All three say you own the code. It's the next sentence that matters.

I read the terms of service for Lovable, Bolt and v0 this week, start to finish, looking for the part where they take your code.

It isn't there. All three give it to you.

Bolt is the bluntest: "All code that you create with Bolt and StackBlitz is your own code, which you can use for any legal purpose including commercial purposes." [1] No asterisk.

Lovable: "you also own any AI Output generated for you through the Services." [2]

Vercel's v0: "you own Customer Content and Vercel assigns to you Vercel's rights, if any, in the Output." [3]

Read that last one again. If any.

Then, the same paragraph: "You will need to make your own determination regarding the intellectual property rights you have in Output and its commercial usability, taking into account, among other things, your usage scenarios and the laws of the relevant jurisdiction." [3]

That isn't a company being cagey. That's a company being honest about the thing the discourse keeps skipping: assigning you their rights doesn't create rights. If machine-generated output attracts no copyright where you live, then "you own it" transfers nothing, and Vercel is telling you to go find out for yourself. It's the most candid sentence in any of the three documents, and it's the one everyone scrolls past.

So "who owns the code" has a boring answer — you do, more or less, to the extent there's anything there to own. And asking it has kept us busy while three sharper questions walked past.

Owning it doesn't make it yours alone

v0: "the Output may not be unique, and the AI Products and Services may provide the same or similar Output to other users." [3] Lovable: "AI Output may be similar or identical to content generated for other users who submit similar prompts." [2]

You own it. So does whoever typed the same sentence.

Owning it doesn't mean you're covered

Vercel disclaims any warranty of "non-infringement of third-party rights (including copyright)" [3], and then: "Vercel does not provide any indemnity to you for Customer Content, nor the AI Products and Services." [3]

You own the output and the risk it infringes something. Same box, no separate shipping.

Owning it doesn't mean you can keep it running

This is the one that bites, and it isn't in the IP section at all.

Lovable's licence to use the service: "limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable… This license terminates immediately if you violate these Terms or your account is terminated for any reason." [2]

Your app's address: "You have no proprietary, possessory, or ongoing rights to any specific subdomain." Reclaimable, seven days' notice, and reclamation "does not entitle you to a refund or any other compensation." [2]

The ground it stands on: "Lovable Cloud is provisioned on third-party infrastructure (currently Supabase)." [2]

You own the source. You don't own the runtime, the address, or the database.

And one that's just about money

Unless you're on a Business plan, Lovable has "a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, process, analyze, and otherwise exploit your Customer Data… including developing and training artificial intelligence and machine learning models." [2] You own the code; they train on it. Both true, near enough the same page. There's an opt-out — contact them, or upgrade. [2] Same shape at Vercel: on Hobby and Pro your content can be used and shared, and the no-training warranty is an Enterprise line item. [3]

None of this is a scandal. It's a few companies making rational choices and writing them down plainly, and mostly nobody reads them. Bolt in particular comes out of this better than its reputation.

But it does mean the question I keep seeing — do I own the code my AI tool wrote? — is the wrong one. You own it. Congratulations. It's a text file.

The real question is the one the terms can't answer, because it isn't theirs to answer: when the account closes, or the subdomain gets reclaimed, or the company gets bought — what do you still have?

For most people who shipped something this year, the honest answer is a folder of source they can't run, pointing at a database they don't have, at an address that was never theirs.

That's not an ownership problem. That's an infrastructure problem wearing an ownership costume — and the terms of service are not where it gets fixed.

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[1] Bolt / StackBlitz Support, "Corporate and commercial" — fetched 16 Jul 2026.
[2] Lovable Terms of Service — Last Updated 19 Jan 2026, Effective 20 Jan 2026.
[3] Vercel AI Product Terms — Last Updated 17 Mar 2026, Effective 31 Mar 2026.
Terms change. Every quote is dated; re-check before relying on any of it.