Base44 Pricing 2026: Which Plan a Service Business Needs

Short answer: Base44 costs $0, $16, $40, $80 or $160 a month billed yearly, and $0, $20, $50, $100 or $200 month to month. For a service business the choice is between two plans. Starter ($16 yearly, $20 monthly) is the plan for your own domain, no Base44 badge, private apps and emails to leads who have not signed up. Builder ($40 yearly, $50 monthly) is the plan for anything that runs by itself: booking reminders, branded emails, Stripe deposits, Google Calendar and Gmail connectors. Pro and Elite add credits and support, not features a booking app needs. One number most pricing pages miss: a message credit costs the same 16 cents on Starter, Builder and Pro, so moving up buys features, not cheaper building.

What this page is based on. This is a source roundup of Base44's pricing page and help docs, read on 18 October 2026, with links below each table. The cost-per-credit and cost-per-booking figures are our own arithmetic on those prices and on the credit readings from our own Base44 Free build: eleven sessions in September 2026 on a new Free workspace, with a credit reading before and after every prompt and every booking (the full results are in our Base44 free plan review). We have not paid for Starter or Builder. What they unlock comes from Base44's documentation, not from our own use. How we work: how we test.

Base44 pricing in one table

Prices and credits from base44.com/pricing on 18 October 2026, unchanged since our 13 October capture. The first-year totals are our arithmetic. Base44's page says yearly billing saves 20%, charged once a year. Above Elite sit Business and Enterprise plans for organisations (SSO, data residency, audit logs), which Base44's billing docs list at 2,400 to 5,400 message credits a month; their prices are not published.

Two extras exist only on yearly billing. Every yearly plan from Starter up includes a free domain for one year, claimed within 60 days of starting the plan (on Starter, for yearly plans bought from 4 October 2026). Builder and above add 25 credits to share with a friend. The monthly versions of the same plans list neither, both on the pricing page and in the billing docs. If you will want your own domain anyway, count it in the yearly side of the comparison. The setup is in our Base44 custom domain guide.

What a credit buys, and what it really costs

Base44 sells two separate allowances, and every plan has both:

• Message credits pay for building: each prompt you send to the AI that writes your app. Base44's credits docs estimate about 0.5 credits for a small text or visual change, about 1 for a small feature, about 2 for a complex module and 3 to 4 for an app-wide change. Discuss mode (questions without changes) costs about 0.3. Dragging, layout changes and text edits by hand cost nothing.
• Integration credits pay for your app running: about 1 per email, about 2 per email sent from your own domain, about 1 per file upload or AI image, and about 1 per 10 workflow steps. Reading and writing your app's database costs nothing.

Our own Free build gives the real-world scale. Our prompts cost between 0.50 and 3.00 message credits each, the opening build of a client booking portal took 4.81, and Free's 25 credits lasted five days. On the running side, every one of 23 real bookings cost 2.0 integration credits (2.03 on average), mostly the confirmation email.

Now divide the prices by the credits. This is the part that decides whether to move up:

Our arithmetic on base44.com/pricing, 18 October 2026. Month to month, each message credit costs $0.20 up to Pro and about $0.17 on Elite. The booking figures assume every booking costs what ours did on the free base44.app address; an email from your own domain uses about 2 credits instead of 1, so treat them as an upper estimate. The allowance is shared by every app in the workspace.

What the table says in plain terms:

1. Building does not get cheaper until Elite. Starter, Builder and Pro all charge 16 cents a message credit on yearly billing. If you are upgrading only because you ran out of message credits, you are buying more of the same thing at the same price.
2. Running gets twice as cheap at Builder. Integration credits cost $8 per 1,000 on Starter and $4 on Builder. A small practice will not use 2,000 a month on bookings alone, so this matters only once you add things that run on their own, such as reminder emails or an AI step in a workflow.
3. For a booking business, both allowances are rarely the limit. Roughly 985 bookings a month fit inside Starter. The real reason to pay for Builder is the features in the next section, not the credits.

Which plan a service business needs

The line falls in a clear place. Starter makes the app look and act like your business (your domain, your sending address, no badge, private if you want). Builder makes it work while you are with clients: the reminder the night before, the deposit at booking, the calendar invite. Base44's pricing FAQ says most app creators land on Starter; for a coach or consultant who wants reminders and deposits, the docs put the answer at Builder.

In our Free build we asked Base44 for exactly those Builder features, and it built them without saying they needed a plan: a reminder job that never ran in 36 hours of waiting, a deposit button that took no money, and an intake form that told leads to check an inbox no email reached. Each of those maps to a row above. The full account, with what each attempt cost in credits, is in our Base44 free plan review.

Both columns from base44.com/pricing and Base44's docs on 18 October 2026. Builder is marked as the pick for a booking business that needs reminders or deposits; if you need neither, Starter is the cheaper right answer.

Billing rules that change the math

These come from Base44's billing and credits docs on 18 October 2026, and several of them decide whether yearly or monthly is the right first purchase.

• Credits reset monthly on every paid plan, yearly included. A yearly plan still gives you one month's allowance at a time, on the day of the month you subscribed, at the exact UTC time you bought. Unused credits expire at each reset.
• Yearly is non-refundable and cannot be turned back into monthly yourself. The docs say yearly fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable; support can review a mistaken purchase case by case.
• Monthly to yearly costs nothing twice. What you already paid for the current month is credited against the yearly price. Switching does not give you a fresh set of credits mid-month.
• Upgrades apply at once. Moving from a monthly plan to a higher monthly plan charges the full price difference, and your unused credits carry over for one more cycle, up to one month's worth. Upgrades involving a yearly plan are prorated and unused credits expire at the next reset as usual. Bonus and top-up credits never carry over.
• Downgrades and cancellations wait for the end of the period. On cancellation the workspace drops to Free: your apps stay live, but paid features stop and you are back to a maximum of 5 apps.
• On paid plans, automatic AI error fixes are free. On Free, both Resolve with AI and automatic fix messages use message credits.
• When integration credits run out, your clients see an error. Base44 emails you, and a visitor who triggers an action that needs credits gets a generic error with no mention of credits.
• Cards only. Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover; no PayPal, bank transfer or virtual cards. Promo codes have to be applied before you buy or upgrade.
• Discounts are case by case. The pricing page offers education and non-profit pricing case by case. You can also claim 20 message credits once by sharing a Base44 project on LinkedIn or X. Base44 says top-ups exist but does not publish their price.

What we would do with those rules. Build on Free until you hit the first wall in the table above. If you are still finding out whether clients will use the app, take the plan you need month to month: an upgrade to a higher monthly plan keeps your unused credits for one more cycle, and nothing is locked in. Once clients are booking through it, switch to yearly: you save 20%, the month you already paid is credited, and the free domain is yours to claim within 60 days.

Who should skip a paid Base44 plan

If what you need is a booking page, not your own app, you will pay less and maintain nothing with a ready-made tool: our best booking setup for coaches compares the setups we have built. And if you will not test every feature yourself as a client before you rely on it, be careful on any plan: in our Free build the AI announced features as working that never ran. The step-by-step build is in build a booking app without code.

What to do next

Start on Free and build the app until it hits a wall. Pick Starter when the wall is your brand (domain, badge, lead emails), Builder when it is automation (reminders, deposits, calendar sync). Take it month to month while you test, then move to yearly once clients book through it.