# Builder.ai Pricing: What It Cost and What to Use Instead > Builder.ai entered insolvency in May 2025. You cannot buy from it today. What builds cost, what stranded customers should check, and what to use instead. Source: https://llamapress.ai/builder-ai-pricing-what-it-cost-what-happened-and-what-to-use-instead | Updated: 2026-08-28 --- [LlamaPress Blog](https://llamapress.ai/blog) Builder.ai entered insolvency in May 2025. You cannot buy from it today. What builds cost, what stranded customers should check, and what to use instead. [Back to all articles](https://llamapress.ai/blog) ![Kody Kendall, AI and software engineer](https://llamapress-ai-image-uploads.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/jujc1ep8nuqrdiftdfer1ngp833u) Written by Kody Kendall AI & Software Engineer. Builds and ships AI coding agents every day as the founder of LlamaPress. Builder.ai priced each app build per feature through its Studio products. Each feature you picked from the catalog added a set amount to the quote. A simple app ran a few thousand dollars. A complex app reached six figures. But Builder.ai entered insolvency proceedings, a legal wind-down, on May 20, 2025. As of this writing, you cannot buy an app from Builder.ai. I build AI coding agents (software that writes code) for a living. I followed the Builder.ai collapse closely. This page covers three things. First, how Builder.ai pricing worked while the company operated. Second, what happened to the company and its customers, from the public record. Third, how to vet any AI development company now. ![Construction crane over an unfinished building, like the half-built apps Builder.ai customers were left with](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1764258777856-723351e71a17?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w4NTU2MDF8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHxjb25zdHJ1Y3Rpb24lMjBzaXRlJTIwYWJhbmRvbmVkJTIwdW5maW5pc2hlZCUyMGJ1aWxkaW5nJTIwcHJvamVjdHxlbnwwfHx8fDE3ODc4NzgxMTF8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080) Photo by [Juan Pablo](https://unsplash.com/@who0ne?utm_source=leonardo_rails_app&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/construction-crane-on-unfinished-building-under-blue-sky-yjBpfw9-r_o?utm_source=leonardo_rails_app&utm_medium=referral) ## How Builder.ai Pricing Worked Builder.ai sold app builds the way a deli sells sandwiches. You picked the parts and you saw a price. Its Studio products let you describe the app you wanted. Then you chose features from a catalog: a login screen, a payment flow, a chat function, a booking calendar. Each feature added a fixed amount. The quote showed a total price and a delivery timeline before you committed. The company also sold plans for hosting, maintenance, and updates on top of the build price. I will not quote exact plan prices here. The company is gone. Its price list also changed over the years. Simple apps with short feature lists were quoted in the low thousands of dollars. Complex builds with long feature lists climbed into five and six figures. The pitch was that AI assembled your app from prebuilt blocks. That promise was supposed to make the price lower and more predictable than an agency quote. The per-feature model had real appeal. I want to be fair about why. Traditional agency quotes are opaque. A fixed menu with a visible price per feature felt like progress. For many buyers, a Builder.ai quote was the first app quote they ever understood. The menu was never the problem. The problem sat behind the menu. ## What Happened to Builder.ai The company collapsed in the spring of 2025. The sequence below comes from public reporting. In February 2025, founder Sachin Dev Duggal stepped down as CEO. In May 2025, the lender Viola Credit seized about 37 million dollars from the company's accounts. That seizure triggered the crisis. On May 20, 2025, Builder.ai entered insolvency proceedings. Bankruptcy proceedings followed in the UK, the US, and India. Reporting at the time put unpaid cloud bills at roughly 85 million dollars to Amazon and about 30 million dollars to Microsoft. Years of allegations sat behind the collapse. The allegations said the company exaggerated its AI capabilities and misreported its financials. Investigations reported that roughly 700 human engineers did much of the work marketed as AI-built. Most of those engineers worked in India. Per that reporting, the AI did far less of the building than customers were told. The customers paid the real price. Hundreds of them had paid deposits and held half-built apps when the company went under. No vendor remained to finish the work or hand over what was done. I take no pleasure in that outcome. A collapse like Builder.ai's makes every honest builder's job harder. The next buyer walks in the door rightly suspicious. ## If You Were a Builder.ai Customer, Check These Three Things If you had a project in flight when Builder.ai entered insolvency proceedings, the practical questions matter more than the story. Check three things, in this order. ### 1. Do you have the code? Look for repository access the vendor granted you. Look for a code delivery named in your contract. Look for files your team downloaded during the project. If the source code exists anywhere you control, a new developer or an AI coding agent can usually continue the build. If the code only lived on the Builder.ai platform, assume you start over. Treat anything you recover as a bonus. ### 2. Was there an escrow or IP clause? Read your contract for two clauses: source code escrow and intellectual property (IP) assignment. Escrow means a neutral third party holds your code. An IP clause that assigns the code to you on payment strengthens your claim in the insolvency proceedings. If a third-party escrow agent held code for your project, contact the agent directly. Insolvency practitioners handle claims in a queue. File early, and file with your documents. ### 3. Can you get your data out? If your app was live and collected real records, the data may matter more than the code. Export everything you can reach: user lists, orders, uploaded files, database backups. Code can be rebuilt from a good description of the process. Two years of customer records cannot. ## The Checklist for Evaluating Any AI Dev Company After Builder.ai The collapse was painful. Still, the collapse produced one useful thing. There is now a short list of questions that would have flagged the risk early. Put these questions to any vendor, including us. - **Can I watch the AI actually work?