What’s new in Playcode

103 updates in the last 90 days.

New features, improvements and fixes, newest first.

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Our rocket on its pad beside a tall board of update cards: the builder pins a fresh card at the top, Play fits a new part to the rocket, and two passing suits stop to stare.

October 2026

ImprovedBuild

A shorter model list on Standard

The Standard model picker now opens on four models: Claude Opus 5.5 (the default), Gemini 4 Argon, GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5. Grok 4.7, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Kimi K3 are still there: choose More models… at the bottom of the list to see them.

Claude Opus 4.6 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash have left the picker. If one of them is already your model, it keeps working until you choose another.

Read the docs

ImprovedBuild

New projects start private on every plan

A project you create while signed in now starts private on every Playcode plan, Free included. Before, a new project on the Free plan started public, so anyone with its link could open it.

  • Private from the start. Only you and the people and teams you invite can open a new project.
  • Share when you are ready. To share by link, open the project's Share tab and set Anyone with the link to Can view. Set it back to No access to make the project private again.
  • What stays the same. Projects you already have keep their setting. A project you start before you sign in stays public until you turn its link off, and the published site stays public either way.

Read the docs

ImprovedBuild

Private projects on every plan, Free included

Every Playcode plan can now keep a project private, Free included. Before, making a project private needed a paid plan.

  • Make any project private. Open the project's Share tab and set Anyone with the link to No access. Then only you and the people and teams you invited can open it.
  • It stays private. Opening a private project on the Free plan no longer turns its public link back on. If that happened to one of your projects before, set Anyone with the link back to No access.
  • What stays the same. The project's creator or an Admin makes the change, and the published site stays public either way.

Read the docs

Try it: Make this project private - turn off its public link.

ImprovedAccount and billing

A new way in: every sign-in method, everywhere

Signing in and creating an account look new, and they work the same everywhere on Playcode.

  • Every way in, in one place. Continue with Google, get a code by email, or use Microsoft or GitHub, on the website as well as in the app.
  • Your idea comes with you. Describe what you want to build, sign in with any method, and Playcode starts on your idea as soon as you are in - including after a GitHub or Microsoft sign-in.
  • The code is easier to find. The code step now says plainly that the email may be in your Spam folder, and shows how to mark it as not spam so the next one lands in your inbox.
  • Sign in without losing your place. If you are asked to sign in while you work, your request stays on screen, and closing the sign-in takes you back to where you were.
  • Smooth on a slow connection. The picture for the next step loads while you read the current one, and each step glides into the next.

ImprovedBuild

DeepSeek V4 Pro folds into V4.1 Flash - same answers, lower price

DeepSeek V4 Pro has left the model picker. DeepSeek has been serving every V4 Pro request with V4.1 Flash since mid-September (until a V4.1 Pro exists), so the picker entry no longer bought anything the Flash entry does not - except a higher price.

If you had V4 Pro selected as a default or on a chat, it now runs on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash automatically, billed at the Flash rate: $0.30 in / $1.20 out per million tokens instead of V4 Pro's $1.32 / $3.96. Same upstream model, about 4x cheaper.

We also moved DeepSeek onto redundant serving infrastructure, so the model no longer depends on a single upstream to stay available.

September 2026

ImprovedAdd to your app

App AI prices now match chat prices

AI used inside your hosted apps is now priced per model, exactly like the in-chat prices - one price book everywhere. Most models move to the standard rate; the flagship cards keep their premium pricing unchanged.

ImprovedAdd to your app

Email: Send to anyone turns on by itself once your domain is verified

One less switch to find. When your app's sending domain verifies, Send to anyone now comes on with it - your app can email customers right away, from your own domain, with one-click unsubscribe on every mail to a non-member. Before, verified-domain projects still had to discover the switch in Settings > Email; every one of them turned it on.

The switch stays where it was, as the off lever: turn it off and it stays off - for every app of the project, including ones created later. Nothing else changes: without a verified domain, delivery still goes only to recipients who confirmed their address, and the daily caps, suppression and unsubscribe protections run exactly as before.

