Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the vibe coding bill
Day 7 of vibe coding, and let me be clear on one thing: Replit is the most addictive app I’ve ever used. At least since being a kid.
Last night I was thinking about vibe coding in the middle of the night. I checked on my app on my phone at dinner. And while I opened up the WSJ first this morning, my brain would have preferred Replit. I’ve dropped tons of other things to make more time to be with Replit.
Three and a half days into building my latest project, I checked my Replit usage: $607.70 in additional charges beyond my $25/month Core plan. And another $200+ yesterday alone. At this burn rate, I’ll likely be spending $8,000 month.
And you know what? I’m not even mad about it. I’m locked in.
But my goal here isn’t to play around. It’s to go from idea and ideation to a commerical-grade production app, all 100% inside Replit, without a developer or any other tools. Is this pushing the limits of vibe coding? Yes. I’m 50/50 on if I’ll get there.
If you are just playing with Replit or Loveable etc., then the base price of $20-$25 a month if all you’ll likely need to pay. But if you want to use it all day, and you turn on the max modes (Claude Sonnet 4 + extending thinking, then you’ll pay roughly $1 a minute. Maybe a bit more.
The Progression from “Just Testing” to Something Incredible
We’ve all been there. You have a brilliant idea at 2 AM, fire up Replit, and start chatting with Claude 4 to build your next unicorn startup. “Just a quick prototype,” you tell yourself.
But here’s my actual goal: Go from ideation to a 100% commercial-quality app entirely inside Replit. No hiring developers. No coding it myself. Just vibe coding with AI until I have something I can actually sell.
In that context, $8,000/month isn’t financial ruin – it’s a bargain.
Here’s how it actually goes:
Stage 1: Play With Some Ideas
- ⏱️ 20 minutes
- 🔄 4 actions
- including in monthly pricing
“Oh this is cheap! AI development is the future!”
You’re just exploring, maybe asking Claude to explain a concept or write a simple function. The costs are minimal, the dopamine is high.
Stage 2: Turn on Max Mode, Getting Serious
- ⏱️ 2 minutes
- 🔄 5 actions
- 📄 192 lines, 8 files
- 💰 $2.45
Now you’re structuring a real project. Multiple files, proper architecture. The line count might be lower per file, but you’re building something substantial. Costs are climbing but still reasonable.
Stage 3: Production Reality
- ⏱️ 2 minutes
- 🔄 12 actions
- 📄 205 lines, 8 files
- 💰 $1.93
- 🧠 Extended thinking + High power model
The cost went down in stage 3? That’s the misleading part – this session was shorter and more focused. But notice those tags: “Extended thinking” and “High power model.” You’re now using Claude at maximum capacity for complex architectural decisions.
Stage 4: My Current Reality
- 📅 First 3.5 days into project
- 💰 $607.70 in additional usage
- 📊 $173/day burn rate
- 🎯 $8,000/month trajectory
No usage alerts. No budget set. Just pure, unfiltered AI-assisted development at industrial scale.
The Math That Should Excite You (Not Terrify You)
At my current pace, here’s what a commercial-quality app built entirely in Replit looks like:
My Development Phases & Spending
Planning & Architecture (Days 1-5)
- Current reality: $865 (3.5 days = $607, extrapolated)
- Heavy Claude usage for every architectural decision
Core Development (Days 6-18)
- Projected: $2,250
- This is where the real money gets spent – complex features, debugging sessions, iterations
Integration & Testing (Days 19-25)
- Projected: $1,400
- Debugging integration issues with extended thinking sessions
Polish & Deployment (Days 26-30)
- Projected: $900
- Even “light” usage adds up at this scale
Total projected cost: $5,415
But let’s be honest – I’m probably hitting closer to $8,000 because I’m attempting something that pushes the limits:
- Building a commercial-quality app without traditional development
- Learning new frameworks through AI conversation
- Iterating constantly to reach true commercial standards
- Using Claude for literally every aspect of the build
This isn’t just prototyping – it’s proving that ideation-to-commercial-app can happen entirely through vibe coding.
The Question That Keeps Me Up at Night (For Real)
Will I get there? Will I go from ideation to a 100% commercial-quality app all inside a vibe coding app? Without hiring a dev, coding myself, etc.?
