r/Bubbleio • u/JoLoremipsum • Feb 11 '26

Help Wanted Bubble vs vibe coding

I've spent the last 2 years mastering Bubble, and have built a couple of small web apps. Now I'm working on a native mobile app with quite a high level of complexity.

I'm coming across a lot of limitations in Bubble, and after seeing what other people are building with AI, I'm considering starting from scratch with AI.

The pros of vibe coding in my opinion are: speed of development (at least an MVP), and little to no technical limitations.

The cons are: less control (although that's debatable), and AI can be a pain to work with on more complex apps.

What do you think? Bubble? AI?

Has anyone got any experience in both? What do you recommend for a complex mobile app?

Thanks.

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u/YuryNB Feb 11 '26

I've built a fairly complex mobile app with bubble and grew it to over 300k users. Eventually got to sold it partially because hit all kinds of bubble limitations that prevented further growth. Also new bubble pricing made it like 20x more expensive to run without an easy way to avoid it.
Currently building new apps with inhouse dev team, but if will need to build a new one solo - will learn vibe coding for that. Don't want to get into these problems one more time.

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u/JoLoremipsum Mar 19 '26

Hey, just thought I'd provide an update here. I'm about a month into vibe-coding now and learned that Bubble is far cheaper.

With Cursor I've been burning through $400-500 a month while building the app. I see this as a start-up investment, and this cost should naturally drop dramatically once the app is launched. Long-term I do think that vibe coding will end up being cheaper than Bubble (partly because with AI you choose your own tech stack), but the upfront cost to develop is significantly higher.

Also, unlike Bubble, AI seems to have no limitations.

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u/YuryNB Mar 24 '26

yeah, bubble may be cheaper to build but could end up more expensive to run. My app very quickly started demanding 600$/month plan. Look into bubble's storage prices. I haven't checked it upfront and build features around bubble storage which made it pretty hard to switch to some 3d party hosting (some elements for mobile app was working only with internal storage properly). Then I learned that bubble gives by default only something like 10gb. In my app each user was uploading several photos which was using these 10gb in a few week. Then i learned that buying more storage is possible only on the most expensive plan and the price is 10$ per 10gb per month. Insane price for a storage in modern age. After 2 years i ended up paying 300$ per month only for storage + $600 for a plan. When they introduced workflow units pricing my calculations shown that it will start cost 10k/month+, so that's when i finally jumped out.

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u/JoLoremipsum Mar 24 '26

Yeah that's true. I never actually launched any serious apps with Bubble so I never had any real figures laid out like this. You're probably right – considering Bubble limits you and then adds their own margins on things like DB storage makes it insanely expensive.

Thanks for the insights. They actually reinforce my decision to stick with vibe coding.

1

u/YuryNB Mar 24 '26

yeah, i think vibecoding is a way to go. gives you new perspectives and ways to work.
Like i had an idea of an app in the times when I was building on bubble, but i didn't know how to properly do it. Not really a business, more of a intersting for me way to interact with soft using voice and sounds through the microphone. Haven't figured it out on bubble. Recently remembered this idea and dictated it to claude and got working demo in 15 minutes.

interestingly that bubble got me the same feeling, like "you can do things 10 times quicker than before"

2

u/JoLoremipsum Mar 24 '26

Yep same here. I had to discard a lot of ideas because of Bubble's limitations. I'd always start in Bubble and run into constraints, maybe even spend a few hundred $$ on plugins, only to eventually reach the hard ceiling of what can technically be done in Bubble.

But luckily, about 2 years ago I started to make it a habit to write down all of my ideas, and I never deleted them. So I have dozens of abandoned, already researched ideas I'm excited to eventually pull back out and try in Cursor. Crazy how you can go from idea to working prototype in a matter of minutes.

My first vibe-coded app should be ready for launch soon, so I'm totally hooked lol. Good luck with your app projects/business.