ImprovedBuild

Loading gets bulletproof

We chased down a family of rare but painful loading failures - the kind where Playcode showed a spinner and simply never finished. All fixed today:

  • A freeze on certain networks and privacy settings. A stylesheet request could block the whole page from rendering on devices where third-party requests hang. Pages now render regardless, every time.
  • The editor recovers stuck browser storage by itself. If your browser's local database wedges (an old tab holding a lock, strict privacy modes), Playcode now detects it in seconds, repairs it, and continues - your work lives on our servers, so nothing is lost.
  • The preview says so instead of spinning. If the preview engine can't start on a slow connection, you now get a clear retry button within seconds instead of an endless spinner.
  • Clearer sign-in errors. If an ad blocker or filtered network breaks Google sign-in or the human-check, the dialog now tells you what to do instead of silently resetting.

If loading ever felt stuck for you before - it wasn't your device, and it's fixed. Thanks to the users whose reports led us straight to it.

ImprovedAdd to your app

Ask for payments, get Stripe best practices by default

When you ask the assistant to add payments, subscriptions, or a checkout to your app, it now follows a Stripe playbook by default:

  • Stripe Checkout over custom card forms. The hosted payment page converts better - Apple Pay, Google Pay, one-click Link, and local payment methods appear automatically - and Stripe's own card-testing defenses stand in front of it. Playcode sells its own plans the same way.
  • Fraud protection armed from day one. Stripe.js loads on every page of your site so Stripe Radar can tell real customers from bots, and the assistant reminds you to keep Radar on. An unprotected payment form gets found by card-testing bots within days, and the disputes that follow can get a Stripe account blocked.
  • Keys handled safely. Secret keys stay on the server, never in page code. On browser-only projects the assistant uses Payment Links, which need no keys at all.
  • Real fulfillment. Purchases unlock through verified Stripe webhooks, not just "the buyer landed on the success page".

ImprovedBuild

Claude Opus 5.5 is the new Quality default

Claude Opus 5.5 is now the default model on the Quality tier. It is Anthropic's newest Opus, it keeps the 1M-token context window and the 128K maximum answer length of Claude Opus 5, and it costs less per token: $4 in / $20 out per million against Opus 5's $5 / $25, with re-read context dropping from $0.50 to $0.20 per million.

One thing to know about credits. Opus 5.5 thinks for longer before it answers. On our own benchmark it spends roughly 1.8 times as many tokens working through the same task, which more than cancels out the lower price per token - so a typical job costs somewhat more, not less. We chose it as the default anyway, because the work it returns is better.

Claude Opus 5 is still one click away in the model picker, and it is the cheaper of the two per answer. If you would rather trade some quality for a smaller bill, pick it - and anything you have already pinned to it stays exactly as it is.

ImprovedBuild

GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna arrive at half the price of the models they replace

OpenAI completed the GPT-6 family today, and both new models cost exactly half what their predecessors did. They take over the seats those models held in the picker.

GPT-6 Sol replaces GPT-5.6 Sol on the Quality tier, at $2 in / $10 out per million tokens instead of $4 / $20. OpenAI positions it as the balance of intelligence and cost, and its own testing puts it ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol on professional work, factuality and coding.

GPT-6 Luna replaces GPT-5.6 Luna on the Fast tier, at $0.10 in / $0.50 out instead of $0.20 / $1.20. That makes it the cheapest model we offer - good for simple pages, quick edits and high-volume work.

Both keep the 1M-token context window and the 128K maximum answer length of the models they replace, and we pass the full price cut through, so the same work costs fewer credits.

Nothing you have pinned breaks. GPT-5.6 Sol and Luna stay available to existing chats; chats and preferences set to them move to the GPT-6 equivalent automatically, which is cheaper for the same job.

ImprovedBuild

Every dialog now speaks one design

Every popup in Playcode - confirmations, settings sheets, menus, tooltips - has been rebuilt on one design system, so the whole app now asks questions the same calm way.

