Bubble AI Vision AMA Takeaways

:speech_balloon: What Happened in the Bubble AI Vision AMA?

On April 3rd, Bubble held an AMA outlining their vision for how AI fits into Bubble’s future. Key themes included:

  • Bubble positioned itself as the only platform with a truly visual development language — something it claims gives non-technical users a real edge over tools that rely on generated code, which still requires reading and understanding logic.

  • A claim that platforms like Bolt, Lovable, and Cursor will struggle to stay relevant because iteration on complex apps will require technical skills that most users don’t have. To paraphrase: “writing and reading code isn’t easy. AI is not changing that that much.”

  • The company emphasized its core advantage: that Bubble apps can be understood by anyone, not just developers — an edge it claims is baked into its visual-first design.

  • A vague roadmap for AI tools — with no timelines, no clear definition of what v1 might look like, and no commitment to improving foundational UX or stability.

Takeaways from Bubble’s AI Vision AMA

Bubble’s founders made a bold claim during their recent AMA: they believe the real challenge isn’t how they will survive this AI shift—it’s how platforms like Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor will stay relevant when non-technical users build complex apps and then struggle to iterate on them. Their argument is that reading and writing code is still hard, and no-code tools that generate code won’t solve that.

I think there’s some truth to this… but also some smoke.

In fact, some of the very things they think give them an edge are exactly where these newer platforms may have the upper hand.

AI-First, Then Visual: The Backend-First Advantage

Bubble is taking a frontend-first approach — not by strategic choice, but because it’s effectively locked into that path after 13 years of building the current system. Meanwhile, platforms like Bolt are doing the opposite—they’re building backend AI-generation engines first and then layering UI wrappers over that.

To me, the backend logic is the harder, more critical part. Once AI-generated code is solid, creating a visual layer to interpret or edit it (e.g., “show me this algorithm as a flowchart” or “visualize these if/else paths”) becomes a much easier problem to solve.

So while Bubble talks about how hard it is to iterate without reading code, Bolt’s approach may actually make iteration easier, not harder.

Bubble’s “Visual Development Language” Isn’t That Visual

Bubble is stressing that it’s a true “visual development language”, something the others supposedly lack. But how visual is it really?

Let’s be honest: Bubble’s workflows are vertical-only, there’s no way to customize flow direction, and its UI logic often ends up buried in scattered conditionals or hard-to-read expressions. That’s not exactly “visual thinking.” The platforms that started with code generation and are now adding UI layers might end up offering better visual logic tools in the long run.

Bubble Costs 10–30x More — And Gives You Less Power

Not only are these new platforms evolving fast, they’re way cheaper. Bubble is often 10x–30x more expensive—if I’m going to spend that much, I might as well hire a junior offshore developer for $30–$50/hr who can listen to my “vibe-coded” feedback (e.g., “make this page smoother,” “fix this logic flow”) and implement it live. That might sound wild, but it’s still cheaper than Bubble for many real-world apps.

Who Are We Kidding? Bubble Isn’t Really for Non-Technical Users

Bubble often says it’s designed for non-technical creators—but look at the reality:

  • Most Bubble apps don’t use backend workflows.

  • The apps that do are usually built or supported by someone technical.

  • Native elements like radio buttons, file uploaders, or scrollbars behave inconsistently. Repeating group filters break or require hacky workarounds → Most serious Bubble apps end up with JavaScript, CSS, or HTML injected into them anyway.

That’s not “no code.” That’s code with a UI layer glued on top—and a steep learning curve for anyone who doesn’t already think like a developer.

The “No If Statements” Claim

Bubble claims that one of its strengths is that it doesn’t use “if statements”—because most of the world can’t read them. But… come on.

Bubble conditionals are if statements. They’re often deeply nested, packed into long conditional expressions, and spread across multiple UI elements. Some parts are even hidden behind “arbitrary text” clicks. If anything, they’re harder to read than traditional code, because you can’t see them all in one place.

So this “no if statements” narrative? It’s not just inaccurate—it’s irrelevant. You can’t build anything functional in Bubble without conditional logic. And if you truly can’t handle conditionals, then Bubble definitely isn’t the platform for you. Bolt and friends may actually be more accessible in the long run.


Other Takeaways from the AMA

  • :white_check_mark: API streaming is coming, which is one of the few truly exciting updates.

  • :cross_mark:It was disheartening that the only answer to the question “As a new user, is there a place where I can chat with a Bubble expert about AI to get answers about expressions and best practices?” was the forum. While Bubble’s competitors don’t offer any customer service, it’s still disappointing to hear it stated so plainly, especially considering that several “gold” agencies are creating awful builds.

