Bolt.new

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Bolt.new is an AI-powered, browser-based web development platform that lets you generate, edit, run, and deploy full-stack web applications using plain English prompts. It was created by the developer tooling company StackBlitz, which was co-founded in 2017 by CEO Eric Simons and CTO Albert Pai, and it pairs frontier large language models (primarily Anthropic's Claude family) with StackBlitz's proprietary WebContainers runtime. While traditional AI coding assistants only suggest snippets of text that you have to copy, paste, and debug on your own computer, Bolt.new gives an AI agent direct control over a complete Node.js environment, a live preview, a code editor, and, since late 2025, a managed backend for hosting, databases, and authentication. Beyond the core StackBlitz team, open-source contributors such as Cole Medin expanded the platform's footprint by launching bolt.diy, a community-driven variant that connects the same in-browser environment to many local and commercial model providers and is now hosted in StackBlitz's own GitHub organization.

The platform matters because it removes the steepest barrier in software creation: setting up and maintaining a local development environment. Think of traditional software development like cooking in a commercial kitchen where you have to install the plumbing, wire the stove, and inspect the gas lines before you can even crack an egg; Bolt.new hands you a fully stocked, preheated kitchen the second you open a web page. After seven years of building browser-native execution technology, StackBlitz was, in Simons's words, on the verge of going under when it launched Bolt.new on October 3, 2024. The product then grew to roughly $4 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within about a month, $20 million within about 60 days, and roughly $40 million by March 2025, when it had more than 3 million registered users and a team of fewer than 20 people at launch and under 40 a few months later.


Bolt.new transforms the web browser from a passive code editor into a self-contained operating system where AI agents write, execute, debug, and deploy full-stack software in real time.


History and Company

StackBlitz began in 2017 as a browser-based IDE for front-end developers, built on the Monaco editor that also powers Visual Studio Code. In May 2021 the company announced WebContainers, a WebAssembly-based layer that lets Node.js run natively inside a browser tab, and it later extended support beyond Chromium browsers to Safari and iOS. The technology impressed developers but generated little revenue, and by 2024 the company was preparing to wind down when it gave itself one last bet: combine WebContainers with the reliable zero-shot code generation that had just arrived with Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Bolt.new launched with a single tweet and a $9 per month plan, and StackBlitz also published the core of Bolt as an open-source repository, which spawned community forks such as bolt.diy.

The growth that followed made Bolt.new one of the fastest-growing software products on record and turned StackBlitz into a company known mainly by its new product's name. In January 2025, StackBlitz raised a $105.5 million Series B led by Emergence Capital and GV (Google's venture arm) at a reported post-money valuation of about $700 million, bringing total funding to roughly $135 million; the company was named to the 2025 Forbes AI 50, and Netlify reported in March 2025 that Bolt users had deployed more than one million websites. Because the tiny team could not answer tickets by hand, Simons has said an AI support assistant from Parahelp handled about 90% of customer support requests during the surge. No independently confirmed revenue figure for 2026 has been published; earlier company forecasts targeted $100 million in ARR by the end of 2025.

Bolt.new has also used community events to drive adoption. Its "World's Largest Hackathon," held online from May 30 to June 30, 2025, offered more than $1 million in prizes and drew more than 130,000 registered builders, which the company submitted as a world record. On October 1, 2025, Bolt launched Bolt v2, repositioning the product from fast prototyping toward production apps with built-in infrastructure, and through 2026 it pushed further into teams and enterprises with design systems, multiplayer editing, and governance controls. In October 2026, Bolt.new acquired Dokai, a San Francisco startup that deployed AI agents inside enterprise sales systems, saying that about half of its own enterprise customers start building before they sign a contract and that Dokai's technology would power longer-running, multi-step agent features.

How Bolt.new Works

Under the hood, Bolt.new operates across three tightly coupled layers: an AI agent layer, an in-browser WebContainers runtime, and an integrated cloud layer called Bolt Cloud. When you type a prompt like "build a personal finance dashboard with a dark mode toggle and CSV export," the agent can first produce a plan in Plan Mode, listing what it intends to build, which files it will create, and which dependencies it needs, so you can adjust the approach before tokens are spent on code. It then scaffolds the file tree (typically JavaScript or TypeScript with React, Vite, and Tailwind CSS), runs package managers like npm to install dependencies, starts the development server, and renders a live interactive preview beside the code editor. If a package throws an error in the terminal, the agent reads the console output and repairs the broken file, a loop Bolt says its v2 agents reduced sharply through autonomous debugging.