  • Destructive actions ask properly. Deleting a chat, folder, project, domain or token states what happens in one plain sentence, and the most dangerous ones wake their button only when you type the exact name.
  • Clearer questions everywhere. Renames open with your current name ready to edit, the resize dialog shows the price before you switch, and the unlock-for-transfer flow hands you the code with a plain way to lock it back.
  • Menus and pickers cleaned up. The project, workspace and attachment menus render as one crisp panel, and the build-quality picker opens right by its button instead of covering your work.
  • Phone-friendly sheets. Top up and Share now open as bottom sheets on phones, with the main action in thumb reach.

ImprovedBuild

Language templates open with your code in front

Open a JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Python, SQL or any other language template and the code is the first thing you see: the file tabs on top, the file tree on the left, the AI Chat right under the editor, and the live preview with the console beside them.

Before, every template opened with the chat alone and the code sat a click away in the menu.

Website and business templates keep opening chat-first: describe what you want, and the preview updates as you go.

ImprovedPublish

Domain settings say what the check saw

When you move a domain's DNS to Playcode, the certificate for the bare name now follows the nameserver change as soon as it lands, instead of up to an hour later. The check that decides it reads the registry itself on every pass.

Settings > Domains tells you exactly what that check saw: which nameservers answer today, which ones they must be, and when we last looked. The old sentence that promised a fix "within minutes" is gone.

"Finish setup" on a domain whose DNS moved here opens the same three-step switch the connect flow shows: the values to paste, what the world reports while the change spreads, and the done card once everything serves.

Moving DNS to Playcode keeps a www that already points at your Playcode site, and the review list says plainly when an unchecked record would leave a name unanswered after the switch.

ImprovedAdd to your app

Send to anyone now covers both environments, and held mail gets a Deliver button

Turning on Send to anyone in Settings > Email now applies to your Development and Production computers at once. Before, only the published app was switched on, so a test send from the editor could still be held while the page said delivery was live.

Mail that was held before you switched it on no longer sits there: every held address now shows a Deliver button as soon as your domain is verified and Send to anyone is on, including addresses that were never added to your verified recipients.

Your sending domain verifies within seconds of the records going live, with nothing to click. The assistant can check a domain for you too, and reads each email under the computer it came from.

Adding a customer's address to Verified recipients now warns you first: that list is for your own inboxes, and each add sends the person a permission request. Customers are reached through your own domain.

ImprovedBuild

The assistant never runs out of checkpoints before a risky change

A cloud computer keeps up to 20 checkpoints you own. When the assistant reached that number it used to refuse to take a new one, and a schema migration could go in without a rollback point. Now, at the cap, the assistant replaces its own oldest checkpoint and tells you which one it replaced. The checkpoints you saved yourself are never the ones replaced.

If the Checkpoint history dialog cannot open, it now says why instead of staying blank.

ImprovedBuild

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash replaces V4 Flash on the Fast tier, now with image input

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is now the DeepSeek Flash option on the cheap-and-fast tier, in place of DeepSeek V4 Flash. DeepSeek retired V4 Flash today and shipped V4.1 Flash on a new architecture that its own tests place ahead of DeepSeek V4 Pro - and it can now see images (V4 Flash was text-only), so screenshots and reference designs work on this model too.

It is also cheaper: $0.30 in / $1.20 out per million tokens, down from $0.44 / $1.32. We pass the cut straight through, so the same work costs fewer credits.

If you had DeepSeek V4 Flash selected as a default or on a chat, it now runs on V4.1 Flash automatically - nothing to change on your side.

Gemini 3 Flash remains the tier default.

ImprovedPublish

Your domain's status now says what it is waiting for

The status chip next to a custom domain in Publish and in Workspace > Domains used to say only *Verifying* or *Action needed*. It now tells you why:

  • Waiting for your DNS change - the record you added has not reached us

yet. This takes minutes, sometimes up to a day.

  • Issuing the certificate - your DNS is right and the HTTPS certificate

is on its way.

  • DNS does not point to Playcode yet - the certificate could not be

issued. Fix the records and we retry on our own.

  • Active until a date - the certificate renews itself before it expires.

Nothing to do.

The same reading applies to every domain, however it is connected, so two screens never disagree about the same address.

