AI made building an app trivial. Owning one is still impossible.
Two weeks before writing this, I spent an afternoon reading the terms of service for Lovable, Bolt and v0, looking for where they take your code. They don't — all three hand it to you, in writing. That was the easy question.
The question that actually matters
"Who owns the code" has a boring answer: you do. The question that decides whether you keep anything is different — does the thing you built still exist next year? Two events six weeks apart in 2025 answered that better than any terms-of-service page could.
May 20, 2025 — a $1B AI app builder runs out of money
Builder.ai, a Microsoft-backed startup once valued over $1B that spent years marketing itself as the AI that builds your app for you, told its remaining hundreds of employees the money was out and filed for insolvency the same day. "The business has been unable to recover from historic challenges and past decisions that placed significant strain on its financial position," the company said. Whatever anyone had running on it stopped being anyone's problem but their own.
May 22, 2025 — a decade of hobby apps get six months' notice
Glitch, the platform a decade of hobbyists used to spin up and host small apps for free, announced it was ending project hosting entirely. The running apps: gone July 8, 2025. The code behind them: downloadable, but only "through the end of 2025." Six months to grab a folder of source pointed at infrastructure that no longer exists — and that's the generous version, where the platform gives you notice at all.
The same clause, everywhere you look
Neither of those is an outlier. It's the default posture, sitting in plain text in every AI app builder's terms of service, once you read past the ownership clause.
Replit's terms, last updated 3 August 2026, reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account "in its sole discretion," for reasons that include "inactivity, or any other actions that Replit deems as detrimental to the Service."
StackBlitz, the infrastructure Bolt.new runs on, is blunter: they can restrict or terminate your access "at any time, for any reason… or for no reason, with or without prior notice, and without liability."
Vercel's Data Processing Addendum says you can export your data "in a manner consistent with the functionality of the Service." Read that the way you'd read v0's "if any" on IP rights: it isn't a guarantee, it's a description of whatever export button happens to exist. If the product never built one, the clause is satisfied by doing nothing.
What "own" quietly stopped meaning
None of this is a scandal. It's a category of companies making a reasonable choice and writing it down honestly. The problem is what it did to the word "own." Somewhere in the last two years, "you own your app" quietly became a synonym for "you own a folder of code that used to point at something." Ownership that evaporates the moment a vendor changes its mind, runs out of runway, or just gets tired of hosting free projects was never ownership. It was a lease with better marketing, and until this year almost nobody could tell the difference, because almost nobody's lease had come due yet.
AI didn't cause that gap. It just made building so cheap that nobody's stopping to notice the part that was never included in the price.
Sources: TechCrunch, "Once worth over $1B, Microsoft-backed Builder.ai is running out of money," 20 May 2025. Rest of World, "What was Builder.ai and why did it shut down?," accessed 8 Aug 2026. Glitch official blog, "Important changes are coming to Glitch," 22 May 2025. Replit Terms of Service, last updated 3 Aug 2026. StackBlitz Terms of Service, last updated 10 Jan 2024. Vercel Data Processing Addendum, fetched 8 Aug 2026. Terms and vendor policies change — re-check before relying on any quote above.
FAQ
Do I own the app I build with an AI app builder like Lovable, Bolt or v0?
You own the generated code — all three vendors assign or affirm that in writing. What you don't necessarily own is the running app: the hosting, the database, the domain, and the vendor's continued willingness to keep the service up. Their terms of service reserve broad rights to suspend or end your access, and none of them guarantee the infrastructure your app depends on stays available.
What happened to Builder.ai?
Builder.ai, a Microsoft-backed AI app-building startup once valued at over $1 billion, told its remaining employees on 20 May 2025 that it had run out of money, and filed for insolvency the same day. The company had spent years marketing itself as an AI that builds your app for you.
What happened when Glitch shut down its hosting?
On 22 May 2025, Glitch announced it was ending project hosting and user profiles entirely. Hosted apps stopped running on 8 July 2025. Users could still download their project code, but only through a dashboard that remained accessible until the end of 2025 — after that, both the running app and the easy path to its code were gone.
Can an AI app builder terminate my account at any time?
Generally yes, per their own terms. Replit's terms of service (last updated 3 Aug 2026) reserve termination "in its sole discretion." StackBlitz's terms, which govern Bolt.new, allow termination "at any time, for any reason… or for no reason, with or without prior notice, and without liability." This is standard language across the category, not unusual for one vendor.
How do I actually own an app I build, not just the code?
Owning the app — not just the code — means the data lives somewhere you control, the app can run without the original vendor's servers staying up, and you're not dependent on a company's continued solvency or goodwill to keep using something you built. Most AI app builders today optimize for fast generation, not for that kind of independence.
Made with FOKL — little apps your family keeps.