Last reviewed September 2026, based on Bolt’s public documentation and pricing. Competitor products change often — if something here is out of date, tell us at support@archie.com.
At a glance
How each one works
Bolt, from StackBlitz, runs a complete development environment — file system, terminal, package manager, and preview — inside your browser using WebContainers. You prompt, Bolt generates and runs the code, and you see the result almost immediately. Bolt Cloud adds built-in databases, authentication, file storage, edge functions, and hosting. Plan and Discussion modes let you work through a change before code is generated. Archie starts with a plan: overview, modules, user types, system services, and integrations, all editable. From the plan, Generate Frontend lays out every screen in a UI architecture and builds a click-through prototype, and Generate Backend builds the schema and APIs on Archie Core. Generate Full-Stack turns the prototype into a deployed app. See How Archie works.Key differences
Speed of the first draft vs. structure of the whole app
Bolt is built for speed: prompt to running preview in seconds, all in the browser. That makes it great for experiments, demos, and hackathons. Archie trades a few minutes up front for structure. The plan defines who uses the app, what each user type can do, and how the modules fit together before code exists. Every screen gets a spec and an access level in the UI architecture. The build follows that definition, which is what keeps an app coherent as it grows. See Why the plan comes first.Backend depth
Both tools include a backend. Bolt Cloud covers databases, auth, storage, edge functions, and hosting. Archie Core is built for production workloads: a relational database with a visual data model, auto-generated GraphQL and REST APIs with an OpenAPI spec, role-based access with row-level filters, webhooks, queues and an event bus, scheduled tasks, and built-in integrations for Stripe, SendGrid, Twilio, Slack, and Shopify.Environments and safe changes
Archie Core gives backends Git-like environments: branch development and staging copies, compare schemas with diff, merge changes forward transactionally, and restore from automatic backups. Multiple environments are available on Professional and Enterprise backends.How usage is metered
Bolt meters usage in tokens. Because the AI reads your project on each message, token use tends to grow as the project gets larger. Archie uses AI credits weighted by task complexity. Heavier tasks show their estimated cost before they run, and manual edits, deploying, and exporting code never use credits.When to choose Bolt
- You want the fastest possible path from prompt to running preview, entirely in the browser.
- You’re building a demo, a hackathon project, or a quick JavaScript experiment.
- You like working directly in a full in-browser IDE with a terminal.
When to choose Archie
- You want the whole app defined — users, roles, modules, data — before code is written.
- Your app has multiple user types with different permissions.
- You need a relational backend with GraphQL and REST APIs, row-level permissions, and environments you can branch and merge.
- You want usage costs you can see before heavier tasks run.