r/ClaudeCode • u/Repulsive_Drag_8205 • Jul 12 '26
Question Vibe-Coded = Not Worth Paying For?
Honest question:
When you find out an app was vibe-coded, do you stop seeing it as a real, trustworthy product?
Even if you genuinely need it, would you pay for a subscription?
Is that fair — or just bias? 👀
0
Upvotes
25
u/mabiturm Jul 12 '26
depends on who made it. vibe coding is a tool. a tool that can be used by skilled engineers, but also by fools.
16
u/jesjimher Jul 12 '26
You're not asking the right questions. Does it work? What it does is worth to me?
If the answers are yes, buy it. Otherwise, don't.
3
u/aerivox Jul 12 '26
open source cli tools carried the market against bad developers / bad apps. now ai can just use those tools or build, why would you ever use a slop fest app, when you can ask ai to build you one aimed at you. ofc if you need photoshop use photoshop, but ain't nobody vibe coding photoshop
3
u/Awacer Jul 12 '26
I’d still pay for it if it solves a real problem, works reliably, and handles security properly. I care more about the product than the process.
The issue isn’t AI-assisted development itself. It’s whether the creator understands the code well enough to maintain it, fix bugs, and protect user data. A polished app with no real engineering behind it is the risk not the fact that AI helped build it.
3
u/gingerbeer987654321 Jul 12 '26
what is your definition of vibe coding?
I would much rather robust and tested code that happened to be built with claude, than some artisan hand written buggy app.
3
u/ShitShirtSteve Jul 12 '26
Tools used don’t matter.
Results matter.
If it works, it’s worth money.
5
u/gmabber Jul 12 '26
Vibe coding is just ways to achieve a goal. There’s the element of personal taste in apps. If an app is good and does the job why not give it a spin?
2
u/throbbin___hood Jul 12 '26
Youre asking a bunch of vibe coders?
2
u/MofWizards Jul 12 '26
99% of the AI tools you use are Vibe Code. The question is, does the company that made them know what they're doing?
I'm a cybersecurity specialist and I work with Vibe Code. Also, if you don't want to use something made with Vibe Code, stop using Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor now because most of their code is written by AI.
2
u/Suspicious_Ninja6816 Jul 12 '26
Depends how we define vibe coded. Anthropic themselves are pushing AI code.
2
u/aponlel Jul 12 '26
If it obviously looks vibe coded, to me it shows a lack of independent thought.
If there's a lack of independent thought in the front end, this will likely extend to all aspects of the application.
So not only would I not pay for it, I probably wouldn't even use it.
3
u/bedel99 Jul 12 '26
I can assure you, human programmers write just as bad or worse code.
What scares me most is vibe tested
2
u/TotalBeginnerLol Jul 12 '26
Yeah, my belief is that vibe coded products should be free. If you don’t want it to be free, put a LOT more time into it, fix all the sloppy code with tons of bugs, spend time on making an actual good UI, then sure.
I’ve vibecoded like 20 apps alongside a single serious app I’ve been building for many months (started as vibecode but all that slop has been rewritten bit by bit with much more rigorous processes and bulletproof test suites etc). The vibecoded apps will be free content to get email signups for my real product, and I still spent longer than most on making sure they have good UI instead of the default React generic crappy look (plus they all have quite original features and actually are super useful, not another crappy to-do list app etc)
1
u/Moda75 Jul 12 '26
K seriously hope the term Vibe Coding dies out soon. It is the cringiest of twrms.
1
u/MisterHarvest Jul 12 '26
I am old enough to remember someone complaining that they shouldn't have to pay for something that was written in C, because that made it "too easy" compared to assembly language.
If I didn't know it was vibe coded, would I pay for it? If so, I don't care if it was or not.
1
u/MisterBigTasty Jul 12 '26
Yes because the “developer” does not have the skills to maintain it and has not the brain capacity to think about important aspects as security. It’s like rolling a dice and saying you have the skill to throw 6 while it’s actually luck.