The runtime is what makes Bolt.new unusual. In Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Brave, WebContainers boot a micro operating system and a genuine Node.js process inside the browser tab's memory: StackBlitz rewrote the parts of Node.js that normally talk to the host operating system (the file system, networking, and processes) as a WebAssembly layer, and it maps a virtual network stack onto Service Workers so that a server running in the tab can serve the preview pane. Because nothing runs on a remote virtual machine, previews start almost instantly and StackBlitz avoids paying for a cloud container for every session, which is a sharp contrast with cloud IDEs such as Replit that run code on remote servers and stream results back. Safari uses a different path: Bolt builds hosted previews there instead of running them in the browser. The same design sets Bolt's main technical ceiling, since it supports only JavaScript-based backends, so languages such as Python or PHP are not compatible.

The agent layer has changed more than any other part of the product. Bolt.new launched on Claude 3.5 Sonnet with what is now called the v1 Agent; in September 2025 it made Claude Agent the default, and Bolt v2 introduced an "agents-of-agents" design that let users switch among leading coding agents, including options built on OpenAI's Codex and Gemini. Through late 2025 and early 2026 users could pick specific Claude models (Sonnet 4.5, then Sonnet 4.6 as the default, with Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7 for harder tasks), but in May 2026 Bolt replaced model picking with two agents, Standard for everyday building and Max for deeper reasoning. A third agent, Bolt Forge, arrived in September 2026 and runs only on open-weight models. The legacy v1 Agent and its Discussion Mode were retired on August 3, 2026, with Plan Mode taking over the brainstorming role.

Managing context is the practical skill that separates smooth Bolt projects from frustrating ones. Bolt's agents support large context windows, but to keep performance responsive Bolt limits the active chat history to recent messages, so durable information belongs in project knowledge or in a claude.md or agents.md file that Bolt detects and loads automatically. Users can tag specific files with @, pull requirements from tools such as Notion, Linear, and GitHub through Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors, and reset the agent's understanding of a project with the /clear command. Bolt's own guidance is to use one detailed prompt to start a project and then switch to shorter, focused requests as the codebase grows, because large refactors across many files consume tokens quickly.

Bolt Cloud supplies the production half of the stack. Projects can be published to a free bolt.host subdomain or a custom domain (which can be bought inside Bolt), while Bolt Database provisions a database automatically when the agent decides a project needs one, along with user authentication (email and password or Google sign-in), serverless edge functions, secrets, file storage, user management, and web analytics. Payments run through a direct Stripe integration, Supabase remains available for teams that prefer an external database, and Netlify is still offered as an alternative host. Code can be synchronized with GitHub, and since 2025 Bolt has run security checks at publish time that flag issues such as missing database access policies or exposed secrets, with an option to ask the agent to fix them.

Design Principles

Bolt.new is built around three core design principles: near-zero-latency local execution, full code ownership without vendor lock-in, and deliberate control over the context the agent sees. First, by executing JavaScript and TypeScript in the browser tab rather than streaming a remote desktop, the platform cuts network lag and avoids paying for a cloud container per session, which helped StackBlitz keep infrastructure costs low as usage exploded. Second, unlike traditional no-code platforms that trap your work inside proprietary visual blocks, Bolt.new generates standard, human-readable code that you can inspect line by line, export as a ZIP archive, push to GitHub, or open in desktop editors like Visual Studio Code or Cursor. It's the difference between renting a pre-furnished apartment where you aren't allowed to move the walls and receiving the actual architectural blueprints and lumber for a house you own outright, although projects that use Bolt Database, Bolt hosting, or the newer code storage format (which no longer supports "Open in StackBlitz") take more work to move elsewhere.

Third, the platform separates thinking from building and lets teams ground the agent in real material. Plan Mode lets you review and adjust a build strategy before any code changes, and the earlier Discussion Mode served the same purpose until its retirement in August 2026. To steer output, users can drag in files and screenshots, import Figma frames or Google Stitch designs, attach a company design system that Bolt converts into a browsable Storybook, and save reusable instructions as Skills that apply automatically when they match a prompt. These features matter because vague requirements are a common cause of generic or inconsistent AI-generated interfaces, so giving the agent concrete designs, files, and rules usually produces more consistent results than rewording the same prompt.

