I Ranked Every Vibe Coding App (Cursor vs Claude Code vs Lovable)

0:00Micky, by the end of this episode, what are we going to learn? We're going to know what's the best, what's the worst, what to use, what not to use. And this is just our non-professional professional opinion. Okay, so this is the definitive guide to vibe coding apps, right? Yes. This is the ultimate tier list. And if this offends you, I apologize in advance.

0:27okay any disclosures are you involved in any of these companies um wait to the end i'm actually no i'm not an investor in any um i do have a bias but i'll explain later the bias as we go on sounds good i invested in bolt in the last round actually funny story i had the opportunity to invest in lovable we both did yeah but they hit me at a time where it's like i never had done i still haven't but like i was like i don't know what this is vibe coding and then yeah they raised what some hundred billion at a six billion two billion dollar valuation so crazy yeah you win some you lose some all right so let's get into it okay so lovable v0 bolt cloud code cursor codex windsurf vibe code rork let's just hit right out the hip what's d tier i mean i see i see you touching winds okay so i don't think windsurf is d tier in terms of like tech but with what happened with the team and like the founder sort of dipping and then devin came scooped them up it's one of those where like i'm sure the text good but like is there any trust anymore and i know two guys who work at windsurf awesome dudes but i probably would never use windsurf ever again and respectfully in the kindness of fashion i would put a d tier by the way all these tools are amazing yeah they're great they do you know like again this is our non-professional professional opinion right i just personally wouldn't use windsurf uh simply for the fact that like again you know you you're sort of trusting the team behind said tool you're building with right and when i mean you're a founder like imagine just upping and leaving like the type of confidence that instills with your users investors and all that type of stuff so yeah i would respectfully um put windsurf at d tier it's also very technical yes yes so and that's one thing too right we have this chart here and I would put windsurf at a very technical like you would have to be a technical person to get the best out of it now you have people who like riley and others who are you know using these technical tools but if you speak to the team at windsurf or even cursor they'll tell you yeah we're building for developers right their focus is developers I actually spoke to someone who works at cursor and I told him like you know a lot of like non-technical people are using your tool so is that like changing how you guys build and like is that like sort of you know affecting your decisions and he straight up was like no he's like we're building for developers he's like it's cool to see non-developers use it but the main demographic is developers and from a team perspective and a business perspective it makes sense right so you could do it but i just wouldn't use windsurf so i put a d tier okay so you're you're putting a d tier just because of the sort of how it played out yeah like realistically i would maybe it would be between an a and a b for me right because i used to i used winster for a bit it was pretty cool um and i if based on how it was back then if i were to rate it it'd be between a and a b okay so but with all the business stuff putting it yeah i'm putting it in a d just because it's pretty complicated okay yeah well then let's talk about another complicated tool cursor okay i mean to me okay i'll do this one To me, I'm going to give it, it's either A tier or S tier for me.

3:59Well, so first let's define it on the chart. It's definitely like you have to be technical to use it, right? Like being able to even open it up and fork a repo, NPM run, NPM install. Like these are like, I don't expect a non-technical person to use it, but you know, if there's a will, there's a way and I've seen people use it. So I agree. if you are a vibe coder and non-technical person you're going to experience pain true but what i will say about cursor versus windsurf there's a lot more tutorials on cursor so and and and that's one thing like so in a bigger community around cursor fair and and and i'll give you an example in like the web dev world like there are people who are pro next js and anti next js and one of the biggest pros to Next.js, you know, people can argue technicalities is the community, right?

4:55Especially even with React, like let's go one level down, React. There are people who love React, who hate React. And the reason React's one is because the community is so huge, right? So there's a lot of support. There's a lot of documentation. There are a lot of external packages. That's why you go to any of these tools and you ask it, make me a website. It's going to use React, right? Even the LLMs have picked it, right? So I think that matters. And for the audience's sake, I'll give Cursor an A tier. I can agree with that. But to me, this is like S++. Okay, cool. Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong.

5:34I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So that's exactly why I built idea browser dot com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox. And it's all backed by high quality data trends. How we do it. People always ask. We use AI agents to go and search. What are people looking for? And what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building?

6:11And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chat GBT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, ideabrowser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it. What's next? Lovable.