ImprovedPublish

Domain search now covers 600+ more extensions

Search Workspace > Domains and the list just got a lot longer: 615 new extensions are now searchable and buyable, priced at what the registries actually charge today.

  • Recognizable names, not just filler. .xyz, .zip, .yoga,

and .zone are in, alongside hundreds of others spanning tech, business, and lifestyle endings.

  • Your originals are untouched. .com, .net, .org, .app,

.dev, and .io stay at the price they have always been - this expansion only adds, it never repriced what you already use.

  • A few extensions still ask for more. Some endings - country codes and

a handful of membership-only names - need something extra from their own registry before anyone can register them through us. Search still tells you what is missing instead of a dead end; we are working through that list one registry at a time.

ImprovedBuild

Background agents can now see images and pages

Background agents (the tasks your AI delegates work to) can now look at images, capture page screenshots, and understand videos, just like the main agent. Visual work delegates reliably: captioning a photo gallery, writing honest alt text, matching a reference design, picking a video poster frame, or reviewing a page's layout no longer fails partway because the helper agent could not see what it was working with.

Available on vision-capable models across all task roles - explorer, coder, auditor, and researcher.

ImprovedBuild

Gemini 3.8 Flash replaces 3.6 Flash on the Pro tier

Gemini 3.8 Flash is now the Gemini option on the Pro quality tier. It launched today at the same price as its predecessors, and Google's own launch numbers put it ahead of 3.7 Flash on every published axis - software engineering, terminal coding, and multi-step reasoning. In our own SVG drawing benchmark it is measurably the strongest Gemini Flash yet.

It also costs you fewer credits than 3.6 Flash did. Google discounted this rate card after we first added 3.6 Flash, and our pricing had not caught up, so 3.6 Flash was charging roughly double what it should have. That is corrected: every Gemini Flash model now bills at the real rate.

If you had 3.6 Flash selected on a chat, it keeps working and stays on that chat - nothing you pinned has moved. It is simply no longer offered in the picker for new selections.

The cheap-and-fast tier is unchanged. Gemini 3 Flash is still the default there, and still the cheapest way to build.

ImprovedBuild

Grok 4.6 replaces Grok 4.5 on the Pro tier

Grok 4.6 is now the Grok option on the Pro quality tier, in place of Grok 4.5. xAI prices the two identically and calls 4.6 "the most intelligent and fastest model we've built" - and in our own SVG drawing benchmark the difference is visible: where 4.5 famously spent 668 tokens barely attempting the task, 4.6 actually engages with it.

If you had Grok 4.5 selected on a chat, it keeps working and stays on that chat - nothing you pinned has moved. It is simply no longer offered in the picker for new selections.

ImprovedBuild

GLM 5.3 replaces GLM 5.2 on the Fast tier

GLM 5.3 is now the GLM option on the cheap-and-fast tier, in place of GLM 5.2. Z.ai prices the two identically, and 5.3 is the newer and stronger model - Z.ai's own measurements show it doing markedly better agentic coding work while spending *fewer* output tokens than 5.2 at every reasoning-effort level, which on a reasoning model means the same work tends to cost you less.

It also brings a real reasoning-effort dial (low / high / max), which the Intelligence setting now drives.

If you had GLM 5.2 selected on a chat, it keeps working and stays on that chat - nothing you pinned has moved. It is simply no longer offered in the picker for new selections.

ImprovedBuild

GPT-5.6 Luna joins the Fast tier at a 5x lower price

GPT-5.6 Luna is now available on the cheap-and-fast tier. OpenAI cut its price fivefold today - to $0.20 in / $1.20 out per million tokens - which makes Luna the cheapest model in the picker, below even Gemini 3 Flash. In our SVG drawing benchmark it lands right beside Gemini 3 Flash in capability, with a reasoning-effort dial that responds cleanly to the Intelligence setting.

We also passed today's OpenAI price cuts for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra straight through - the same work now costs you fewer credits on all three.

Gemini 3 Flash remains the tier default.