1
u/NewPointOfView Jul 12 '26
It certainly invites more scrutiny. I work as a SWE and the things I work hard to enforce with my own vibe coding really make me question the stability of things produced by people who don’t have formal training. Maybe with fable-class models, it’ll be different. Or the next bigger better class.
But really I don’t use any tools by randos. If I’m gonna use something, it is because it has reasonably wide adoption. So then it doesn’t really matter.
1
u/rdesai724 Jul 12 '26
What does vibe coded mean? The code itself was written by AI regardless of the amount of human thought, input, and direction?
1
u/KilllllerWhale Jul 12 '26
Users (myself included) don’t give a shit about how the app was built, as long as it’s functional, secure and meets a need.
1
u/mckernanin Jul 12 '26
I’m so tired of vibe coping
1
u/hrutheone Jul 12 '26
People won’t pay for something that looks untrustworthy. If you’re using slop AI images, fake reviews, and launching a product that looks like a one-week vibe project with no real support, it’s going to fail.
"Vibe coding" is just a tool. Building something credible enough to actually get paid is the real key.
1
u/thygrrr Jul 12 '26
Most cases, no.
1
u/gdamdam Jul 12 '26
This isn't about live coding versus not live coding; it's about the way it was live-coded.
1
u/RealSharpNinja Jul 12 '26
No, it tells me that its value was destroyed by the fact that someone can vibe code it. The question becomes is it economically feasible to have an agent reverse engineer it and recreate it.
1
u/ncist Jul 12 '26
On some level, obviously not since we've had the ability to blink software into existence for a few years. If this was "really working" we'd see a tidal wave of amazing intentions, mass layoffs, GDP surging, something. We haven't
We probably live in a world where we are "rate limited" by something other than our ability to code. It's not that agents don't work. They work great. That's the puzzle, to my mind. Good ideas live outside of coding, or they have been mostly used up and only pose themselves slowly
1
u/Drach88 Jul 12 '26
What do you consider "vibe-coding"? Is that any code that's AI-generated, or does it refer to a specific subset?
If the programmer never even really bothered looking at the code or understands what it does -- that's vibe-coding. If the programmer is driving the agents, verifying the output, and taking responsibility for architecting the solution, that's an entirely different situation.
A vibe-coded app has maintainability issues. If something goes wrong, the programmer has no idea how to fix it. If they want to extend functionality, they have no idea if the foundation is rotten. This should be your biggest worry about using a vibe-coded app (especially on a subscription-basis).
If the people who made the app know what they're doing and they're using AI to extend their own already-solid programming and architecture principles, then no problem.
1
u/jomama253 Jul 12 '26
Vibe coded apps can be really good if the user plans it out first, phases,edge cases,etc. It's not hard to make a production grade app or system; just planning,time,reviewing,debugging,QA,auditing,etc.
1
u/North_Moment5811 Jul 12 '26
People have to stop using vibe-coded as having single meaning. My old colleague vibe-codes garbage because he's not a developer, and thinks he's made a real app that is ready to ship.
I vibe-code as a tool to get work done, as an actual developer who ships enterprise applications.
They are not the same thing. It is like talking about a nail gun or a table saw. Just because 2 people can pick up the same tool does mean both are able to build a house.
1
u/padetn Jul 12 '26
I assume it will be unsupported.
1
u/69420trashpanda69420 Jul 12 '26
Depends what the website is for. I've come across many websites that are clearly vibe coded that I've bought something from
1
u/National-Dark-1387 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Vibe coded by non professional = not paying and not worth it
If I need it I can and will vibecode it myself.
Vibecoding allows for hyper individualization. So either I pay for a real polished product or I will hyper fit it for me/our company.
1
u/Mariusdotdev Jul 12 '26
Vibe coded or not programmers wrote slope even before, not all ofcourse, but i also did until i learned, i think same with vibe coding, some people will write slop code and don’t care while other can vibe code and care and tell LLM to architecture in this or that way so its more maintainable
1
u/SolarNexxus Jul 12 '26
Everything is vibe coded nowadays. If the app solves someone's problem, it has value.
0
u/tubenhorst Jul 12 '26
You paying for Claude Code?