6:37lovable cloud lovable ai so i will so explain what that is because not everyone yeah so basically the the pain point with lovable and bolt was really the integrations right you would need a back end and it was really difficult right you had to sign up and then you had to connect and copy api keys again these are trivial things to a developer to a non-developer this is a headache and what they've done from my understanding is they've abstracted all this stuff away so the moment you boot up a lovable project i'm assuming they call apis and they fetch all that information for you which makes it easier but i still have found people running to the cloud codes and the codexes and the cursor so i will give lovable a b how do you feel um i i understand why you're giving it a b you know because you look at it from an engineering perspective and you're probably like well if i'm gonna go and create a product you know yeah maybe lovable something i can get you know get going a pretty page but um i mean from a prototyping perspective if you know i'll give you this i think v0 is better than lovable why do you say that um versell's marketplace like their integrations it gives you plethora of options right so with for with lovable for example they've sort of picked what back end you're going to use it's super based right and there's pros and cons to that like the depending on the type of apps you're going to build there's pros and cons to it with versell you have all the type all different types of uh what you might call it backends and here's where the bias comes in convicts is going to be on the versell marketplace soon and i think convicts is the best market best back end and the reason why there's biases because i work there now just full disclosure because people are going to be like oh he's talking about it because he works there well i started working there because i like the product homie didn't look at the camera once until he started saying convicts said the word comics and he was like convicts because comics is the number one.

8:47Yeah, I'm PR trained. But I personally think, and I've, for example, I had my wedding not too long ago and I tried using all the AI tools to build like our RSVP site. And at some point, all of them bricked except V0. So even if I were just to like vibe code and just go through it, I personally think out of the V0 bolt and lovable, I would pick V0. There's also templates and components that you can reuse with v0. Yes, yes. And just like the integration with Vercel, it's one of those things too where I know this probably doesn't matter to a tier list, but I also sort of think about like the future of the tool we're using.

9:33And it's like, it seems like Vercel and v0 are going to be very tight knit. And that's like a bet I'm willing to make if I'm building a product that I want users to use. so are you giving v0s tier is that what i'm hearing if i was a vibe vibe coder like let's say i did not know how to write code i would maybe right there i don't i don't think i'd give it like can we do an in-between okay so i'll do it in between and this is definitely non uh technical friendly lovable of course is here as well you sort of disagreed with lovable being a b tier so we're no no do you think it's a i can give you like an a between b that's what i think it really is okay i'll give you an a between b that's what i think it is bolt i i i would put them on par with lovable yeah okay yeah fair see not a biased investor i respect that um roark i personally haven't used roark so i will trust your judgment i know they do mobile apps right so there's this new class of vibe coding apps for literal mobile apps and that's VibeCodeApp by Riley, our friend Riley and Rourke I haven't played with both of them extensively but played with them enough to know that VibeCodeApp is it really is the lovable for mobile apps I find the actually there's also anything Yes, I have seen anything.

11:07I maybe did one prompt and then I stopped just because I don't really do a lot of mobile app stuff. But I have realized that even at Convex, there's a lot of these mobile app vibe coding platforms that are popping up. So this seems to be the new thing. And for a reason, right? I think that there's a lot of opportunity to make money building apps. So you think mobile app, like if I wanted to, let's say I wanted to launch a consumer product. You think mobile is better than web? I don't think it's better. I think it depends what you're building. I just think that right now there's just a lot of, you're seeing the Cal AIs of the world making millions of dollars a month with relatively simple apps with AI baked in.

11:54So I think that there's going to be a lot of people who want to build something similar in different niches. And that's why I think that right now I'm actually coming up with a lot of mobile app ideas. And that's why. Yeah. You see, maybe I'm just thinking too, like I'm too much in my developer mind. But to me, it feels like downloading an app feels like too much commitment for me. Like I would really need a reason to download an app. But it seems like people are just downloading apps. Like they'll watch a TikTok video and they're like, yeah, I want to check this out. So am I wrong? Or is like why the push for apps?

12:27Because everyone's doing an app now, a consumer app. um i think uh i'm the same way to be honest like it to me just feels like a lot of commitment yeah it is a commitment it is a commitment but like if you are suffering from back pain and you're on tiktok and you searched you know back pain for tall people and then you see this ad that is just hey are you tall and so as a matter of fact i'm six foot three um you know well we have this ai that helps you like reduce back pain by 35 percent in this you know we become your back pain coach you know do you want to download this and it gets me at that moment i might i might make sense i might download it and i i find that and like observing my wife has helped me realize social trends people use tiktok like a search engine yes so that that makes sense So where do we put VibeCode, Rourke, anything, if you've used anything?

