For founders, freelancers and teachers who want to keep what they ship
Thunkable builds native iOS and Android apps by chatting, inside its platform. Playcode builds a React Native app plus its own backend, database and website in one project, ships it under your own store accounts, and gives you code you can export and open anywhere.
No credit card required · No coding needed
Quick answer
Playcode is a Thunkable alternative for people who want the app to outlive the subscription. You describe it, Playcode builds a real React Native project with its own backend and database, publishes under your own store accounts, and gives you code you can export and keep. Preview it on your phone.
Used by people at
Counts registered accounts using corporate email domains from the companies above. Playcode is a self-serve product, not a contracted vendor to these brands.
Three steps that end with the project on your own machine
Say what people do in the app and what has to be stored between visits. The AI builds the screens and the tables behind them in the same pass, so the data model is decided out loud rather than by accident.
Ask it to read the plan back before it builds. Correcting a sentence is cheaper than correcting a database.
Ask for the phone preview and scan the code it gives you. The app runs on your handset, over your real connection, against the same backend the finished version will use.
Nothing here is a stand-in device. What you see on your phone is what your customers will see on theirs.
Download the project and open the folder on your own machine before launch, so you know the exit works while nothing is at stake. Then let the AI drive the build and the submission.
You bring your own Apple and Google developer accounts and click the final submit. The listing is created in your account and stays there.
Your website is live!
Every Thunkable row quotes thunkable.com or its pricing FAQ as read on 2026-08-16. Plans change, so read the current page before you decide.
| What you are comparing | Thunkable (read 2026-08-16) | Playcode |
|---|---|---|
| How the app gets built | Thunkable describes an AI Builder you build with by prompting, a visual designer, a code editor, version history and a Discuss Mode for planning without editing. Its site says it has helped people turn ideas into apps for over 10 years. | You describe the app in plain English and Playcode writes a React Native and Expo project. You can keep prompting, or open the files and change them yourself. |
| What the plan meters | AI tokens and live published apps. On 2026-08-16 the pricing page listed Free with 2,000 AI tokens, 3 public projects and 5 screens per project; Builder at $37 per month billed yearly with 50,000 tokens and 1 live published app; and Advanced at $99 per month billed yearly with unlimited live published apps. | AI credits for building, plus plan limits on projects. How many apps you have in the stores is not the meter. |
| What happens if you stop paying | The pricing FAQ says you must maintain an active subscription for your published apps to remain active, and that if a subscription expires, published apps become unavailable for end users, noting an exception for Pro and Business plans. It also says a Free downgrade puts projects into read-only mode. | Playcode Cloud runs your backend while your plan is active, and we will not pretend otherwise. The difference is what survives the decision: on a paid plan the project code and the database schema are exportable, and the store listing lives in your own developer account. |
| Whose store account the app ships under | The pricing FAQ says you will need a developer license from Google and Apple to publish your apps, and that these fees may be one-time or annual payments. | Same requirement, and we say it up front. The AI drives the build and the submission and drafts the listing, but the developer accounts and the final submit are yours. |
| What surrounds the app | Thunkable describes publishing native apps to the App Store and Google Play directly from its platform, plus a code editor, image generation and version history. | The phone app arrives with its own backend, its own database and a website that shares them, so one account works on the phone and on the web and there is only one place your data lives. |
Not features on a plan card. The parts that matter the day you want to leave.
A React Native project and a backend project, in folders any developer recognises. Export it on a paid plan, unzip it, and open it in whatever editor you like.
Your records live in your project database, and the schema that defines them is part of the exported project. Data without its schema is a spreadsheet; this is not that.
The app is submitted through your own Apple and Google developer accounts, so the listing, the reviews and the customers stay attached to you.
The same project publishes a website on a live link with HTTPS and a custom domain, sharing the app backend, so people can find you without the store.
Do the exit once, before launch, while nothing depends on it. It takes an afternoon and it changes every later decision.
The app ships under your account, not ours. Enrolment involves identity checks, two-factor and tax and banking forms, and it is not instant.