ImprovedBuild

Playcode speaks your language from the first visit

The app now opens in your browser's language on your first visit - all ten languages, including the sign-in page. On the website, the language switcher now also lives in the top menu (next to Pricing on desktop, inside the menu on phones), and if the site isn't in your language, a small note offers the switch in your own language.

Also fixed on phones: on some Android screens the page could grow slightly wider than the display, which pushed the menu button half off the edge. The menu stays put now, and a new account button next to it takes you straight to sign-in - or to your projects if you're already signed in.

August 2026

ImprovedBuild

Long builds stay on track through context handoffs

On very long builds the agent periodically folds older conversation history into a compact brief to stay fast. That fold used to be lossy: the agent could forget its instructions, lose its place, and re-read files it had just read. The whole handoff was rebuilt:

  • The agent now writes its own handoff note. Instead of an outside

summary, the model working on your project writes a structured continuation brief for itself - what it was doing, what it decided, what comes next, in its own words.

  • Task instructions can no longer be lost. A background task's original

instructions survive every handoff word-for-word.

  • No more re-reading loops. The brief carries the exact code regions the

next step needs, pre-loaded - resuming costs zero extra reads instead of re-opening file after file.

  • A stuck loop breaks itself. If context refills right after a fold, the

agent gets more room instead of folding again and again.

  • A heads-up before the fold. The agent is warned as the handoff

approaches, so it finishes the step it is on and writes things down first.

ImprovedBuild

The agent keeps more context by default on long builds

On long builds the agent periodically compacts older conversation history to stay fast. Until now it compacted early enough that big tasks - many files, long sessions - could lose track of files it had just read and re-read them.

  • The default Context level is now High (was Medium). On models with large

context windows the agent keeps roughly 2.5x more of the conversation before compacting, so long builds stay coherent instead of looping over the same files.

  • No extra confirmation for the default. The one-tap cost acknowledgment

now appears only when you raise Context above High (Extra High or Max).

  • Your explicit choice is untouched. If you set Medium (or any level)

yourself, that choice stays exactly as you set it.

You can still change Context per chat in the build-quality dialog, or set your own default in Settings → You → AI defaults.

ImprovedBuild

Long builds no longer freeze the chat

When the assistant starts a long job - a build, an app-store submission, a big install - the chat now stays yours.

  • You can always talk. A message you send while a job runs reaches the

assistant immediately, mid-work, instead of waiting in silence until the job ends.

  • Stop means stop. Pressing Stop lands in about two seconds, even during a

long wait - and the assistant stays quiet afterwards until you speak.

  • Finished jobs report back on their own. When a background job completes,

a small note appears in the chat and the assistant picks the result up and continues - even if it had already handed the chat back to you. A running job can no longer be forgotten.

  • One question, one answer. A message sent at just the wrong moment no

longer risks two competing replies.

ImprovedBuild

The assistant hands you a QR code instead of an address to retype

When something has to reach your phone - opening your app in Expo Go, checking a preview on a real device - the assistant now draws a QR code in the chat instead of asking you to type a long address across two screens.

  • The address stays printed under the code as selectable text, so on a desktop

you can still copy it in one click.

  • The code carries the Playcode mark in the middle, and it is rendered to be

scannable rather than decorative: it sizes itself to the address it holds, and in a column too narrow to scan from it steps aside and leaves you the text.

  • It works the same in dark and light themes.

Only for addresses that genuinely have to cross to another device. A link you can simply tap stays a link.

ImprovedAccount and billing

Upgrading to Max now upgrades your existing projects too

When you upgrade to Max, every project you already have now moves to the larger Max machines automatically - 8 CPU · 16 GB in the editor and bigger production machines with a 200 GB disk - not only the projects you create after upgrading.

  • Projects that are asleep pick up the new hardware silently and wake up on

it the next time you open them.

  • An editor you are actively using switches on its next idle pause, usually

within minutes.

  • Published production apps pause briefly - usually seconds, at most a couple

of minutes - while they move to a bigger machine.

And if you ever move back to Pro: CPU and RAM return to Pro sizes, but any disk space you grew into stays yours. We never shrink your disk.

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