13:27I think we can put them right below Lovable and Bolt. So B-tier, solid. B-tier, solid. I think that you can use any of those. And maybe one of them is slightly better on the day or slightly worse on the day. But I think that what's going to happen, I think, is those are, it's so relatively new. I think Rourke launched a couple months ago. I also remembered another one. My boy Seth is a zero, which is a mobile app one as well. So yeah, I think to your point, I haven't tested any of them one to give a definitive opinion, but they're all fairly new and it's exciting stuff. And I'm sure they have free tier, so max it out.

14:13I think they're going to get better too over time, right? Do you know, are they all built on Expo? Yes. I think from my understanding, I know Rourke is. I'm pretty sure they are. It would be foolish for them to not be because you would want your app to be on both Android and, you know, App Store. And if you're doing a Swift app, then you're going to have to do the Google Play version. And that's two different code bases. So it would make sense for them to use Expo. And again, the ecosystem is growing. React is growing. There's a lot of money behind it. So I would think that they're all built on X-File.

14:50Cool. So that, and here's the funny part. All these guys are probably using the same model underneath the hood. It's either going to be Claude or it's going to be Codex, which is gaining a lot of hype. I'm interested to hear what you think about Codex. I mean, you're the front end developer. Little higher. Little higher, yes. So I seen a lot of hype with GPT-5's Codex model. And I used it in cursor. It was okay. Like it was pretty good. But I still think Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the best coding model right now. So I would put Codex like right below cursor, but above lovable and bolt. And for non-technical people, like should they be using Codex?

15:40Yes, Codex does have like a web version. I would put it like somewhere around here. And there's, to your point to like a cursor, there are a lot of videos on Codex because they seem to have gone both developer and non-developer attention. You can use like OpenAI's web-based cloud platform to run Codex. So I would put it like somewhere around here. Yeah. I still think there's a little feat, like there's a little difficulty to it if you're non-technical, but where there's a will, there's a way. My take on Codex is it's a bit, yeah, it's a little worse than Cursor, but it gains like the most improved award.

16:20Yes, 100%, because it sucked in the beginning. It really did. And like now people are comparing it to Claude, like Claude Coates. So they've definitely, Sam's cooking. Sam's cooking, and I wouldn't bet against them. No, no, they have trillions of dollars or whatever, but billions. Well, it's important, right? Because if you're going to pick something, you 100 % right. You don't want to be windsurfed.

16:45I'm not mean. I swear. I'm actually a nice guy. Yeah. It's good, but I couldn't help it. Claude code. Okay. All right. What do you think? I think cursor's king, man. Wow. Claude code got nerfed. Claude code recently has got nerfed. Yes. like if this was four weeks ago it'd be like this like cloud code would be above s tier but like now like i don't know what's happening like i rather like it'll use the same model cloud sonic 4.5 i'll get better results with it on cursor than with on cloud code and the reason being is a lot of people think like oh if they're using the same model it's the same output but really the difference maker is like, yes, everyone's using the same model, but then you build the agent on top.

17:36And basically what that means is like when you tell, when you prompt, hey, fix this error, right? The LLM doesn't have the power to read a file. You have to give it a tool that gives it the ability to read a file. And then it reads that code and then it gives you the output. And now you have to give it a tool to write that code, right? So it seems to me cursor's agent, which is built on top of cloud code that gives it the ability to read, write, edit, and all that type of stuff might actually be better than cloud code, cloud code, right? So I think this is going to be a tug of war, right? Like where cloud code will be better at one point, then cursor, then cloud code, then cursor, right?

18:15But as a non-technical person, if I would be frank, if I was a non-technical person cursor would be here cloud code would be here and this would be the tier list we're missing one one company here oh replet are you an investor in rep no i'm not an investor okay i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a serious question i don't know anyone who's used replet but they're winning i'm not even trying to be funny yeah like i actually don't know a single soul who's used replit the one time i used replit was back when i like this is like three years ago four years ago yeah and i needed to run some sort of like file some python script yeah so who uses replit i mean i know two people who use okay so they're winning then okay makes sense yeah i don't know where i'd put replit i've never built anything fully with it people seem to love it they raise the bajillion dollars as well um so i'll trust your discretion i mean they've i from what i understand they have two modes with replet so they have like your vibe code mode and then they have agent mode so you prompt it and it takes like 15 or 20 minutes and it goes and builds your app instead of one minute or two minutes which is cool um so they built their own agent are they using like their own model like are they developing their own models or i'm not sure like if they're developing their own models it's hard to like say right um but i have seen you know my friend billy howell actually uh talks a lot about replet and i've seen some of the output on it and it's pretty impressive so you're giving it an a i'm giving it i'm putting it like lovable replet yeah so okay So this is fair.