I don’t know. I give it a 50/50 shot right now. But I am… addicted. I need the hit.
In fact, I’m a totally different person than I was a week ago. Harry Stebbings said he saw it when my responsiveness plummeted. I’m locked in.
The Future May Not Be Here, But If Not, It’s Close
Here’s the perspective that keeps me sleeping at night with my spend
Traditional approach for a commercial app:
- Hire development team: $50,000-150,000
- Timeline: 3-6 months
- Managing contractors, QA, deployment
- Doesn’t really work the way you wanted
- Still need technical co-founder or CTO
My ideation-to-commercial experiment:
- Timeline: 30-45 days
- Cost: $8,000-$10,000 (even worst case)
- Full control and understanding of every line
- Learning while building
- Can iterate and pivot instantly
If this works, it’s a 10x improvement in cost and speed.
The Hidden Costs Everyone Ignores
When you see that $607.70 charge for the first few days, you’re not just paying for compute. You’re paying for:
Compressed Learning Cycles
- Instead of spending weeks reading documentation
- Instead of trial-and-error debugging sessions
- Instead of architectural mistakes that cost days to fix
Premium Development Experience
- Instant code reviews and suggestions
- Architecture guidance from a AI
- Debugging partner that never gets tired
Opportunity Cost Mitigation
- Shipping in hours instead of days
- Getting to market faster — possibly. Possibly.
- Learning while building instead of building while learning
The Scenarios You Should Budget For
Based on my experience and others I’ve talked to, there are a lot of play apps you can build for the base $20-$25 a month. But you can’t go that far. For a real app, with real complexity, a rough budget per month:
Conservative ($1,200-2,000/month):
- Experienced developer
- Selective AI use
- Simple projects
Realistic ($2,000-4,000/month):
- Mixed experience level
- Balanced AI usage
- Standard web apps
Intensive ($4,000-8,000/month):
- Learning new tech stack
- Complex domain problems
- Iteration-heavy development
Extreme ($8,000+/month):
- AI-first development approach
- Prototype everything
- Build multiple projects simultaneously
Is this a lot more expensive that Claude / Claude Code itself? Yeah, it sure seems to be. You are paying a premium for the full vibe coding environment. If you can work without coding though, it’s probably worth it.
Pro Tips for Managing the Burn
- Set Usage Alerts on Day 1 – Don’t be hit with $607 in surprise charges.
- Set realistic daily budgets – $100-200/day for serious development
- Use cheaper models for simple tasks – Not everything needs Claude 4 Sonnet. It costs 7.5x as much.
- Batch complex questions – One big architectural discussion vs. 20 small ones
- Learn to prompt efficiently – Better prompts = fewer expensive iterations
- Know when to code manually, if you can – Some things are genuinely faster to write yourself
- Monitor your burn rate daily – $173/day compounds quickly
The Bottom Line
That first “$1.34” session can easily become a $4,000-$8,000 monthly habit. I just DM’d with a CTO that’s trying to do a similar project, he spend $4k in 2 weeks on Replit in max/max mode too.
But here’s the thing – when the alternative is $150,000 in development costs or 12 months of traditional development, that AI bill starts looking like the bargain of the century.
The speed and quality of AI-assisted development isn’t just transformative – it’s economically game-changing for non-technical resources small teams. I’m trying to build a production-grade applicationsat a pace that would have been impossible just 12 months ago.
Will I spend $8,000 this month on Replit? Probably. Will I ship a product that would have cost me $150,000 and 6-12 months to build traditionally? If I could even find anyone I trust to help me, and stick with it? That’s the experiment.
Just don’t be surprised when your “quick weekend project” costs more than your mortgage payment. But also don’t be surprised when you ship something incredible in record time.
Can you ‘roll-your-own’ HubSpot or Notion for $20-$25 a month? No chance. That’s a social media myth. At least for now.
The future is a little more expensive than it looks at first. Nut it’s also incredible.
Currently Day 7 of vibe coding a project that’s already cost me $607. Will I go from ideation to commercial-quality app entirely through AI? 50/50 shot. Follow along as I either build the next unicorn or go bankrupt trying. Probably both.
(P.S. – @lovable_dev is great too. We used it to build a core landing page. I’m not taking ‘sides’, but for this project, I chose Replit.)
