shadcn/ui vs Bolt.new
Beautifully designed React components you copy-paste into your app
vs. Prompt to full-stack app in your browser — by StackBlitz
Pricing tiers
shadcn/ui
OSS (MIT)
$0. MIT license. Free forever. No signup. Components copy-pasted into your repo and owned by you.
$0 base (usage-based)
Bolt.new
Free
1M tokens/month. 300K tokens/day cap. Public + private projects. 10MB file uploads. Hosting + unlimited DBs.
Free
Pro
$25/month. Starts at 10M tokens/month, no daily cap. No Bolt branding, 100MB uploads, custom domains, SEO support, image AI edit. Rollover tokens.
$25/mo
Teams
$30/member/month. Centralized billing, team access, private NPM registries, design system knowledge.
$30/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SSO, audit logs, dedicated account manager, 24/7 support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing oss on shadcn/ui vs free on Bolt.new.
| Metric | shadcn/ui | Bolt.new |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
shadcn/ui · 12 features
- 50+ Components — Button, dialog, dropdown, form, table, etc.
- Accessibility — WAI-ARIA compliant.
- Blocks — Full-page layouts ready to use.
- Charts — Composable Recharts wrappers.
- CSS Variables — Themeable via --primary, --background, etc.
- Custom Registries — Publish your own components via registry spec.
- Dark Mode — Built-in toggleable theme.
- Form Components (react-hook-form) — Integrated with react-hook-form + Zod.
- MCP Server — Query component catalog from AI agents.
- Radix UI Primitives — Headless accessibility foundation.
- shadcn CLI — Scaffold + add components.
- Themes + Theme Editor — CSS vars-based color system.
Bolt.new · 14 features
- Browser Terminal — Real shell in-browser. Run npm install, scripts, etc.
- Deploy to Netlify — One-click deploy to Netlify.
- Deploy to Vercel — One-click deploy to Vercel.
- Design System Knowledge — Team plan: shared design-system context for consistent UI.
- Expo Support — Build React Native/Expo apps too.
- GitHub Export — Push full project to a new GitHub repo.
- Image Input — Upload image/sketch → Bolt generates matching UI.
- Import Existing Project — Upload an existing repo and iterate in Bolt.
- Live Edit + Run — Edit code + hot reload alongside AI agent.
- Private NPM Registries — Team plan: use private packages.
- Prompt to App — Describe app → Bolt scaffolds + codes + runs it in the browser.
- Stripe Integration — Hook up Stripe payments in-chat.
- Supabase Integration — Provision + connect Supabase from chat.
- WebContainer runtime — Node.js + terminal + filesystem running entirely in your browser.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | shadcn/ui | Bolt.new |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | shadcn CLI | — |
| REST | Component Registry | — |
| MCP | shadcn MCP Server | — |
| OTHER | Docs + Component Browser, Theme Customizer | Bolt Web App, GitHub Export, StackBlitz Sync, WebContainer runtime |
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