Bubble vs Glide
Both are no-code tools. Here is what separates them.
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.
What Glide is
Glide is a platform for turning spreadsheets and tables into working apps. A source such as Google Sheets, Excel or Airtable is connected, and Glide builds an app on top of it, so the data stays in the file a team already maintains while the app provides the interface onto it. Apps can start from a template or from an existing spreadsheet and then be customised. Different teams can be given their own views of the same data, actions can be attached to records, and people are invited with permissions that set what each of them can see and do. There is an API, and apps are published from the platform to desktop and mobile. GlideOS is a separate product from the original Glide platform and needs its own subscription. It is an AI software development platform for internal business apps: a project starts from a spreadsheet, a prompt or a file, and GlideOS reads the structure and logic of the data to generate screens and workflows from it. Automations can be triggered by incoming events, and repetitive tasks can be handled by predefined rules. GlideOS works with more than 1,000 services and does not require them to be installed or configured in advance. Describing what needs to be built is enough for it to identify the relevant integrations, and authorisation is completed through a Connect card inside the app. GlideOS has a free plan at $0 a month with one project and a limited credit allowance. Solo costs $25 a month with five projects, a database and 100 MB of storage. Team costs $125 a month with 25 GB of storage and support for between 5 and 100 members. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes 100 GB of storage, single sign-on, custom connectors, priority support and a dedicated success manager. Common builds include a CRM shaped to a specific workflow, secure customer portals, procurement and order management, inventory tracking, logistics and shipment tracking, and dashboards for following business metrics. Glide holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification and complies with GDPR and CCPA. It is not open source, and it is free to start with paid upgrades for more capacity.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.