Is Base44 Free? What It Built and Which Plan to Buy

Short answer: yes, Base44 is free, and the free plan really does build and run a client booking app. What it will not do is the part a service business gets paid for. On our own Free workspace we built a booking portal for a consultant from one plain-English prompt: services page, client logins, intake form with file upload, double-booking protection, an admin dashboard and confirmation emails. It took 23 real bookings for $0. Then it hit the walls: no custom domain, no emails to leads who have not signed up, no automatic reminders, no deposits. Free does not block those features. It builds them, says they work, and ships them silently broken. So the real question is which paid plan you need, and the answer is short: Starter ($16 a month billed yearly) if you need your own domain and lead emails, Builder ($40 billed yearly) if you need reminders or deposits.

What this page is based on. Everything about the free plan comes from our own build: eleven sessions between 14 and 18 September 2026 on a brand-new Base44 Free workspace with no card on file, with a before-and-after credit reading on every prompt and every booking. We spent the whole month's 25 message credits on purpose to capture what happens at zero. Plan prices and which plan unlocks what come from Base44's pricing page and help docs, re-checked on 13 October 2026. We have not paid for Starter or Builder, so we describe what they unlock from Base44's own documentation, not from use. How we score: how we test.

The Base44 plans, and what each one unlocks for a booking app

Base44 sells credits in two separate pools. Message credits pay for talking to the AI that builds your app. Integration credits pay for your app doing things once it is live, such as sending an email or storing an uploaded file. The plans differ in both pools and in a short list of features.

Prices and credits from base44.com/pricing, 13 October 2026. Yearly billing saves 20%, and Base44's page says paid plans start at $20 a month month to month. Feature gates from Base44's docs on 13 October 2026: billing and plans (domain, badge, backend functions), sending emails (lead emails need a paid plan and a verified custom domain), workflows ("available on the Builder plan and above") and payments ("Stripe is available on the Builder plan and above"). Base44's credits page adds that on Free "you can only build public apps".

Base44's own pricing FAQ says "most app creators land on Starter". For a booking business, our build says the line falls somewhere more specific: on whether you need reminders and deposits. If you are still deciding between building an app and using a ready-made booking tool, start with our booking setup comparison for coaches.

What the free plan built, and what it costs to run

One prompt, pasted in full, asked for twelve things a consultant's client portal needs. Seven are things Base44 says Free can do. Five are paid features we left in on purpose, to see what Free does when you ask for them. The seven free ones all worked, with no hand-written code (the build itself, prompt by prompt, is in our no-code booking app guide):

The client-data test matters most for a portal. Signed in as one client, using that client's own access token, we asked Base44's database for the other client's intake and booking. Both came back "not found", and listing the app's users returned "permission denied". A public Free app means anyone can reach the address, not that anyone can read the data.

Running it is cheap and predictable. We took 23 real bookings and read the integration credits before and after each one: every booking cost 2.0 credits (2.03 on average) and zero message credits. By our arithmetic, Free's 100 integration credits cover about 49 bookings a month, or about 24 complete first-time clients who also upload a file at intake. That allowance is shared across every app in the workspace. At least one widely copied page says Free has 500 integration credits; the usage panel in our workspace said 100, and so does Base44's pricing page.

On Starter's 2,000 integration credits the same arithmetic gives roughly 1,000 bookings a month, and on Builder's 10,000 roughly 5,000. One difference: Base44's email docs say an email sent from your own domain uses 2 integration credits instead of 1, and we measured our bookings on the free base44.app address, so treat those paid-plan figures as our estimate, not a measurement.

Building is what runs out. The 25 message credits lasted five days. Our prompts cost between 0.50 and 3.00 credits each, Base44 shows no estimate before you send, and the opening build alone took 4.81 credits, nearly a fifth of the month.

The four walls, and the plan that removes each one

This is the part to read before you decide. In every case below, Base44's assistant built the feature, said it was done, and did not mention the plan it needs until after the credits were spent, if at all.

1. Lead emails: the form says "check your inbox", nothing is sent

We asked for an intake form that people can fill in without creating an account, with a confirmation email to the address they type. The assistant built it for 2.10 message credits, 8.4% of the free month, and reported "Both functions work." We then filled the form in as a new lead. The screen said "Your intake is in. Check your inbox for a confirmation." No email arrived. The only trace was one red row in the app's Logs: "Emails to people who aren't registered users of this app need a paid plan and a verified custom domain."

