What a Full-Stack App Actually Costs to Build With Remy
A real cost breakdown: what Remy charges in AI tokens to build a full-stack app, compared to a contractor's day rate and a SaaS subscription.
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Build an App With Remy?
A typical project on Remy runs $100 to $500 in AI tokens from first description to a deployed, working application, on top of a flat $99/month (or $79/month billed annually) platform subscription. That token range is the only sourced figure for what a build costs — it covers the full compile: backend, database, auth, frontend, and deployment, not just a prototype screen.
That number sounds abstract until you put it next to what the same tool used to cost. A vendor approval workflow, an onboarding portal, an inventory tracker — the kind of internal app most teams either buy as a SaaS line item or wait months for an engineering team to build — comes out the other side of a Remy build for less than a single hour of a contractor’s time.
TL;DR
- A full-stack app built with Remy tends to cost $100 to $500 in AI tokens, billed at the model provider’s own rate with no markup added on top.
- The token cost is separate from the flat $99/month (or $79/month annual) subscription that covers hosting, databases, auth, and monitoring for everything built — that subscription is the ongoing cost of keeping any app live.
- Because tokens are billed at cost, when model prices drop, the cost of a build drops with them — automatically, without a new plan or a new contract.
- Most builds finish in well under a day, which is part of why the token spend stays low even for a full production app.
- Compared to a contract developer’s day rate, a Remy build finishes for a fraction of a single day of billable engineering time.
- The token spend for a build is a one-time cost, not a recurring one — once an app is compiled, changing it costs more tokens, not a new invoice, while the $99/month platform fee is the separate ongoing cost of hosting.
- The same flat platform fee covers unlimited projects, so a team building five internal tools a year pays it once, not five times.
- Because the AI does the compiling, token cost scales with how much you build, not with how many people use the app once it ships.
- ✕a coding agent
- ✕no-code
- ✕vibe coding
- ✕a faster Cursor
The one that tells the coding agents what to build.
What Actually Drives the Cost of a Build?
Every Remy build has two separate costs, and conflating them is the most common way people misjudge what a project will run.
The first is the platform fee — $99/month, or $79/month billed annually. That’s a flat, recurring rate for the infrastructure every app runs on: hosting, databases, authentication, deployments, and monitoring. It doesn’t change no matter how many apps get built or how much traffic they get, but it is an ongoing cost, not a one-time one.
The second is AI tokens, billed separately at whatever Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google charges per token — the same rate you’d pay calling their APIs directly, with nothing added on top. This is the number that varies by project and is spent once per build or per round of changes — it’s the piece of the cost that’s genuinely one-time, and it’s what this piece is actually about.
A vendor approval tool with a handful of tables and one approval workflow costs less in tokens than a multi-role CRM with reporting, notifications, and a dozen data views. Complexity drives token spend the way square footage drives a construction estimate — more surface area to design, more logic to generate, more QA passes to run.
What Does a Typical Build Cost, Concretely?
Taking a project from idea to a deployed app tends to run $100 to $500 in tokens. A single, focused internal tool — an approval queue, a lightweight tracker, a status dashboard — usually lands toward the lower end of that range. A build with more moving parts, or a team iterating through several rounds of changes, lands toward the higher end.
That range holds up well against the alternative most teams are actually comparing it to: a developer’s day rate, or a SaaS subscription that renews whether or not it fits. For related reading on what these builds look like in practice, see Five Internal Tools You Can Ship with AI in an Afternoon, which walks through five examples with their own cost anchors.
Remy build cost vs. the alternatives
| Remy build | Contract developer | No-code/SaaS subscription | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | $100–$500 in tokens (one time, per build) | A day rate, typically several hundred to over a thousand dollars per day | Often $0 setup, but recurring fees start immediately |
| Ongoing cost | $99/mo flat platform fee (unlimited projects), required to keep apps hosted and live | Hourly/day rate for every change requested | Monthly or annual subscription that renews indefinitely |
| What you own after | Standard TypeScript in a git repo you own — portable even if you ever stop paying the platform fee | Code, if the contract specifies you keep it | Nothing — the tool stops working the day you cancel |
| Time to first version | Well under a day | Days to weeks, depending on scope and availability | Immediate, but configuration-limited to what the platform supports |
| Cost to add a feature later | More tokens, no new contract | New hours billed | Often capped by the plan tier, or requires an upgrade |
Everyone else built a construction worker.