  • :cross_mark: Bubble claims it can push two major initiatives at once: native mobile + AI tooling. Realistically, it can’t. Even worse, core things like stability, UX, reusable components, and native elements aren’t even current initiatives.

  • :cross_mark: The idea that “building is free; only releasing into the marketplace costs” sounds good—but in practice, you can’t build much without hitting paywalls around workflows or database limits.

  • :cross_mark: Bubble says there’s “no greater risk” of idea theft on their platform than anywhere else. While the risk of an idea being stolen on a Bubble app may not be significantly greater, it’s hard to say it’s not greater at all when Bubble still exposes DB schemas publicly, despite promising to fix that years ago.


Final Thoughts

I’m rooting for Bubble — I use it, recommend it, and have built many apps with it. But this AMA raised more red flags than it answered. The AI vision is vague, the timelines are nonexistent, and the core platform still lacks usability and performance.

The fact that the big teaser announcement was just a contest with $3K in giveaways — less than the cost of a dedicated instance for a single week — speaks volumes about the lack of truly exciting news on the AI front.

Meanwhile, competitors like Bolt and Cursor are charging forward. The idea that they’ll become irrelevant because iteration is “too hard” for non-coders — or that “AI isn’t changing that that much” when it comes to reading code — feels increasingly out of touch with where things are actually headed.

What Bubble should do next is probably a separate discussion — but there’s a strong case for leaning into what it already does best: being a visual front end. Partnering with AI-native backend tools, focusing on visualizing complex logic, or simply fixing core UX issues would be a more grounded path than trying to do everything at once.

12 Likes

Great summary of the key points and issues

Having tested several bubble competitors in the last few weeks I’ve been shocked at how good their support is, how good the AI is and how much cheaper they are.

Bubble still wins out for useability at this stage although I think several systems are really making leaps to close that gap. It’s going to be very interesting over the next year to see how all this plays out.

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Bubble is behind on AI right now…

but, that’s not always a bad thing.

The churn rate on the other AI builders is huge. People try them and get frustrated and complain and leave to try the next one, and on and on.

I think Bubble has an opportunity to come out ahead in the long run.

The other builders don’t have a visual editor because they’re new to the scene. A visual editor is gold to those that are serious about building an app.

As far as working on multiple fronts…

AI cannot be ignored right now by Bubble. It’s the thing that’s new and it’s worth pursuing to stay in the game.

Just my thoughts. Thanks for your interesting post.

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Interesting topics, but I don’t agree with everything. First, again, the pricing. Like a lot of other posts about pricing from competitors, often, you don’t give a complete review of the full pricing that costs other solutions and consider limitations (bandwidth, DB size, # of users…). And since a lot of users now compare with AI tools, there are also limitations on how many AI calls you can make. So once you use them and you don’t know code… good luck continuing to work on your app until the next available AI calls… When Bubble changed to WU pricing, a lot of users left, claiming competitors are cheaper, without really calculating all costs (server and everything associated with server costs like load balancing, DB, CDN, security…). However, I totally agree, from my point of view, that Bubble could be cheaper (and should be). They should also provide access to dedicated plans (which could be without dedicated support and have the same limitations as the team plan).

Second, the use of JS, CSS, or HTML. I think the issue here is mostly with the users, not Bubble. I’ve built a lot of apps and rarely use any of these. In some rare cases, I’ve needed to use JS (and often I chose to build a plugin). However, I agree that Bubble (like any other dev tools from low to no code) is for non-technical users. There’s a learning curve for any of these tools. But also, you need to start thinking like a developer to use Bubble. A lot of questions here on the forum are from users who are unable to operationalize their questions. AI will help them a lot on this side. But after that, will they really understand what AI did? Not sure… Yes, Bubble is easier to read for sure… that’s all.
Third, making the DB schema available doesn’t help you “steal” an idea. It might help you build a similar app faster compared to if you don’t know the DB schema, but that’s all. Like building any other app, everything is a question of A) IDEA, B) the right moment, C) the right market, and D) being faster than anyone else.

I totally agree that other low-code or AI tools will not become irrelevant. They are not targeting the same market. I agree that Bubble has a lot to do on their side to improve. I was not a fan of Bubble working on AI, but I must admit that it was a necessary thing to do NOW. However, I am also scared of ending up, again, with a half-baked feature that will just slow down work (it’s better to build it myself than to modify what AI did). I did a test and only got a 50% working app. Yes, what I asked from Bubble was hard, but they are certainly not ready. (I didn’t spend time fixing it because it was just to check how Bubble could create something I had already built).