20:12So we have V0 close to, in my opinion, maybe a little in the A tier. But like if I was a vibe coder, I'd go for V0, Codex, Lovable Bolt. Actually, can I add one more? Yeah. Have you heard of Chef? No. Chef was actually built by Convex. But what's funny is the reason Chef was built and we built Chef was to show vibe coding platforms that if you use Convex as your backend, it's better. So we didn't build it to compete. One or two people worked on Chef and it's actually pretty good. Like off rip you'll get, and I won't, cause people will be like, oh, you're being biased. So I won't even show, you could check it out, it's free.

20:53So Chef isn't meant to compete, but it was more so of a showcase for tools to use Convex as their backend. And a lot of the new tools, like you have Vlai, you have Bloom, like a lot of the new vibe coding platforms are all built on Convex cause they saw this And they're like, oh, and we open source the repo to anyone can fork and build a vibe coding platform. And I non-bias would put Chef along these lines. The only thing is, again, we're not trying to compete. So at some point, these tools would get better. Like, for example, I don't think there's a way for you to assign a domain on Chef. Right.

21:29So wasn't meant to impress users, but more so developers who are building these tools. but yeah I think I'm I'm pretty happy with this list okay so just to wrap this up what advice do you have for non-technical people and technical people if they're trying to choose a vibe coding platform yeah so if you're technical then man it's like cursor or cloud code like there's there's no other option in my opinion and that's simply because you're probably going to be steering the wheel anyway. So you're not going to be vibe, vibe coding. I know there's like, uh, open code by my uncle Dax. Um, I haven't used it.

22:10Sorry, Unc. I should, uh, I hear a lot of developers talk, uh, you know, highly of it. So like, you're probably using one of these tools and you're probably steering the ship, right? So no advice to you, just do what you're supposed to do now to non-technical people, I think there has to be, I've noticed after last couple months with all the new tools and all that stuff happening, there has to be a mindset shift. And the mindset shift is a lot of people get frustrated if in five prompts, they don't build something. And it's like, respectfully, the audacity to think you're going to build software that's fully functional, that people are going to use and care about.

22:49Borderline pay you money. I don't want to crash out and you think you could do it in five six prompts when you know it takes time it takes planning it takes testing there's alpha there's beta then there's a final version and then like software is art and you know thank the lord that there are tools that allow the non-technical person to build stuff but we need audacity we we need to treat it with care um your first version doesn't work you used you know you used lovable and it broke okay so what you use another tool and try again. Right. I think there needs to be a shift in understanding that software is difficult.

23:27Websites are easy. You know, landing pages are easy, but software is difficult, especially ones people actually pay for. Right. So when we enter this mindset, we're like, okay, I'm going to build something. It's going to be awesome. It's going to take me time because I'm going to make it awesome. Then we'll be okay. But I'll see people like, yeah, I prompted 10 times and it broke. Welcome to software development. So that's the one thing I would see. Like there are a lot of cool tutorials. I mean, you bring up a lot of awesome people that show people like the mindset, you know, planning. Cursor has this one thing called plan mode, which is pretty awesome.

24:03And all that stuff is great. And there are even tools that allow you to plan now. And, you know, ChadGBT5 is great if you want to like just go back and forth and brainstorm. it's more about mindset now a lot of non-technical people fail to realize that it really takes time to build something else it's like building a business right or if you're a gym bro it's like going to the gym you know great things take time they take patient take calculation there's mistakes mistakes lead to experience experience leads to you being a better builder so take time and enjoy the ride there you go well said i want to say one last thing to end uh my recommendation to people is actually to follow all the founders of these businesses.

24:43So VZero, Guillermo, Codex, Sam Altman, Lovable, Anton, Bolt is Eric Simons, Replit, Amjad, et cetera, et cetera. Follow them and then see who you believe in. Like if you really connect with Eric, if you really connect with Amjad, if you really connect with Sam Altman, like then pick that platform. Facts. Because you are betting on someone. You're betting on someone. betting on a company, right? And this is why, again, like people who bet on windsurf got windsurfed. Yeah. God bless him. All right, that's the episode. Mickey, thanks for coming on. Greg, I appreciate you, man. It's been a fun year.

25:23It's been a fun year. You've had a busy year. I'm going to include links to follow you. I know you're getting to 100 ,000 subscribers on YouTube. We're trying. We're trying. We'll include that there and see you next time. Appreciate you, bro. Thank you again. later.