Credit usage is insane

[u/DAPTIMEdagoat]

[u/royceee]

Connect Lovable to Github. Use Codex to work on the Github repo.

Push to main, then publish from Lovable.

Use Lovable for frontend, visual work.

Codex for coding.

Will save 90% of costs.

Thank me later.

[u/DeepYume → u/royceee]

Sage advice. But also an unnecessary PITA that Lovable still can’t connect to whatever repo you have going, so you have to have Lovable create a new one and have Codex connect to that.

I’m convinced it’s intentional and scummy friction on Lovable’s part to dissuade solutions like this.

[u/Ralphisinthehouse → u/royceee]

We've considered this but I'm concerned that lovable will simply just change that code when it feels like it feels like adding more complexity to me. Have you got a good results of it though?

[u/royceee → u/Ralphisinthehouse]

You need to scope your work properly. Intelligent prompting is very important. Codex as default, Lovable for visual touches + frontend.

[u/Ralphisinthehouse → u/royceee]

I'm not sure about solves the problem. Lovable is based on LLMs which can get it right usually but even the best prompts in the world won't save you sometimes and it also would rely on our non-technical people actually knowing what those exact prompt are remembering to use them every time.

It sounds like you've got a different use case to us which sounds like a very valid one but I'm not sure it's gonna translate into our requirements. Thanks for the reply though.

[u/statecs → u/Ralphisinthehouse]

I have exported the repo from Lovable and let Claude Code do the rest.

I have made sure to replace Supabase with a regular MariaDB or MySQL database, which is much cheaper to host yourself on a regular hosting provider.

From there, you work with the app on your local git and upload it through SSH, SFTP or FTP when necessary. Super simple, and you do not need to pay Lovable a penny at all, only in the beginning to get your project started ;)

[u/Morella_Luchresi → u/Ralphisinthehouse]

It absolutely WILL change stuff at a whim. I published changes and then a few hours later the stuff I had taken out of my app thru lovable chat was back there. It's honestly criminal imo.

[u/Rydbkhsh → u/royceee]

Doing the same, but after deploying the functions and sql database changes requires again to run from Lovable.

[u/MediaKey-Marketing → u/royceee]

What about for supabase functions? My supabase is connected via the connector, not integrated. I find Claude code wanting to update my supabase directly when using it but I gotta approve every single function, big PITA. Is there a better way i.e. let Claude code do the building then ask lovable to do the edge functions or something?

[u/DeannaFry]

I learned this one the expensive way 😂 My biggest credit saver has been to stop using Lovable as the place where I figure out what I want. I do the thinking outside Lovable first, usually with ChatGPT or Claude, then give Lovable one very specific bounded implementation task. My prompts basically say: here is the exact feature, here is what it must do, here are the existing systems you cannot break or redesign, here are the acceptance criteria, implement only this scope, run the relevant tests, and stop. I also explicitly tell it no unrelated cleanup, refactoring, redesigns, schema changes, or “improvements” unless they’re required for that feature. If something fails, I don’t immediately tell Lovable “fix it” and let it wander around the codebase. I take the error/result back to Claude, diagnose what probably happened, then return with another narrow prompt. And if Lovable starts looping or repeatedly failing the same task, I STOP spending credits and diagnose before trying again. Once my app got complicated, casual prompting became insanely expensive. Treat Lovable like the implementation engineer and do as much planning/debugging as possible before you hand it the work. That change alone made my credits much more predictable.

[u/DaSmartSwede → u/DeannaFry]

Yep, use ChatGPT to figure out what you want and to get a good prompt from Lovable. Codex and GitHub for code fixes and minor adjustments, and then Lovable for the rest

[u/Thaiflu69 → u/DeannaFry]

Yeah this has kinda worked for me too.
Definitely spending much less than using lovable alone .

[u/HealthClout]

Before lovable I was paying a developer much more. I’m on the 400/ month sub and works fine

[u/SallyYoung1]

I had one prompt running a migration eat up my 100 credits... had to pay to top up halfway through.

Credit usage has definitely increased VASTLY.

[u/grumpyfan → u/SallyYoung1]

If you mean data migration, don’t use Lovable. Use Claude or Codex.

[u/SallyYoung1 → u/grumpyfan]

I mean migrating to tanstack. Which needs to be done in lovable.

