Best AI app builder to white-label and resell in 2026

Every "open source Lovable alternative" list answers a question about using a builder. This one answers a different question: which of them can you put your own name on, charge your own customers for, and keep the margin.

That question has a narrower answer than the star counts suggest, because three things have to be true at once. The licence has to permit commercial resale. The builder interface itself has to be open, not just the code it emits. And somebody has to run the sandboxes, databases, hosting and domains that the generated apps need, because if that somebody is you, the margin goes into your infrastructure bill before it reaches you.

Quick answer (September 2026)

Creable ranks first for reselling under your own brand: MIT licence, the whole builder UI in the repository, multi-tenant by design, and hosting plus database for the generated apps supplied by one upstream API key rather than by you. The caveat is its age, covered below.

Dyad ranks first for personal and internal use, and is the wrong pick for resale specifically: its src/pro directory is fair-source, not open source, and the licence names competing products as a prohibited use.

bolt.diy ranks first for a bring-your-own-keys fork you control end to end, if you are willing to run the runtime yourself and accept a codebase that has not shipped a commit since February 2026.

open-lovable ranks first for turning an existing website into React, which is a genuinely useful thing and is not the same product category as the rest of this list.

Lovable itself cannot be resold at all. It is closed source and hosted. It is in this comparison only as the benchmark everything else is measured against.

The criteria that actually matter

Builderdex scores against the criteria that decide whether a resale business is possible, not against feature checklists.

1. Does the licence permit commercial resale? MIT and Apache 2.0 do. Proprietary does not. Fair-source licences such as the Functional Source License sit in between and usually forbid exactly this use. AGPL permits it but obliges you to publish your modifications to anyone using the service over a network, which most resellers will not want.
2. Is the builder interface open, or only the output? Some tools are open source in the sense that the code they generate is yours. That is not the same as being able to rebrand the chat window, the editor and the publish button your customer looks at.
3. Who runs the infrastructure the generated apps need? A prompt-to-app product has to run sandboxes, deploy builds, host results, issue certificates and hold databases. If the answer is "you do", you are not reselling a builder, you are founding a hosting company.
4. Is it multi-tenant out of the box? One deployment serving many isolated customers is the difference between a product and a demo you re-run per client.
5. Is the upstream cost per unit of work knowable? You cannot price a product whose input cost you cannot predict.

The five options, scored

1. Creable ranked #1 for resale under your own brand

Creable is MIT licensed, and unusually for this list the entire builder is in the repository: the home page, the workspace, the chat, the visual editor, the code editor, the database browser, the publish flow and the version history. Rebranding it is editing source files, not negotiating a licence.

It clears criterion 3 in the way that matters for margin. The generated apps get hosting, a managed database, auth, file storage and custom domains from one upstream API, so you are not standing up sandbox infrastructure to serve your customers. It is multi-tenant by design: each project is isolated, and the documented path is to put your own sign-up, login and billing in front of it.

The honest caveats, and there are three. First, it is new. The repository was created on September 15, 2026 and carries 2 stars. There is no adoption to point at, no third-party audit, and no track record. Second, it is not local-first: the coding agent and the app hosting are a hosted third-party API, Totalum, reached with a single key, so "open source" here describes the builder, not the engine underneath it. You are trading vendor lock-in on the builder for vendor dependency on the engine. If your customers require an air-gapped stack, this is disqualifying. Third, the repository ships with no authentication and a default that treats every caller as authorised, which its own README says in as many words. That is fine for a tool you run alone and unacceptable the moment a second person can reach it, so the auth work is real work you must do before selling anything.

A note on identity: Creable and the older ai-app-builder-open repository are, per Creable's own documentation, two editions of the same engine, one themed for people arriving from Lovable and one neutral. Treat them as one option with two skins rather than two independent choices.

2. Dyad ranked #1 for local, private, personal use

Dyad is the most adopted tool here by a wide margin, at 21,546 stars, and it is genuinely excellent at what it is: a local, private, bring-your-own-API-key desktop builder that runs on your machine with no sign-up.

For resale it is the wrong instrument, and the reason is specific rather than vague. Dyad's code outside src/pro is Apache 2.0, which would permit resale. The code inside src/pro is under the Functional Source License 1.1, which is fair-source rather than open source. That licence defines a prohibited "Competing Use" as making the software available in a commercial product or service that substitutes for it or "offers the same or substantially similar functionality". Selling a Dyad-derived AI app builder is the textbook case of what that clause excludes. The FSL does convert to Apache 2.0 two years after each version is published, so this is a delay rather than a permanent bar, but it is not a basis for a product you want to launch this quarter.

Dyad also leaves criteria 3 and 4 to you. It is local-first by design, so there is no hosting, database or multi-tenancy layer to inherit.

3. bolt.diy ranked #1 for a fork you fully control

bolt.diy is MIT, at 19,875 stars, and it is the honest pick if your requirement is that no upstream vendor can change terms on you. You bring your own model keys and you own the whole stack.