I’ve almost forget: what Bubble do is not just to be a visual tools but a fullstack tool. I don’t agree that they should leave backend process but more, improve them a lot.

@mitchbaylis Support is probably good because they need to be. I remember Bubble’s support when they started, and this is far from what we have now. So don’t pay too much attention to support for new tools; this could change really fast as they grow.

Finally, I was also mostly disappointing from this AMA. nothing I already know !

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Really good write up, some fair points and I too feel the red flag count is far too high.

Any one reading this and feeling there is simply no hope for this platform, give Flutterflow a go! The component (reusable element) and page AI creators are great for quick design work and tied in with Google Cloud Functions, (which you can use AI to create scripts in JS or Py) is a seriously strong stack, doesn’t cost WU/$ when testing, or emulating. Native apps have been possible for a fair while now BUT the bar is set a little higher than Bubble and you are likely to struggle at first. You won’t be sharing your database with 500k other users either and workflows are actually visual and if an action doesn’t exist, use the inbuilt AI tool to write one for you!

If you are a ‘vibe coder’, you’ll get it in time!

I’ve built many bubble apps, I’ve got a few left that I’m slowly rebuilding (once done I will now own the code!) but I no longer recommend it due to issues like this that seem to show that there is a disconnect between what Bubble is doing and what Bubble should have already done.

Guess how much it costs to have a fully stable webapp/app store app, exclusive database access? Not the 3k we keep getting pushed on us. The cost per WU is 20x the real world cost and whilst margin is acceptable … this is a rip off.

I fell out with Bubble when they decided to charge WUs in Dev mode; essentially adding a cost for any time you Test/Build your app and the AMA just solidified my concern.

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I’m going to give Bubble the benefit of the doubt when it comes to AI.

They’ve built the best no code platform there is, so I’m thinking they’ll follow it up with the best AI builder there is.

They do know something about what they’re doing or they wouldn’t be where they are.

Good to hear on support. I will check that out more. Yeah price comparisons between Bubble vs. Bolt & friends is nearly as drastic as price comparison between traditional development vs. Bubble.

MAJOR leaps. It will be a very interesting and dynamic next few years. Hopefully Bubble will remain usable at least long enough for the arms raced to be decided :crossed_fingers:; I really don’t want to have to move everything over multiple times…

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Whether or not it should be, it HAS to be to not go extinct.

You said in one sentence what I was trying to say. To build anything more complex than a Wix-esque site, you need to start thinking like a developer. Once you’re able to do that, you probably can figure out Bolt or the likes of them, as they make it easier to iterate on their platforms.

I don’t mean “steal” nefariously, but yeah, making it easier to “clone” an app makes it easier for someone to take your idea and run with it and find market fit before you do. And more than once a Bubble app’s exposed DB schema has revealed some trade secret about the app (e.g., their basic monetization model, which was not what an outsider would assume). All I said is that it’s gotta increase the % by at least a tiny bit..

I agree AI must be done. I just know it won’t be done right given the knee jerk focus of Bubble and its focus on native apps which started as a bad idea and is now a disaster (the change being based on what else must be done now). I also think that the fundamentals have to be shored up in order for AI to be able to work and silly page builders are not the type of AI that is going to do the trick.

so true, but Bubble must return to its roots for support and other aspects if it wants to survive…

This is so true and such a missed opportunity. Check out this AI discussion from Bubble from over 2 years ago (i.e., a lifetime ago) @ the 57 min mark. It’s the exact same talking points that Bubble is using right now. That’s like Steve Jobs giving the same presentation in 2000 and 2010 without having positioned Apple any better during that time period..

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Good takeaways!

The closest race I’m watching now is between Lovable and Bubble.

Both are aimed at non-technicals, and on the Lovable side, they are just missing the UI for doing style changes.

I’m planning to migrate an app of a client out of Bubble later this year, and I think ill be using Lovable for this.

Even if Bubble AI improves and starts to create ‘full’ MVP’s and one point, you are still stuck with the weird Bubble tweaks for parsing JSON, limitations in UI, slowpage load performance, etc

You can overcome the limits of Bubble by building plugins, using the toolbox for running javascript, etc. But if in Lovable I can find an easier way things as code is more flexible than Bubble, why would I still want to build an MVP in Bubble?

Interesting moments ahead in any case!