Features and Integrations

Bolt.new now covers most of the path from idea to launched product, and its feature set has grown quickly since Bolt v2. Most of the items below arrived between October 2025 and October 2026, so tutorials older than a year often describe a noticeably different interface. The main capabilities, grouped by stage of work, are:

  • Planning and prompting: Plan Mode, an Enhance prompt helper that asks guiding questions, a Prompt Library, a prompt queue of up to 20 requests, voice dictation in multiple languages, and reusable Skills that can be imported from GitHub.
  • Design: Figma frame import, Google Stitch export, uploaded design systems for paid Teams plans (with preloaded systems such as Porsche and Cloudscape for everyone), token-free visual edits in the preview that cost tokens only when saved, pinned preview comments that become prompts, and AI image generation and editing.
  • Backend: Bolt Database with authentication, edge functions, secrets, storage, and user management; Supabase and Stripe integrations; private-by-default tables for new databases from October 30, 2026; and leaked-password protection.
  • Publishing: bolt.host hosting, custom and purchased domains, Netlify as an alternative, built-in analytics, version history with restore, security audits, and private share links.
  • Collaboration: multiplayer editing, Viewer, Editor, and Co-owner roles, team templates, a projects dashboard, a template marketplace, and an organization-level GitHub app that limits which repositories members can access.
  • Mobile: React Native apps through Expo, with phone previews in Expo Go and builds and store submission through Expo Application Services (EAS); since October 2026, Bolt itself also runs on mobile browsers for previews, publishing, and project management.
  • Beyond apps: Bolt Slides, introduced in July 2026, builds presentations from prompts and publishes them to a public URL, with an open-source component library on GitHub.

Most of these capabilities came from Bolt's push to make generated apps survive contact with real users, which is where earlier vibe-coding tools struggled. The emphasis on design systems, security audits, and team controls also reflects a shift in customers, as Bolt increasingly sells to product teams at large companies rather than only to hobbyists and solo founders. Readers comparing Bolt.new with similar tools can consult the AI Coding Agent Comparison and the Visual and Low-Code Agent Builder Comparison.

StackBlitz Products and Ecosystem

Bolt.new sits on top of a small family of related StackBlitz offerings, and understanding them clarifies what is proprietary and what is open. WebContainers, Bolt Cloud, and the hosted Bolt.new service are commercial products, while bolt.diy and the original Bolt codebase are open source and can be run independently. The table below summarizes the main pieces as of late 2026.

Offering What it is Notes
StackBlitz IDE The original browser-based development environment, launched in 2017 Still available for developers; newer Bolt projects using the updated code storage format cannot be opened in it
WebContainers / WebContainer API The WebAssembly runtime that runs Node.js inside a browser tab Powers Bolt previews in Chromium browsers; the API is free for personal and open-source use and licensed commercially
Bolt.new The prompt-to-app builder with Standard, Max, and Forge agents Free, Pro, Teams, and Enterprise plans
Bolt Cloud Hosting, domains, Bolt Database, authentication, storage, and analytics Included with Bolt plans; Netlify and Supabase remain optional alternatives
Bolt Forge and Bolt Lite An open-weight-model agent and a $9 per month Forge-only plan Launched as a research preview in September 2026; not offered on Teams or Enterprise
Bolt Slides Prompt-built presentations published to a public URL Introduced in July 2026
bolt.diy The official open-source version of Bolt, started by Cole Medin (previously oTToDev) Runs locally or self-hosted and lets users choose the model for each prompt, including open-source and self-hosted models

StackBlitz has also tried to give back to the open-source projects it depends on. In 2025 it announced the Bolt 100K Open Source Fund, alongside long-running support for Vite and Vitest maintainers and membership in the Open Source Pledge. bolt.diy, which moved into the StackBlitz Labs GitHub organization and passed 12,000 stars in early 2025, gives developers a way to experiment with the Bolt interface while paying model providers directly or running models locally.

Pricing

Bolt.new uses token-based pricing, so cost depends on how much code the agent reads and writes rather than on the number of features used. Tokens are consumed by every prompt and code change, and costs per edit rise as a project grows because the agent must consider more files; planning first, writing focused prompts, and using visual edits for small style changes are the most effective ways to save tokens. The table below reflects Bolt's published plans in late 2026; yearly billing saves up to 28%, and from November 1, 2026, Bolt moved plan and domain billing to Link, a Stripe service.