Ready when: Sign in to App Store Connect and Google Play Console yourself. If someone else set them up, confirm the legal entity on the account is the one that should own the app.
Exportable code that has never been exported is a promise, not a property. The only version of this you can trust is the one you have already opened.
Ready when: A folder on your own machine, and the ability to unzip a project into it. That is the whole requirement.
Bookings, orders, student progress, member records: whichever it is, that sentence decides what you check first and what you back up.
Ready when: Write it down and keep it next to the project. If you cannot finish the sentence, you are not ready to invite customers yet.
Write what people do in the app, then list what has to survive between visits. Ask for the phone app and its backend in the same pass.
A project with the screens, the tables behind them, and sign-in wired to the project backend rather than to a separate service.
Ask the AI to list the tables and columns it created, and check that the thing you named as "must never lose" is one of them.
Export the project on a paid plan, unzip it on your own machine, and open the folder.
Ordinary folders: the phone app in one, the backend in another, and a file that defines your database tables.
Find the file that defines your main table and read it. If you can point at the line that stores the thing you must never lose, the exit works.
Ask the AI to list every setting the project reads from its environment, such as its public address and any provider keys, and keep that list with the export.
A short list of names, with no secret values written next to them.
Check that the list contains names only. A secret that has been pasted into a document is a secret you now have to rotate.
Let the AI drive the build and the submission and draft the listing, then review the listing and press submit yourself.
A build waiting in your own developer account with a listing you have read line by line.
Open App Store Connect on your own login and see the app there. If you cannot see it from your own account, it is not yours yet.
Choose: Before. An export you try on a quiet Tuesday costs an hour. The same export attempted during a crisis costs the crisis.
Tradeoff: It is an hour you would rather spend on features, and it will probably tell you nothing is wrong. That is the point of a drill.
Choose: One project, unless the two really serve different people. One backend means one place to change a rule and one place to look when something is wrong.
Tradeoff: A single project is a single thing to keep healthy. Splitting them feels tidier and quietly doubles the work of every future change.
Choose: Start with one app and roles. Every extra app is another listing, another review and another build to keep current.
Tradeoff: Roles need thinking about early, because a screen that shows the wrong person the wrong record is worse than a second app.
Install the build on a phone that has never had the app, sign in with an account created on the website, and complete the main task.
Expected: One account recognised on both sides, the task completes, and the record it creates is visible on the web view too.
Sign in with the wrong password, then with an email that has no account, then submit the main form with a required field empty.
Expected: Three readable messages that tell the person what to do next, and no internal error text on screen.
Force-close the app halfway through saving, reopen it, and complete the same action again on a weak connection.
Expected: One record, not two, and the person is still signed in when the app reopens.
After the store release goes live, download the public build on a borrowed phone and run the whole task as a stranger would.
Expected: The app works from a cold start with no leftover state, and any email or notification it should send arrives.
Each one has someone on the other side who would notice if it disappeared.
Handover without a rebuild
Schedules, announcements and member records, with an office view on the web for whoever runs the place next year.
Money flow you can audit
Accounts, plans and a paywall. The agent can build payment flows when you provide the relevant keys and requirements, on the same backend as everything else.
One customer, one account
You already have customers with logins. The app uses those same accounts, because there is one backend behind both.
A deliverable you can hand over
A freelance or agency build where the deliverable is not a login to your tool. It is the project, the schema and a listing in their own developer account.
Playcode has been building and running real projects since 2016
Playcode AI runs the same frontier models that power ChatGPT and Claude - and orchestrates them like a team: it plans the work, delegates to sub-agents, runs long jobs in the background, and reviews its own changes.
The latest models from every major lab, in one picker. Switch anytime.
Big jobs split across specialists - one explores your code, one writes, one audits - working in parallel.
Long builds and migrations keep running while you keep talking. They report back when done.
Have a design in Figma? Paste a screenshot - or a page you like, or a bug - and it builds from what it sees.