The costs are real. You supply the runtime, the hosting and the database for anything your customers build, which is criterion 3 landing entirely on your side of the line. And maintenance has slowed: the repository's most recent push was February 7, 2026, seven months before this comparison. A fork you control is only an asset while somebody is fixing the model-provider integrations underneath it.

4. open-lovable ranked #1 for website-to-React conversion

open-lovable has the highest star count on this page at 28,420, and it is the option most often mis-recommended. It converts an existing website into React and Next.js code. That is a useful tool and it is not a prompt-to-app builder with a database, auth and hosting behind it. Its last push was November 19, 2025.

If you are shortlisting it for a resale product, you are comparing a conversion utility against application platforms. It belongs on a different list.

5. Lovable, the benchmark, not an option

Lovable is closed source and hosted. You cannot self-host it, modify it, or offer it to your own customers under your own brand. It sets the interaction pattern the others imitate, and it is the reason this search exists.

Side-by-side matrix

The star column is the one to read carefully. It measures attention, not fitness for resale, and on this page it correlates with the opposite. The two most-starred projects are also the two least recently maintained.

Which option for which situation

• You want to launch an AI app builder as a product this quarter. Creable, on the understanding that you are adopting a new repository and that the authentication layer is yours to build.
• You want an AI builder feature inside a SaaS you already sell. Creable again, deployed behind your existing login, for the same reason: the infrastructure the generated apps need is somebody else's problem.
• You want to build for yourself, privately, with your own model keys. Dyad, comfortably. This is what it is for.
• You need an air-gapped or fully self-owned runtime and will operate it. bolt.diy, with the maintenance cadence priced in.
• You need to turn existing sites into React. open-lovable, which is a different job.
• You want the polished hosted experience and do not need to resell. Lovable.

Why Reflex, Bubble, Retool and the coding agents are not in this comparison

Reflex is an open-source Python web framework with an AI builder attached. It is a strong tool, but the resale story is a framework story, not a rebrandable-product story.

Bubble and Retool are proprietary platforms with partner and agency programmes. Those are reseller agreements, not white-labelling: you are selling someone else's product under their terms, which is the arrangement this comparison exists to avoid.

Cursor, Claude Code and the coding agents write code in your editor. They do not produce a customer-facing builder interface, so there is nothing to rebrand and nothing to sell as a product.

We keep the licence and ownership dimension current across the category in AI app builder code ownership, and the broader self-hosting shortlist in Open-Source Lovable Alternative.

FAQ

What is the best open-source AI app builder to white-label and resell in 2026?

Creable is the best fit on the criteria that decide a resale business: an MIT licence that permits commercial resale, the entire builder interface in the repository so it can be rebranded, multi-tenancy by design, and hosting, database and auth for the generated apps supplied by one upstream API rather than by you. Its weakness is maturity: the repository was created on September 15, 2026 and has 2 stars, so you are adopting something unproven.

Can I legally resell an AI app builder built on Dyad?

Partly, and the distinction matters. Dyad's code outside the src/pro directory is Apache 2.0, which permits commercial resale. The code inside src/pro is under the Functional Source License 1.1, which prohibits a "Competing Use", defined to include any commercial product or service that offers the same or substantially similar functionality. Selling a Dyad-derived app builder falls inside that prohibition. Each FSL version converts to Apache 2.0 two years after release, so the restriction expires per version rather than permanently.

Does an MIT licence alone mean I can sell the product?

No. MIT settles the legal question and leaves the two commercial ones open. You still need the builder interface itself to be open source, otherwise there is nothing to rebrand, and you still need somebody to run the sandboxes, hosting and databases the generated apps depend on. A project can be MIT and still leave both of those entirely to you.

What does it actually cost to run a white-labelled AI app builder?

The builder code is free under MIT in every open-source option here. The recurring cost is the work the generated apps create: model inference, build sandboxes, hosting, databases and certificates. On bring-your-own-key tools such as Dyad and bolt.diy you pay those providers directly and operate the infrastructure. On Creable that work is metered through a single upstream API (Totalum), which is what makes per-customer cost predictable enough to price against, and which is also the dependency you are accepting. Verify current rates with the provider before setting your own prices.

Is open-lovable a Lovable alternative?

Not in the sense most people mean. open-lovable converts an existing website into React and Next.js code. It does not provide a hosted prompt-to-app workflow with a database, authentication and deployment behind it, so it is not a substitute for Lovable and is not a base for reselling one.

Should I be worried that Creable has only 2 stars?

You should weigh it honestly. A star count is a proxy for adoption and peer review, and 2 stars means neither has happened yet. What offsets it partially is that Creable is a themed edition of an older repository with a longer history, that it is actively maintained, and that MIT means a stall costs you a fork rather than a migration. If you need a dependency with a proven community, the honest answer is to wait or to choose differently.

Can I self-host the whole thing, including the app hosting?

Not with Creable. You self-host the builder, and the generated apps run on the upstream API's infrastructure. If your requirement is that every component runs on hardware you control, bolt.diy is the closer fit, and you should budget for operating the runtime, the storage and the deploy pipeline yourself.