The short answer: Emergent has four plans. Free gives you 10 credits. Standard is $20/month for 100 credits. Pro is $200/month for 750 credits. Business and Enterprise are custom-priced for teams. Everything you do uses credits, including putting your app live, which costs at least 50 credits plus a monthly fee to keep it online.
Below is what each plan includes, how the credits actually get used, and how to work out what your app will cost before you start. All prices are from Emergent's own pricing page and help center, checked in October 2026.
Emergent plans and prices at a glance
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually | Credits / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | n/a | 10 |
| Standard | $20 | $17/mo | 100 |
| Pro | $200 | $167/mo | 750 |
| Business / Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
What each plan adds:
- Free: web and mobile building with advanced models. No production publishing, no GitHub integration, no private hosting.
- Standard: private project hosting, GitHub integration, forking, and extra credits when you need them.
- Pro: a 1M context window, "ultra thinking", system prompt editing, custom AI agents and priority support.
- Business / Enterprise: SSO, role-based access, shared workspaces and real-time co-editing, plus audit logs and VPC deployment on Enterprise.
Is Emergent free?
Partly. You can sign up and build without paying, but the free plan is designed for a first look, not for finishing an app:
- 10 credits. Emergent's help center describes them as "10 credits on your first day". Emergent also says a single prompt can use "anywhere from a handful of credits (for a small change to how your app looks and feels) to hundreds (for a full feature with tests and making it live)". In practice, 10 credits covers a prompt or two.
- No production publishing. Free apps live in your workspace. Some free users may get one frontend-only published app, but you can't put a full-stack app on a live URL without a paid plan.
- No GitHub integration, private hosting or custom domain. Those start on Standard.
So the honest answer to "is Emergent free?" is: free to try, paid to ship. If you want to build and publish something without paying, see the free AI app builder roundup.
How Emergent credits work
Emergent doesn't charge per app or per message. Every piece of work the platform does takes credits from your balance: writing code from a prompt, running tests, database work, calls to AI models inside your app, and publishing. Four rules matter most:
- Cost depends on the size of the job. A small visual change is cheap. A full feature with tests can cost hundreds of credits.
- Monthly credits don't roll over. They refill to your plan's amount each billing cycle, so unused credits are lost.
- Top-up credits never expire. Credits you buy on top of your plan carry over indefinitely.
- At zero, work pauses. If you run out mid-build, the build stops until you add credits. Nothing is lost, but your app won't go live until the work finishes.
The cost most people miss: putting your app live
Building is only half the bill. Emergent's help center says that publishing to a live URL "requires a paid Publish (minimum 50 credits)", and that keeping an app live has a monthly fee on top.
Here's what that means on the Standard plan:
- You get 100 credits a month.
- Publishing one app takes at least 50 of them.
- That leaves about 50 credits for building, and a single large feature can use more than that.
So if you plan to keep an app online, budget for top-ups, or treat Standard as a plan for one small app at a time. Pro's 750 credits give much more room, but at ten times the price.
What an Emergent credit costs
| Plan | Per credit (monthly) | Per credit (annual) |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $0.20 | $0.17 |
| Pro | $0.27 | $0.22 |
One surprise: Pro costs more per credit than Standard. You're paying for the extra features (the 1M context window, ultra thinking and custom agents), not for cheaper credits. If all you need is more credits, price out Standard plus top-ups before jumping to Pro.
Which Emergent plan should you choose?
- Free if you only want to see how Emergent works before paying.
- Standard if you're building one small app and want GitHub and a live URL. Expect to buy top-ups if you keep it online.
- Pro if you build large apps daily and need the long context and custom agents, and $200 a month fits your budget.
- Business if a team needs SSO, shared workspaces and admin controls.
A cheaper option: GenVibe
If the price of going live is what puts you off, GenVibe builds the same kind of apps (web, and React Native / Expo mobile, from a prompt, a Figma design or a screenshot) for less:
| Emergent | GenVibe | |
|---|---|---|
| Free start | 10 credits | 20 credits, no card |
| Publish to a live URL | Paid plans only, min. 50 credits + monthly fee | Included on every plan, including free |
| Entry paid plan | $20/mo, 100 credits | $12/mo, 100 credits ($9 first month) |
| Top plan | Pro $200/mo, 750 credits | Pro $99/mo, 1,200 credits |
| Web + mobile apps | Yes | Yes |
| Figma and screenshot import | Yes | Yes |
Credits aren't the same unit across tools, so compare what you get rather than the raw numbers. GenVibe meters credits by how much work the AI actually does: a small tweak costs a fraction of a credit. And because hosting is included, none of your credits go to keeping your app online. See the full plans on the pricing page, or the side-by-side on Emergent vs GenVibe.
Emergent is still a capable tool, especially if you want an autonomous agent that runs end to end and you don't mind paying for it. If you want to build and ship on a smaller budget, try GenVibe free →
Frequently asked questions
Is Emergent free?
Emergent has a free plan, but it is very small: 10 credits, and you cannot publish an app to production on it. A single Emergent prompt can use anywhere from a handful of credits to hundreds, so the free plan is enough to try the product, not to finish an app.
How much does Emergent cost per month?
Emergent Standard is $20/month ($17/month billed annually) for 100 credits a month. Emergent Pro is $200/month ($167/month billed annually) for 750 credits a month. Business and Enterprise plans have custom pricing.
How much does it cost to deploy an app on Emergent?
According to Emergent’s help center, publishing to a live URL requires a paid Publish of at least 50 credits, and keeping an app live has a monthly fee. On the Standard plan, 50 credits is half of the month’s 100.
Do Emergent credits roll over?
Monthly plan credits do not roll over: they refill to the plan amount each billing cycle. Credits bought as one-time top-ups never expire.
What is a cheaper alternative to Emergent?
GenVibe builds web and React Native / Expo mobile apps from a prompt, Figma design or screenshot. It is free to start with 20 credits and no card, paid plans start at $12/month ($9 for the first month), and publishing your app to a live URL is included on every plan, including free.
Sources: Emergent pricing, How credits work, Plans and the free tier and Deployment on Emergent, checked October 7, 2026. Prices change; check Emergent's site for the latest.