Tuned by years of iteration to write production software - structured, typed, maintainable - not throwaway prototypes.
Under every project is a codebase the agent keeps production-grade. And you are never locked out of it: open the file explorer and edit any file yourself - server included. No AI required.
Complete states, secure boundaries, structured code - the bar is what a professional agency would ship.
Browse the whole project - frontend, backend, configuration - and edit directly in the built-in editor.
Invite your developer with the right role, or export the project code and files. Nothing is trapped in Playcode.
Playcode is built for organizations, not just solo builders. Workspaces hold your projects, people, and billing; roles and teams decide exactly who sees what.
Create a workspace per company, client, or department - each with its own members, projects, and subscription.
Admins manage, editors build, viewers watch. Set roles on the whole workspace, on a team, or on a single project.
Group people into teams and give each team its own projects - or a whole folder of them. Private projects stay private, even inside a shared workspace.
Send a project to any email - a client, a contractor - with exactly the access you choose. No extra seat needed.
Work on one project together. Write in the same AI chat together. Every message, edit, and setting is fully synchronized - live, for everyone, on every device.
Everyone works in the project at the same time - even in the code editor - without lock-outs or "who has the latest version".
Start on the laptop, check from your phone: the same live state follows you everywhere you sign in.
Changes arrive over a live connection the instant they happen. Reloading the page is a habit you can drop.
Every click applies immediately on your device. Syncing happens behind you, not in front of you.
Connection dropped? Your changes queue locally and replay the moment you are back.
The queue survives closing the tab. Nothing you did is lost while you are away.
"I built my entire portfolio site in 20 minutes. My clients think I hired a designer. Already got 3 new inquiries this month."
"We switched from Wix to Playcode. The AI actually understands what we need instead of giving us cookie-cutter templates. Saved us thousands."
"I update my property listings from my phone while showing apartments. Clients are impressed when I tell them I built the site myself."
Start small. Upgrade when you're ready.
Try the AI website builder and see results
Everything you need to build
Cancel anytime. No hidden fees.
Credits are used when AI helps you. Simple edits cost less, complex features cost more.
Most users never run out. 100 credits = lots of building.
It is, if what you want is an app that arrives with its own backend and can be exported as ordinary code. Playcode builds a React Native app, a website and a shared backend in one project from a description. If your Thunkable app works and you are happy inside its platform, moving is a cost with no obvious return.
Ask that question of every builder, including us. Thunkable states in its pricing FAQ, read 2026-08-16, that you must maintain an active subscription for published apps to remain active, with an exception noted for Pro and Business plans. Playcode Cloud also runs your backend while your plan is active. The difference is that the code and the schema are exportable on a paid plan and the store listing is in your own account.
On 2026-08-16 Thunkable listed a free tier with 2,000 AI tokens and 5 screens per project, Builder at $37 per month billed yearly with one live published app, and Advanced at $99 per month billed yearly with unlimited live published apps. Playcode starts at $21 per month with annual billing, or $25 monthly, and meters AI credits rather than published apps. Read both current pages before deciding.
No. There is no importer between two different app formats, and a tool that promises one is worth a second look. The workable path is to describe the flows and the data, rebuild the one that matters most, and compare the result against the app you have.
Yes, and Thunkable says the same in its pricing FAQ: you need a developer license from Google and Apple to publish. On Playcode the AI drives the build and the submission and drafts the listing, but the accounts are yours and you click the final submit. We do not publish apps on your behalf, and no builder can promise a review outcome or a review date.
That is what the drill above is for, and it is worth doing before launch rather than after. You export the project on a paid plan, unzip it, and open the folders. The one thing that does not travel is your secrets, by design, so keep the list of setting names alongside the export.
No. Every step is a sentence you write and a result you check on your own phone. Knowing how to code changes what you can do next, not whether you can start, and the exported project is there for the day you or someone you hire wants it.
Still have questions? Contact us
Describe it today, run it on your phone, and export the project before you launch.
A club app where members see their schedule and pay their dues...Build My AppNo credit card required. AI credits included.