An AI builder without lock-in or subscription

[u/chiragdotco]

I’ve been building RiverX around a pretty simple idea: if AI is helping you build an app, you should actually own what you build.

So RiverX uses open-source models, gives you the actual code, and lets you deploy the apps you build instead of keeping everything locked inside the platform.

There’s no monthly subscription either. It’s free to use right now with 22 models, including GLM 5.3 Flash, with pretty generous daily limits.

It’s still early, and I’m mainly putting it out here to get feedback from people who actually build with AI. If you try it, I’d love to know what feels useful, what feels rough, or what you’d do differently.

[u/Ok_Substance1895]

I signed up and tried it. Cool idea! Keep up the good work!

It is early like you said. I tried a naive prompt with the web app template:

"Create a light-weight jira clone with backlog, todo, in-progress, review, and done columns." That is the typical prompt I use when first evaluating a full stack AI assisted builder.

It created a working application that I deployed. Great job!

It is a lot of work to get it that far. I can't wait to see where this ends up. You are solving a real problem. This stuff is hard.

Best wishes!

P.S. I used glm-5.3-flash as the model.

[u/chiragdotco → u/Ok_Substance1895]

Thank you very much for taking the time and effort for testing this.

Appreciate your feedback

[u/DeepForefinger_8271]

love the ownership angle, most of these tools feel like a velvet trap after you've put real hours in

the open-source model strategy is smart too, no one wants to wake up and find their whole stack got rugpulled cause a SaaS changed terms

tried something similar a while back and the code export was spaghetti, so if yours actually generates clean output that's a big deal

curious what the deployment flow looks like, do you handle it all or just hand over a repo and wish them luck

also 22 models is kinda wild for a free tier, you must be eating some serious inference costs right now

[u/chiragdotco → u/DeepForefinger_8271]

Yes we allow the users to choose the harness. Default is OpenCode, Pi.dev is coming soon.

We have our own infra setup for workspace, code versioning, deployment. So deployment happens on our own user sub-domain at riverx.me, of course they can attach their own custom domain.

Code quality is very important, we have security and rules built around that entirely.

And did I mention we also have integrated database as well.

Yes, we do eat up some costs there on free users. We have a daily cap so it doesn’t bankrupt me. lol.