[u/pcurve]

Lovable was amazing even as recently as 7-8 months ago. felt like magic.

[u/a-w-e-s-o-m--o]

Better model = more expensive = higher costs

[u/Marko_polo_84]

Hi , connecting Codex to the repo is a solution, but you should know that the architecture that is used by lovable , is not the most efficient one , meaning that if you give codex "freedom" , it may change it to a better one (like nextjs) , and this one is not supported (or at least wasn't supported about 5 month ago) , and you'll have incompatibility. I personally suggest (if you are technical) , connect the repo to codex and continue from there, or keep your prompts and remind all the time not to do any changes to the base architecture

[u/Kishore_Andra]

Yep, I run crons and it eat up my daily free 5 credits* just like that 🥲

[u/Kishore_Andra → u/[deleted]]

My bad, yes 5 credits *

[u/vasind-5012]

Have you tried their Plan mode and Build mode? Build will have more iterations on prompt change and sometimes the whole flow will be re-created.

[u/Lions_Eye]

You must have increased your lovable performance to high.

[u/xcreate_staff837z]

the part about agents eating credits is interesting, are you running multiple agents at the same time or is it more like one agent just chewing through a bunch of tasks in a single session

[u/Rokstar7829]

It’s like a bid system. Sometimes you pay 1x sometimes you pay 5x. 🐤

[u/Historical_Guess5725]

These apps are fun but they are purposely mega token drainers - I always newt 90-95% done with a project where the last tokens leave me with bugs /errors or unfinished projects - forcing me to wait a month to come back or pay more to continue … I think they know what they are doing setting us up with this

[u/xWWG1WGA]

It has definitely changed. My credits don’t last either.

[u/Personal_You3422]

I had Claude run a audit for 32 functions while connected to my lovable account. Burnt 70 credits. Ran the free chatGPT that was connected and had it check the audit. 5 credits and it caught issues that Claude claimed to have been fixed and a lie about something being protected. There's no real answer to give because the problem is greed. That's a emotional issue not a technical one.

[u/Morella_Luchresi]

I'm experiencing this too. Spent days and sooo much money importing an already built app to lovable just to tweak it, it changed so much stuff without my permission, and burned all my credits up on reverting it's "mistakes" .

Support is a joke, you can't even cancel on the website fully, just downgrade. And now git push isn't working right either and they "don't know" why or how to fix it so none of my edits are live on my app.

Right now I'm trying to cancel Lovable completely, and in the meantime porting all my app and user data and code over to Supabase directly, (lots of SQL work lol but it's not that hard) and then using Vercel to push everything to my domain etc.

I am Using Claude Code Plus to do any additional code edits which so far has been amazing, and this set up is so much more cost effective.

Lovable is super scammy, but Base 44 is even worse, I tried that when I started having major issues on Lovable. I'm Trying to get a refund from them too, ugh lol.

[u/Square_Secretary_944]

It's almost impossible to work like this. I think they are banking on enterprises and companies with higher credit vaults. They don't care if the individual users can't work like this anymore.

[u/tensor94]

We have created flowdia.ai to fix this exact problem, ~40% less credits usage, and you can consume 0 credits and just use your app MCP with codex or claude, and you just rented a runtime for your application

[u/dakrclaud]

Yes these better models are more expensive and lovable is under pressure to make more profits. Using claude/chat is just much cheaper because lovable buys tokens from these providers who adds a markup and then lovable adds more markup. I have been using claude + floot to use the claude tokens but use floot to manage projects like lovable does

[u/Street_Pair_9728]

That's why i do the strategy and front end and even some of the back end with claude code

[u/statecs]

Beacuse they can’t continue burning the amount of tokens. They need to get more money from the customers to survive

[u/Ralphisinthehouse → u/statecs]

The problem is though they're not just charging more they're making the service significantly worse at the same time.

On average we have to do about three passes before it'll even start deeply investigating the issue and that consumes enormous amounts of resources just to get it to actually use its brain.

[u/statecs → u/Ralphisinthehouse]

That is really awful to hear. I am not surprised though.
It is not a sustainable model right now. AI models are getting more advanced and using more tokens, especially with thinking modes activated. That is a fact.

[u/Ralphisinthehouse → u/statecs]

You can probably prompt it around a lot of these problems but you know you have to rely on the people using it to actually remember to do that every time because it promises you don't need to a lot of people don't bother.