The Startup Ideas Podcast - I Ranked Every Vibe Coding App (Cursor vs Claude Code vs Lovable)

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Micky and I rank the top vibe coding apps in 2025, from Cursor and Claude Code to Lovable, V0, Bolt, Windsurf, and emerging mobile-focused platforms. They break down which tools work best for technical developers versus non-technical builders, discuss the trust and ecosystem factors that matter when choosing a platform, and share hard-won lessons about the mindset shift required to build software with AI assistance. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:11 – Windsurf 03:46 – Cursor 06:33 – Lovable, v0, Bolt 10:17 – Mobile vibe coding: Rork, VibeCode App, Anything 15:04 – Codex 16:52 – Claude Code 18:28 – Replit 20:23 – Chef by Convex 21:39 – Advice for Vibe Coders Key Points Community size and tutorial availability matter as much as technical capability when choosing a vibe coding platform For technical developers, Cursor and Claude Code dominate; for non-technical builders, V0 offers the best balance of power and accessibility Mobile vibe coding platforms (Rourke, Vibe Code App, Anything) represent a new wave of opportunity, especially for consumer apps monetizing through TikTok discovery Non-technical builders need a mindset shift: building real software takes time, testing, and iteration—not five prompts Betting on a platform means betting on the team and founder behind it; follow their vision to choose the right tool The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ Boringmarketing - Vibe Marketing for Companies: boringmarketing.com The Vibe Marketer - Join the Community and Learn: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND MIC ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/rasmickyy  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rasmic

Mickey, 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. Okay, any disclosures? Are you involved in any of these companies? Oh. Wait to the end.

I'm actually, no, I'm not an investor in any. 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 I was like, I never had done.

I still haven't, but like, I don't know what this is. Vive coding. And then, yeah, they raised, what, some hundred billion at a $6 billion, $2 billion dollar valuation. 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, wind surf, vibe code, Rourke. Let's just hit right out the hip.

What's D tier? I mean, I see, I see you touching wins. 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's 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 WinSurf ever again. And respectfully, in the kindness of fashion, I would put it 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 WinSurf,

simply for the fact that, like, again, you know, you're sort of trusting the team. team behind set 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 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 tools. So is that like changing how you guys build and like, is that like sort of, you know, affecting your decisions? And he straight and was like, no. He's like, we're building for. 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 it 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, it would maybe, it would be between an A and B for me. Right. Because I used to, I used Winster for a bit. It was pretty cool. And if, based on how it was back then, if I to rate it, it'd be between an A and a B. Okay. So, but with all the business stuff, putting it in a D. 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. Well, 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 and P.M. 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 j s and anti next j s and one of the biggest pros to next j s you know people can argue technicalities is the community right especially even with react like let's go one level down react there are people who love react who hate react and the reason reacts one is because the community is so huge right so there's a lot of support that you 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++. Mm-hmm. 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.

I 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 ideabrowser.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. And 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 chatGVT 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. Lovable cloud, lovable AI. So I will.

So explain what that is because not everyone. Yeah. So basically 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. 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 Claude Codes

and the codexes and the cursor. So I will give Loveable a B. How do you feel? 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 going to go and create a product, you know, yeah, maybe lovable is something I can get,

you know, get going, a pretty page, but 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? Versel's marketplace, like their integrations, it gives you plethora of options, right? So with Loveable, for example, they've sort of picked what backend you're going to use.

It's super base, right? And there's pros and cons to that. Like, depending on the type of apps you're going to build, there's pros and cons to it. With Vurcell, you have all the type, all different types of what you might call it backends. And here's where the bias comes in. Convix is going to be on the Versel marketplace soon. And I think Convix is the best back end. And the reason why there's bias is 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 liked the product homie didn't look at the camera once until he started saying convex said the word convex

and he was like convex because convex is the number one yeah 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 Versel, 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, like the tool we're using. And it's like, it seems like V.0 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 V0 S 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 it in between? Okay, so I'll do it in between. and this is definitely non-technical friendly, lovable, of course, is here as well. You sort of disagreed with lovable being a B tier, so where, 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 would put them on par with lovable. Yeah. Okay, fair. See, not a biased investor.