We built the contractor.
One file at a time.
UI, API, database, deploy.
The repo is the actual differentiator here, not a claim of free hosting forever: if the $99/month subscription lapses, the hosted version of an app stops running the same way any hosted product would, but the codebase itself is standard TypeScript already in a git repo you control. You can take it to any other host. That’s different from a no-code tool, where cancelling doesn’t leave you with anything portable at all.
The subscription-cost comparison on Remy’s own homepage puts a finer point on the SaaS side of this: a 200-person company running a typical stack of SaaS line items — a CRM, a support desk, project management, analytics, and so on — pays roughly $35,000 a month once all the tools are added up. A single internal tool built on Remy replaces one of those line items for a token cost per build plus one flat platform fee, not a new per-tool recurring bill.
Is Building With Remy Cheaper Than Hiring a Developer?
For the workload Remy targets — internal tools, approval workflows, dashboards, vertical SaaS-shaped apps — yes, and by a wide margin on the upfront cost. A contract developer’s day rate alone often exceeds the total token cost of an entire Remy build, before any hours are billed for revisions, testing, or deployment setup.
The comparison isn’t really “AI vs. developer” though — it’s spec-driven compilation vs. hourly billing. A developer bills for time regardless of how the requirements evolve mid-project. Remy compiles from a spec, and when the spec changes, the cost is more tokens for a recompile, not a renegotiated scope of work. For more on how that spec-first approach differs from a coding agent editing a codebase by hand, see Product Agent vs Coding Agent: The Category Is Splitting in Two.
There’s one workload where a developer is still the right call: novel algorithmic work, or deep integration with an existing, idiosyncratic system that a spec can’t fully describe up front. That’s not the job Remy is built for. For turning a plain-language brief into a deployed, working full-stack app — the case that covers the overwhelming majority of internal tools, dashboards, and vertical SaaS products — Remy is faster and dramatically cheaper, and the decision to build instead of buy stops being a budget conversation.
Why Does the Cost Stay So Low for a Full-Stack Build?
Two things keep the number small relative to what a full-stack app used to cost to build by hand.
First, tokens are billed at the provider’s rate, with no markup. When a model’s price drops, the cost of the next build drops with it, automatically — no new plan, no renegotiation. That’s a direct pass-through, not a subsidized allowance capped by a subscription tier.
Second, most builds finish in well under a day. Less compute time per build means fewer tokens consumed per build. The speed and the cost are the same underlying fact, described two ways.
Seven tools to build an app. Or just Remy.
Editor, preview, AI agents, deploy — all in one tab. Nothing to install.
This is also why comparing Remy’s per-build token cost to a coding agent’s per-diff token cost is the wrong comparison to make in the first place. Cursor and Claude Code are built to make a targeted edit to a codebase that already exists — a different category of work, priced per diff against an existing repo. Remy is built to compile a new backend, database, auth layer, and frontend together from a spec and deploy them as one app. These aren’t sequential steps in the same build, and pricing them against each other in the same project doesn’t make sense: pick the tool for the workload in front of you, not both for the same job.
What Does the $99/Month Actually Pay For?
The token cost gets a build to a deployed app. The $99/month platform fee is what keeps that app running afterward: hosting, the database, authentication, monitoring, and everything else the app needs to stay live in production. It’s flat and unmetered — building five apps costs the same platform fee as building one — but it is a real, ongoing cost of total ownership, not something the token price already covers.
That matters for the cost comparison against SaaS: a subscription tool charges more as you add seats or usage. A Remy subscription doesn’t move based on how many apps have shipped or how much traffic they get. The variable cost is entirely in tokens, and tokens are only spent while you’re actively building or changing something — not while the app just sits there running. The flat fee is what keeps it running at all.
