A free guide in ten chapters
Build an app with AI, from the idea to paying users.
AI tools can now write most of the code for a first product. What they don't do for you is decide what to build, check that anyone wants it, take payments, put it online and find the first users. This guide walks through all of it in order, for someone who has never shipped an app, on tools with free tiers.
Build in an AI app builder such as Lovable, Bolt or Replit: you describe the app, it writes and hosts it. Fastest start; fewer choices later.
Work with Claude Code or Cursor on your own project and host it on Cloudflare's free tier. A steeper first hour; more control and lower costs later.
Chapter 2 helps you pick. Chapters marked for one path can be skipped on the other.
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You can build and host a first version for nothing: every AI builder has a free plan, and Cloudflare's free plan covers hosting and a database. The first costs you meet are more AI usage (on 23 September 2026 the five builders' cheapest paid plans cost $20 to $30 a month billed monthly; Claude Code needs Claude Pro), a domain name, and Stripe's fee on each sale.
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Before the first prompt, check that someone wants it. Write the problem in one sentence, find where people with that problem already talk, and talk to a few of them about the last time it happened. Then put up one page with one promise and an email field, and decide in advance what result would tell you to build.
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If you have never written code, start with an AI app builder such as Lovable, Bolt or Base44: you describe the app in a browser and it builds, hosts and stores data for you. Pick a coding agent such as Claude Code or Cursor if you will work with files and a terminal and want to own every piece. You can move later: most builders sync your code to GitHub.
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Write a one-page plan before the first prompt: what the app does, its screens and the data it keeps. Then ask for one small change per prompt, test it straight away and save a working state before the next one: a git commit with a coding agent, a bookmarked version in an AI builder. Keep keys out of the code, and start fresh when the AI goes in circles.
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On an AI builder, ask it to add its own database and sign-in, which most of them set up for you. With a coding agent, create a Cloudflare D1 database, bind it to your Worker, add tables through migrations, and let a login library such as Better Auth store users and sessions in that same database. Then check who is signed in on every request that reads their data.
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Start with a Stripe Payment Link: no code, one link, and you can take money today. If you use Lovable, Bolt or Replit, use the Stripe connector each one documents. With a coding agent, have it create a Checkout Session on your server, verify the webhook's signature, and unlock the paid features only when that webhook arrives. Test with test keys first.
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Put it on Cloudflare Workers. On the free plan, requests for your pages and files are free and unlimited, and your server code gets 100,000 requests a day (Cloudflare's pages, read 23 September 2026). Deploy from your computer with Wrangler or by connecting a GitHub repository, then add your own domain, which gets HTTPS automatically. The domain itself is the part you pay for.
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Measure four things before you launch: where visitors come from, who signs up, who pays, and which of your posts sent them, by tagging every link you share. Add an analytics script to every page, count the signup button as a goal, tell your analytics who signed up, and put the user id on the payment. Then test it all with one tagged visit.
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Tell the people who asked to hear first: your waitlist gets the news before anyone else. Then post in two or three places where your future users already talk, each with its own tagged link so you can see which one sent signups. Get the launch checklist done the week before, and spend the day itself answering every reply.
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Run one small loop, over and over: read signups and payments by source, talk to the people who used it, write to the ones who never came back, ship the fix they asked for and tell them it shipped. At the end of the month, pick the next place to post from what the numbers said, and decide whether it is time to charge or raise the price.
From Nordva, who make Nordva Launch: waitlists, analytics that show where signups and customers came from, a changelog and in-app feedback. It comes up in the chapters where it does the job; every step works without it.