I respect that. RORC. I personally haven't used RORC, 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 ViveCode app by Riley, our friend Riley. Yeah. And Rourke. I haven't played with both of them extensively, but played with them enough to know that, vibe code app is it really is the lovable for mobile apps I find the oh actually there's also anything yes I have seen anything

I 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 and even at Convex there's a lot of like these mobile app vibe coding platforms that are popping up yeah this seems to be the and for and for reason, right? Like, 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 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 opportunity. You know, you're seeing the Cal AIs of the world making millions of dollars a month with relatively simple apps with AI baked in. So I think that's, 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 I'm, yeah.

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? is like why the push for apps because everyone's doing an app now a consumer app. I think 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 a matter of fact, I'm six foot. You know, well, we have this AI that helps you, like, reduce back pain by 35% 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 download it. And I find that in, like, observing my wife has helped me realize social trends. People use TikTok like a search engine. Yes. So that makes sense. So where do we put vibe code, Rourke?

anything if you've used anything. I think we can put them right below Loveable 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 they, though what's going to happen, I think, is those are, it's so relatively new. Like I think Rourke launched like 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, like 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.

I think they're going to get better too over time, right? Do you know, are they all built on Expo? Yes. 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 basis. 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 Expo.

Cool. 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 clawed 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.

A little higher. A little higher, yes. So I've 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 Clawed Sonnet 4 or 5 is the best coding model right now. So I would put Codex like right below cursor but above Loveable and Bolt.

And for non-technical people, like should they be using codex? Yes, 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's gains like the most improved award. Yes, 100% because it sucked in the beginning.

It really did. And like now people are comparing it to Claude, like Claudecote. 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're 100%, right?

You don't want to be windsurfed. I'm not mean, I swear. I'm actually a nice guy. Yeah. I couldn't help it. Yeah. Um, Claude. Okay.

All right. What do you think? I think Cursor's King, man. Wow. Claude code got nerfed. Claude recently, though. Recently has got nerfed. Yes.

Like, if this was four weeks ago, it'd be like this. Like, Claude 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. Claude Sonnet 4 or 5. I'll get better results with it on cursor than with, on Clod's. 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. And 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, Claude, Claude, 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 Clodco, then cursor, right? But 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. Who?

Replit. Are you an investor in rep, no, I'm not an investor. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to 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 Replit. 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 raised a bigillion dollars as well.

so I'll trust your discretion. I mean, from what I understand, they have two modes with Replits. So they have like your vibe code mode and then they have agent mode. So you prompted 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. 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 bull replet

yeah so okay so this is fair so we have v0 close to in my opinion maybe a little in the a tier but like if i 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 shelf was built and we built chef was to show vibe coding platforms that if you use convex as you're back in 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, because people will be like, oh, you're being biased. So I won't even show. You could check it out.

It's free. So Chef isn't meant to compete, but it was more so of a showcase for tools to use convex as their back in. 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 because 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-biased, would put Chef along these lines.

The only thing is, again, we're not trying to compete. So at some point, these tools will get better. Like, for example, I don't think there's a way for you to assign a domain on Chef. Right. So it wasn't meant to impress users, but more so developers who are building these tools. But, yeah, I think 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 a clod 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 open code by my uncle Dax. Um, I haven't used it. Sorry, Unc. I should. 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. Borderline 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 need to treat it with care. your first version doesn't work.

You used, you know, you used lovable and it broke. Okay, so what? You'll use another tool and try again, right? I think there needs to be a shift in understanding that software is difficult. Websites are easy, you know, landing pages are easy. But software is difficult, especially once 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. 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.

And all that stuff is great. And there are even tools that allow you to plan now. And, you know, Chad GBT5 is great if you want to like just go back and forth and brainstorm. dorm. 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, 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.

my recommendation to people is actually to follow all the founders of these businesses. So VZero, Guillermo, Kodak, Sam Altman, Loveable Anton, Bolt is Eric, Eric Simons, Replet, Amjad, etc, etc. 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 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.

It'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'll include that there. And see you next time. Appreciate you, bro.

Thank you. again. Later.