For a service business that is the costly one, because the lead believes you replied. What fixes it: Starter plus a connected domain, per Base44's sending-emails docs. Emails to clients who have signed up work on every plan.

2. Reminders: built, billed, and never run once

Base44's own suggestion chip offered a Free workspace "Send 24-hour reminders". The assistant built an hourly reminder job for 1.60 credits and announced that reminders were set up. One click away, the Workflows tab said "This feature is only available on the Builder plan or higher." We then watched for 36 hours: no reminder reached either test inbox, bookings passed their 24-hour window, and the reminder flag on every booking stayed empty.

What fixes it: Builder, where Workflows run scheduled emails. Until then, the confirmation email we ended up with says plainly that no reminder is sent, so clients add the session to their own calendar.

3. Deposits: a "Pay $50 and confirm" button that takes no money

We asked for a $50 deposit at booking. The button appeared, the booking confirmed, and the record said deposit: no. Asked about it later, the assistant explained in its own words that payment was not set up, so the page "silently falls back to a free booking". Its rebuild ended in the same place, and the two attempts cost 2.30 credits. In four replies it never mentioned a plan. Base44's payments docs say Stripe is on Builder and above.

One honest note: the Stripe install card in our workspace also said Stripe is not supported in our own country, which is a Stripe rule, not a Base44 plan rule. What fixes it: Builder, in a Stripe-supported country.

4. Your own domain, no badge, private apps

These three are the only gates that behave like a wall: the controls are visible and say they need an upgrade. The free app lives on a base44.app address with the Base44 badge, and Base44's credits page says Free apps are public. What fixes it: Starter, which also adds a free domain for a year on yearly billing (base44.com/pricing, 13 October 2026). Even so, when we asked the assistant for all three, it gave directions and never mentioned a plan.

What happens when the credits run out

The daily wall. Free gives 5 message credits a day. When they are gone, the chat box is replaced by a card: "0 credits remaining", a countdown, and an upgrade button. On the day we first hit it, that card appeared while the workspace still had 16.89 of its 25 monthly credits left. "0 credits" means zero today.

The cap limits starting a message, not what it costs. With 0.60 credits left for the day, one prompt was accepted and billed 1.90, so the day closed at 6.30 of a "5 a day" cap. The overshoot is charged to the monthly pool and not given back. We measured the same rule three times.

The monthly wall arrives with no warning. At 0.79 credits left, and again at 0.09, the chat box showed no counter and no warning. The last prompt started with 0.09 left, cost 1.00, and closed the month at 25.91 of 25. Then, at 21:22 UTC on 18 September: "You're out of monthly credits. Upgrade for more credits, unlimited apps, a custom domain and powerful tools", with 12 days to go until the monthly reset. Base44's own email confirmed the free credits come back at the start of each calendar month.

Your clients do not notice. With the message pool at zero, we published a change (publishing cost nothing) and made a booking as a client. The slot picker loaded, the booking confirmed, and the confirmation email arrived 4 seconds later, paid from the separate integration pool. The free wall stops you editing the app. It does not take the app down.

The hidden cost: the free month spent on the AI's own mistakes

Base44 ships confident code, and some of it was wrong. Across the run we found an admin page any signed-up client could open (records stayed private, the screen did not), a 3-hour time-zone error in every confirmation email, an empty client column in the export, and edits that did not reach clients until we pressed Publish again, with nothing on screen saying so. Asked directly whether the app worked, the assistant told us it was broken in ways our own measurements disproved.

Fixing, removing or arguing about those defects took 8.60 of the 25 message credits: 34.4% of the free month. That is the number to plan around. On Free a third of your building budget can go on repairs; Starter's 100 credits a month are four times the room, and Builder's 250 ten times.

Which plan to pick for a booking business

Base44's billing docs say upgrades take effect right away after you pay, and that moving from a monthly plan to a higher monthly plan carries your unused credits over for one more cycle. So building on Free first and upgrading on the day you hit a wall costs nothing extra.

Who should skip it. If you will not read Base44's logs and test every feature yourself as a client, the free plan's habit of announcing broken features as working will cost you leads before you notice. And if you want a booking page rather than a custom app, a ready-made tool is simpler: our best booking setup for coaches compares the options we have built, and Shopify or Systeme.io for coaches covers selling sessions without building anything. For the whole build, step by step, see build a booking app without code.

How we scored the free plan

This score is for Base44 Free, the plan we tested. It is not a score for Starter or Builder, which we have not used.