Bubble alternatives

12 tools that do a similar job, and what makes each one different.

What Bubble is

Bubble is a no-code application builder, described by its makers as a no-code AI app builder for both web and mobile apps. Apps are assembled visually rather than written, and paid plans from Starter upward include custom domains and backend workflows. Plans are priced by which surfaces an app needs. Starter costs $32 per month for web only, $49 for mobile only and $69 for both. Growth is $134, $199 and $249 across the same three splits, and Team is $399, $529 and $649. Choosing web only where mobile is not needed is the single largest lever on the bill. Running the app is metered separately in workload units, shortened to WU, and twelve distinct activity types feed an app's monthly total. The rates are published per action, which makes the cost of a design decision calculable before it is built. A database search costs 0.3 WU, and each thing that search returns adds 0.015 WU. Writing or modifying a thing costs 0.5 WU and deleting one costs 0.1 WU. An aggregate query is 0.2 WU and a group by query 0.3 WU. Loading a page's HTML costs 0.15 WU, a server-side workflow action 0.6 WU, and evaluating a backend database trigger event 0.05 WU. API traffic is asymmetric: an outbound call costs 0.1 WU, while an inbound Data or Workflow API call costs only 0.01 WU. Plugins are charged on time as well as calls, at 0.2 WU per server-side action plus 0.0005 WU for every millisecond it runs, and the SQL Connector charges 0.1 WU per call plus 0.015 WU per row retrieved. The consequences of running out matter as much as the rates. Warning emails go out at 75 percent and 100 percent of the allowance. Workload used beyond the allowance costs $0.30 per 1,000 units where no workload tier has been bought, and if overages are switched off, an app that exhausts its workload goes offline. Workload tiers can only be bought on Starter, Growth or Team, and Free plan apps can neither buy a tier nor turn overages on, so a free app has a hard ceiling rather than a rising bill. Every paid app also gets 100,000 monthly workload units for its Development environment, keeping test runs off the live allowance. Extra file storage is charged at $3 per 100 GB. Read together, the workload model means an inefficient search that returns thousands of things is not just slow, it is a line item. Bubble publishes enough detail to estimate that cost during design rather than discover it in a bill.

Glide

Generates mobile and web apps from a table your team already maintains. Rows become screens, columns become fields, and the result is installable and works offline. Best for internal tools (inventory, inspections, field data, directories), where the alternative is a spreadsheet somebody edits on a phone.

Freemium

Softr

Turns an Airtable or Google Sheets base into a client portal, directory or internal tool, with authentication and permissions handled. Blocks compose a page without design work. It suits a team that already keeps its data in a base and needs to expose part of it to people who should not see the base.

Freemium

Airtable

A spreadsheet that grew a schema, views and an API. Fields have types, records link to records across tables, and the same data appears as a grid, kanban, calendar or gallery. Automations and interfaces sit on top. It is where a lot of internal tooling starts, and per-seat pricing is where a lot of it stops.

Freemium

Webflow

Sites built visually that still produce markup a developer would accept, a real box model, real class names, no generated soup. A CMS with custom content types, hosting, and interactions for scroll and hover animation. The learning curve is closer to a design tool than a website builder, and understanding CSS makes it click much faster.

Freemium

LottieFiles

The ecosystem around Lottie, the format that ships vector animation as JSON. Animations stay sharp at any size, weigh a fraction of a GIF or video, and can be recoloured or controlled at runtime. The platform hosts a large library, converts from After Effects, and provides players for web and mobile.

Freemium

Warp

A terminal that treats each command and its output as a block you can navigate, copy and share, rather than an endless scroll. Input behaves like a text editor, history is searchable, and an assistant can read a failing command and suggest the fix. Workflows save parameterised commands for a team. Some of it requires an account, which is the objection people raise most.

Freemium

Open-Launch

Daily product launches with a badge and a backlink, run transparently, the ranking rules and the code are public, which is unusual in this category. Free and premium submission paths, with the paid one skipping the queue. Positioned as an open alternative to the closed boards, and worth watching for that reason as much as the traffic.

Freemium

Cursor

VS Code rebuilt around a model that can see the whole repository. Beyond autocomplete it edits across files from an instruction, answers questions about unfamiliar code, and applies a diff you review before it lands. Keybindings and extensions carry over from VS Code, so switching costs an afternoon. The multi-file edit is the feature people stay for.

Freemium

Mixpanel

Event analytics for questions that begin with 'how many users who'. Funnels, retention curves, cohorts and flows are the core, built on events with properties rather than pageviews. Strong at behavioural questions and weaker at the simple traffic reporting a marketing team wants, which is why it often sits beside a web analytics tool.

Freemium

Vercel

Deploys a frontend by pushing to a branch, with a preview URL for every pull request, the workflow most React teams now expect by default. Built by the maintainers of Next.js, which it supports first and best. Edge functions, analytics and image optimisation are included. Costs are predictable until traffic is not, and bandwidth is the line to watch.

Freemium

Amplitude

Behavioural analytics built around cohorts, retention and the paths users take through a product. Comparable to Mixpanel and generally chosen for the depth of its retention and journey analysis. Experimentation and customer data tooling sit alongside. Aimed at product teams with enough volume for the analysis to mean something.

Freemium

Attio

A CRM that models your pipeline instead of making you adopt theirs. Objects, attributes and relationships are defined by you, and it builds from real data, email and calendar activity populate records rather than waiting for someone to log them. Aimed at startups and investment teams whose process does not fit a standard sales funnel.

Freemium