** A real AI coding agent can build in front of you, live. Some vendors only show results days later. In that case you have no way to know who or what did the building. - **Does the code land in an account I control?** Builder.ai customers lacked exactly this protection. Make every commit land in your own GitHub account from week one. Then a failed vendor costs you a partner, and nothing else. - **Is the pricing public and legible?** Some quotes require a sales call before you see a number. Those quotes block comparison and hide the real model. - **What happens if I cancel?** Get the answer in writing. The right answer: you keep the code, the database, and the deployment. You can hand all three to anyone. - **Who are the humans?** Humans in the loop are good. I want engineers to review what an AI agent builds. You are checking for honesty about the split. A company that lies about the split will lie about the rest. ## Builder.ai vs LlamaPress, Honestly LlamaPress competes in the category Builder.ai left behind. Weigh what follows with that in mind. The comparison sets how Builder.ai operated, per the public record, against how we work today. Leonardo, our AI coding agent, builds your app while you watch in a live session. The starting spec is usually the spreadsheet that already runs your process. For that reason our main path is called [Excel to app](https://llamapress.ai/excel-to-app). The code is standard Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL. Every commit lands in your own GitHub account. We state a flat build price from our US-based team before the work starts. If you cancel, you keep the repository, the database, and the running app. The full service model is on our [services page](https://llamapress.ai/services). | | Builder.ai (as it operated) | LlamaPress today | | --- | --- | --- | | Who builds it | Marketed as AI assembly; investigations reported roughly 700 human engineers doing much of the work | Leonardo, an AI coding agent you can watch work live, with human engineers reviewing | | Pricing model | Per-feature quotes through Studio; a few thousand to six figures depending on feature count | Flat build price stated before the work starts, unmetered iteration | | Where the code lives | On the vendor's platform; hundreds of customers were left with unfinished projects in 2025 | In your own GitHub account, standard Rails plus PostgreSQL | | If the vendor disappears | Customers file claims in insolvency proceedings across the UK, US, and India | You already hold the repo, the database, and the deployment; any Rails developer can continue | | Starting spec | A feature catalog you assembled from a menu | The spreadsheet that already runs your business process | I wrote the same kind of honest breakdown for [Lovable](https://llamapress.ai/the-lovable-alternative-when-your-business-app-has-to-outlive-the-prototype) and for [Base44](https://llamapress.ai/the-base44-alternative-that-turns-your-spreadsheet-into-software-you-actually-own). Both tools are real and still operate. Each page spends as much time on what the tool does well as on where the tool stops fitting. Watch the Agent Build ### See the AI write your code, live. Leonardo builds your app in front of you. Every commit lands in your own GitHub account. You get a flat price before we start. You keep everything if you leave. [See how we build](https://llamapress.ai/services) [Describe your app](https://llamapress.ai/) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How much did Builder.ai cost? Builder.ai quoted per feature through its Studio products. Each feature you chose from the catalog added to the price. Simple apps ran a few thousand dollars and complex builds reached six figures. Exact plan prices changed over the years. The company entered insolvency in May 2025. No current price exists today. ### Is Builder.ai still in business? As of this writing, no. Builder.ai entered insolvency proceedings on May 20, 2025. A creditor had seized about 37 million dollars from the company's accounts. Bankruptcy proceedings followed in the UK, the US, and India. You cannot purchase new builds from Builder.ai today. ### Was Builder.ai really built by AI? Investigations reported that roughly 700 human engineers did much of the work marketed as AI-built. Most of those engineers were based in India. For years the company faced allegations that Builder.ai exaggerated its AI capabilities and misreported its financials. Human engineers doing the work is a legitimate model. The issue reporters raised was how Builder.ai described the work to customers and investors. ### What should Builder.ai customers do now? Check three things. First, find any source code you hold. Second, read your contract for an escrow or IP assignment clause you can act on in the insolvency proceedings. Third, export any live data your app still holds. Code and data you control can seed a rebuild with another developer or an AI coding agent. ### What is a good Builder.ai alternative? Pick a vendor that survives the failures Builder.ai created. Look for an AI agent you can watch work. Require code in your own GitHub account, a price stated before the build, and a written answer on cancellation. LlamaPress is built around those answers. Lovable and Base44 are worth evaluating for prototypes.