Attribute List: What’s Included in the Cost of a Build
- Full-stack compilation — backend, database, authentication, and frontend generated together from one spec, not billed as separate line items.
- A full team of specialist agents — Coding, Design, Roadmap, QA, Architecture, and Research sub-agents working the build, included in the flat rate.
- Deployment and hosting — hit Publish and get a live URL the moment the build finishes, with versioned releases and instant rollback, at no separate token cost.
- Ongoing monitoring — error tracking, performance metrics, and usage analytics included in the $99/month rate after the app ships.
- Access across model providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others, billed per token at provider rates with no markup layered on top.
FAQ
How much does it cost to build an app with Remy? A typical project runs $100 to $500 in AI tokens from idea to deployed app, plus a flat $99/month (or $79/month annual) platform subscription that covers hosting, database, and monitoring for everything built on the account.
Is the token cost a subscription or a one-time charge? Tokens are a one-time cost per build or per change — you fund a balance or connect your own provider keys, and spend only when Remy is actively compiling or updating the app. The $99/month platform fee is separate and recurring; it’s what keeps the finished app hosted and live.
Does the cost go up if more people use the app after it ships? No. The $99/month platform fee is flat regardless of usage or number of apps. Token costs are only incurred while building or modifying an app, not from ongoing end-user traffic.
Is building with Remy cheaper than hiring a developer? For internal tools and full-stack apps built from a spec, yes: the upfront token cost is typically far below a single day of a contract developer’s billable rate, with no per-hour billing for changes afterward. A developer still wins on novel algorithmic work or deep integration with an idiosyncratic existing system — that’s a different job than compiling an app from a spec.
Built like a system. Not vibe-coded.
Remy manages the project — every layer architected, not stitched together at the last second.
What happens to the cost if AI model prices drop? Builds get cheaper automatically. Tokens are billed at the model provider’s current rate with no markup, so price drops pass straight through to the next build.
Can I use my own API keys instead of paying Remy for tokens? Yes. Connecting an Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google account bills you directly at their rates, and Remy never touches that money.
Does the $500 upper end include revisions and QA, or just the first version? It reflects the full build process, including the QA sub-agent’s testing passes, not just an initial draft. More complex apps or more rounds of changes trend toward the higher end of the range.
Is there a cheaper way to build a simple internal tool? A smaller, single-workflow tool (an approval queue, a status tracker) typically lands toward the low end of the $100–$500 range, since less gets compiled and tested.
What happens to an app if I stop paying the $99/month platform fee? The hosted version stops running, the same as any hosted app would if hosting lapsed. What’s different is that the code itself — standard TypeScript in a git repo you already own — is portable, so you can redeploy it on another host rather than losing it entirely.
How does Remy stay useful as AI models improve? The spec is the source of truth — recompile it against a newer model and the app upgrades, without a manual rewrite of the codebase.
The Bottom Line
The cost of a Remy build isn’t a pricing gimmick — it’s a direct pass-through of what the compile actually took in tokens, plus a flat, recurring fee for the infrastructure the app runs on afterward. That combination puts a full-stack app within reach of a budget that used to only cover a few hours of contract engineering time, or a fraction of a year’s SaaS renewal — but it’s worth being precise about which part is one-time and which part isn’t: the token spend is per build, the platform fee keeps the lights on.
Remy builds and runs the software a team would otherwise rent. Describe what you need, and it ships as standard TypeScript in a git repo you own.
Tools like Lovable and Bolt are prompt-driven code generators — you describe what you want, and they emit code from that conversation for you to keep iterating on by hand. Remy is spec-driven compilation: the spec stays the source of truth, and the full stack — backend, database, auth, and frontend — is compiled output, not a chat transcript turned into files. That’s a structural difference in how the two approaches work, not a checklist of missing features, and it holds regardless of what either tool ships next. See Remy vs Lovable: Only One Ships a Native Full Stack and Remy vs Bolt: Only One Hands You the Blueprint for the full comparison.
