. Rolled-over tokens are consumed before the new ones.
Why large projects burn more tokens per message
Bolt's own documentation says most token usage comes from syncing your project's files to the model, so larger projects use more tokens on every message. A smaller project costs less, in the help center's words, because Bolt has less code to read and process. A change that took a small share of your allowance on day one takes much more once the app has dozens of screens.
The context window is the project files plus everything in the chat, including prompts and uploaded files. If the project outgrows it, Bolt shows a "Project size exceeded" message. Bolt's token efficiency guide lists the ways to stay under control:
- Delete unused files and split large files into smaller ones.
- Clear context between tasks (Bolt then forgets recent conversation history).
- Point Bolt at specific files or functions instead of the whole codebase.
- Use Plan mode to discuss before building: it uses fewer tokens than Build mode.
- Restore earlier versions with Version History, which costs no tokens.
- Turn connectors on only when a project needs them, since they add to context, and avoid repeated "Attempt fix" clicks, which each spend tokens.
Rollover and extra tokens
On paid plans, unused tokens stay valid for two months from the start of the billing cycle in which you received them, as long as the subscription is active. The free plan has no rollover at all.
When you run short, Bolt's help center says the most cost-effective fix is to upgrade to a higher tier. Reload tokens, bought from Billing and usage, are available only on the highest individual monthly Pro plan or on any annual Pro plan. Reloaded tokens do not expire, and the price is shown on the reload page rather than in the documentation, so we do not quote one. On the free plan, hitting the daily limit still leaves you able to edit existing code by hand in Code view.
Hosting, database and custom domains
Hosting and the database are part of the subscription, but each has usage limits, and the custom domain is the one item that needs a paid plan. Here is what the help center states.
| Item | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting on a bolt.host address | Yes, with a "Made in Bolt" badge | Yes, no badge |
| Monthly hosting usage | 10 GB bandwidth, 333,333 requests | 30 GB bandwidth, 1M requests |
| Over the limit | Site goes offline until the next cycle | Optional pay-as-you-go with a spending cap; the site pauses at the cap |
| Custom domain | No | Yes: connect your own or buy through Bolt |
| Databases | No limit on how many | No limit on how many; other limits in Cloud settings |
Three details matter in practice. First, a free site that exceeds its limits goes offline, so a free project that gets real traffic stops serving visitors. Second, domains bought through Bolt are non-refundable, auto-renew by default at the price shown at checkout, and are locked for 60 days; some endings such as .ai need a 2-year first term. The documentation does not list domain prices, so we leave them out. Third, if you drop from Pro to Free, existing custom-domain sites stay online but you can no longer republish them.
The database is created by Bolt when the project needs one and comes with sign-up and login, file storage and server functions. In unpublished projects, a database with low usage for six days or more may be paused and is restored when you reopen the project. Bolt does not publish a price for database usage on its help pages, so we do not state one.
Is Bolt.new free?
Yes, to start: the Free plan costs $0 and needs no card, but 1 million tokens a month and 300K a day go quickly on anything beyond a prototype. Free projects also show Bolt branding, cannot use a custom domain, and go offline if hosting limits are hit. Treat Free as a way to test whether Bolt suits you, not as a way to run a product.
Three realistic monthly budgets
These are calculations from the published prices, for one builder, before taxes. Token use itself is not published per task, so the plan is chosen by how much you build, not by a fixed formula.
| Scenario | Plan | Monthly cost | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Try an idea, nothing public | Free | $0 | 300K daily cap, Bolt badge, no custom domain |
| One small app online on your own domain | Pro, 10M tokens | $25 ($18 billed yearly), plus the domain | Domain price shown at checkout; tokens per message rise as the app grows |
| A growing app built daily | Pro, 55M tokens | $100, plus the domain | The highest monthly tier is also the one that can buy reload tokens |
The pattern: on Bolt, the subscription buys tokens, and a large project spends them faster. If you are comparing builders, our Lovable vs Bolt and Bolt alternatives guides cover the other differences, and Lovable pricing explains the credit side of the market.
How Cadrant prices the same job
Cadrant, our builder, bills in credits per generation rather than in tokens read from your project. Starter costs $20 a month with 300 credits and up to 5 projects, Pro costs $40 a month with 1,000 credits, unlimited projects, GitHub integration and code export, and Max costs $100 a month with 2,000 credits. About 10 credits create or modify an app. HTTPS hosting and a custom domain are included in every paid plan, and a published app does not consume credits.
Cadrant builds React apps on a Supabase project in your own account, so your database and users stay yours. The trade-offs are real: Cadrant has no free plan comparable to Bolt's, and we have not tested how Bolt and Cadrant compare on credits versus tokens for the same task, so we do not claim a ratio. Bolt is the better fit if you want its in-browser environment and the free tier to experiment. For the wider market, see our AI app cost breakdown, and our AI app builder page for what Cadrant builds.
In short: Bolt's plan cards read simply, $0, $25 and up, but the bill depends on how large your project gets, because each message re-reads it. Keep the project lean, use Plan mode and Version History, and check the pricing page on the day you pay.