Plan Price Tokens Highlights
Free $0 1 million per month, with a 300,000-token daily cap Hosting on bolt.host, unlimited databases, "Made in Bolt" badge
Pro From $25 per month From 10 million per month, no daily cap, unused tokens roll over Custom domains, no Bolt branding, higher tiers such as Pro 50 ($50, 26 million tokens) and Pro 100 ($100, 55 million tokens), Bolt Forge access
Teams $30 per member per month Per-member allowances (not pooled) Admin controls, design systems, team templates, integration allow-lists
Enterprise Custom Custom Governance, single sign-on, security reviews, and onboarding support
Bolt Lite $9 per month Forge-only usage Waitlist plan launched with Bolt Forge; new sign-ups closed October 14, 2026

Why This Matters

Bolt.new shifts software development from syntax memorization to system specification, compressing weeks of prototyping into a single afternoon. For product managers, designers, and non-technical founders, it bridges the gap between a static mockup and a working product: instead of showing investors a slideshow of what an app might look like, you can send them a live, clickable URL with working forms, authentication, and database tables. For experienced engineers and educators, it eliminates boilerplate setup when testing new libraries, building internal admin tools or dashboards, or teaching students how a development server works without spending the first week troubleshooting laptop configurations. Bolt's own data point that about half of its enterprise customers build before signing a contract suggests the same pattern inside companies: people prove an idea with a working app before asking for budget.

The practical boundaries are just as important. Because WebContainers execute only languages supported natively on the web, projects requiring Python or PHP backends, native C++ add-ons, or heavy server workloads still need external infrastructure or a traditional workflow. Mobile apps built through Expo can be previewed instantly, but signed iOS and Android binaries, App Store and Google Play submission, and native features such as in-app purchases still run through Expo's build service and the store review process rather than a single click in Bolt, which is why a cottage industry of services now offers to finish publishing Bolt-built Android and iOS apps. Developers who audit Bolt projects also warn that an app tested only in the in-browser preview can behave differently on production hosting, especially around sessions, cookies, environment variables, and secrets, so a deliberate testing and hardening step remains necessary before launch.

Privacy and governance have become part of the evaluation as well. Since October 7, 2026, a Model training account setting controls whether Bolt may use projects and chats to train AI models; it is on by default except for accounts in the EU, UK, and Switzerland, so individuals and companies with sensitive code should review it, while Bolt Forge goes further by sharing anonymized sessions with a training partner as the price of its larger allowance. Teams and Enterprise plans add administrator controls over integrations, repository access, and site visibility, and Bolt's security audits and private-by-default database tables address the most common security mistakes in AI-generated apps, though they do not replace a human security review.

Recent Developments

Between 2025 and late 2026, StackBlitz expanded Bolt.new from a front-end prototyping tool into an integrated full-stack and enterprise platform while navigating industry debates over code maintainability and "AI slop." Most of these changes are documented in Bolt's public release notes, which the company updated almost weekly during 2026. The most significant changes were:

  • Bolt Cloud, Built-In Databases, and Bolt v2 (August to October 2025): In August 2025, StackBlitz launched Bolt Cloud hosting and domains, enabling one-click publishing to free .bolt.host subdomains as well as custom domain provisioning with automatic HTTPS. In September 2025, the platform made the Claude Agent its default coding engine and introduced Bolt Database, adding built-in database provisioning, user authentication, serverless functions, and file storage alongside existing integrations with external backends like Supabase and Stripe. Bolt formally launched these together as Bolt v2 on October 1, 2025, claiming 98% fewer error loops and support for far larger projects, and added security audits, Google sign-in, and database editing that month.
  • World's Largest Hackathon (May to June 2025): Bolt's month-long online hackathon offered more than $1 million in prizes and drew more than 130,000 registered participants; the grand prize went to Tailored Labs, an AI-powered video editor controlled with natural language.
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Design Systems (January to April 2026): In January 2026, Bolt.new added native Figma frame imports and persistent claude.md project context files. Between February and March 2026, the platform rolled out Model Context Protocol (MCP) server connections with built-in connectors for Notion, Linear, and GitHub, allowing the coding agent to pull ticket requirements and documentation directly from a team's workspace. In late March and April 2026, StackBlitz opened design system uploads to paid Teams plans, converting company component libraries and style tokens into a browsable Storybook so generated interfaces match corporate brand standards rather than generic AI templates.
  • Collaboration and Teams (April 2026): Bolt added multiplayer editing, Viewer, Editor, and Co-owner roles, a shared projects dashboard, and an organization-level GitHub app.
  • Agent Architecture Overhaul (May to August 2026): StackBlitz simplified model selection in May 2026 by introducing unified Standard and Max agents, launched Bolt Slides and Skills in July, and formally retired its legacy v1 Agent and Discussion Mode on August 3, 2026, moving remaining projects to the current Bolt Agent with their chat history preserved.
  • Visual Editing and Bolt Forge (August to October 2026): Bolt introduced visual edits in the preview that consume tokens only when saved, a prompt queue, and pinned preview comments that convert directly into prompts. On September 14, 2026, it launched Bolt Forge, a research preview agent running open-weight models such as GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, and DeepSeek v4 Pro with up to 50 times the usual allowance for individual Pro subscribers; users who opt in share anonymized sessions with Arcee AI to help train a trillion-parameter-class open-weight model, and Bolt reported that the Forge lineup scored about 91% of the top paid model on its internal Build Index benchmark.
  • Privacy, Mobile, and Acquisition (October 2026): Bolt added the Model training setting (October 7), a mobile browser experience (mid-October), private-by-default database tables (October 30), and Link billing (November 1), and it acquired Dokai to strengthen enterprise agent capabilities.
  • Debates Over "AI Slop," Context Degradation, and Native Ceilings: Reviews in 2026 commonly describe Bolt.new as one of the fastest tools for going from a blank screen to a working web preview. However, developer audits point out recurring friction points. First, unguided prompts for "modern SaaS apps" often produce repetitive layouts, known across the industry as "AI slop," unless teams supply custom Figma designs or design system tokens. Second, as projects grow across dozens of interdependent files, sweeping architectural refactors can hit context limits and consume heavy token allotments. Third, while Bolt.new excels at web applications and Expo mobile previews, producing signed native iOS or Android binaries and integrating store-billing features such as Apple's in-app purchases still requires Expo's build tooling and additional native setup outside Bolt.

Additional Viewing

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In this 88-minute interview on Lenny's Podcast, host Lenny Rachitsky sits down with StackBlitz co-founder and CEO Eric Simons to trace how Bolt.new grew from a nearly bankrupt startup into one of the fastest-growing software products in history. Simons explains how his team spent seven years building browser-native WebContainers technology before pairing it with Anthropic's Claude models, resulting in $20 million in annual recurring revenue in two months and $40 million in five months. They also discuss why small, high-context engineering teams outperform bloated organizations and how AI agents reshape the daily responsibilities of product managers and software developers.

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This 46-minute episode of the Superhuman AI Podcast features Bolt.new CEO Eric Simons examining the shift from traditional no-code platforms to true AI-native software development. Simons breaks down why running the entire development environment inside the browser is a major architectural breakthrough that makes software creation accessible to non-technical users, sharing how even his own mother built a working website using AI prompts. The conversation concludes with an argument that personal taste, product specification, and user empathy are rapidly replacing raw syntax knowledge as the primary differentiators for founders and builders.

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In this 25-minute hands-on walkthrough hosted by startup advisor Greg Isenberg, Bolt.new CEO Eric Simons demonstrates step by step how to prompt, refine, and deploy a full-stack web directory from scratch without writing manual code. Simons and Isenberg share practical strategies for minimizing token usage and avoiding rework, such as front-loading detailed feature specifications, specifying the target tech stack early, and dropping UI reference images directly into the prompt window. They also demonstrate how live deployment to Netlify works in real time and explain how startups use the platform to cut thousands of dollars and months of engineering time from MVP launches.

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In this 17-minute talk from the AI Engineer World's Fair 2025, Eric Simons explains how Bolt.new absorbed explosive demand with a team of fewer than 20 people, covering team cohesion, ruthless prioritization, public communication with customers, and the AI support assistant that handled most incoming tickets. It complements the History and Company section by showing the operational side of the growth story rather than the product itself. Watch on YouTube

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This short official tutorial from the Bolt.new channel shows how to use Plan Mode to reason through a complex feature, review the agent's proposed steps, and refine the strategy before any code is written. It illustrates the planning workflow described in the How Bolt.new Works and Design Principles sections, which replaced the retired Discussion Mode in 2026. Watch on YouTube

References

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