Recommendation: Bubble Should Rethink Collaborator Access Across Its Pricing Plans
I think Bubble should seriously reconsider how collaborator access is distributed across Starter, Growth, Team, and Agency accounts. This is not necessarily a request for Bubble to reduce its overall pricing.
The recommendation is much more specific:
Collaboration should not be so tightly tied to infrastructure plan upgrades.
A founder, developer, designer, or small startup should not need to make a major plan jump simply because a second person needs proper access to the application.
The Current Collaboration Gap
With annual billing, Bubble’s current Web pricing is approximately:
| Plan | App editors | Monthly price | Annual cost | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 | $29 | $348 | ||
| Growth | 2 | $119 | $1,428 | ||
| Team | 5 | $349 | $4,188 |
For Web + Mobile:
| Plan | App editors | Monthly price | Annual cost | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 | $59 | $708 | ||
| Growth | 2 | $209 | $2,508 | ||
| Team | 5 | $549 | $6,588 |
This means a Web app owner who is comfortable with Starter but needs just one additional editor has to move from:
$348/year to $1,428/year 
That is an additional $1,080 per year.
For Web + Mobile, the same collaboration requirement takes the subscription from:
$708/year to $2,508/year
That is an additional $1,800 per year.
Growth obviously includes more than one extra editor. It provides additional workload, version control features, branches, logs, and other capabilities. That is exactly why collaboration should arguably be separated from these infrastructure upgrades.
A team may not need additional workload, logs, branches, or capacity. They may simply need another person to help build the product.
How Other Platforms Approach Collaboration
These products are not all direct Bubble competitors, but they are highly relevant development, design, infrastructure, product, and collaboration platforms used by modern software teams.
The important comparison here is not simply price.
It is how easily another person can participate in a project without forcing the entire project onto a dramatically more expensive infrastructure tier.
| Platform | Relevant plan | Collaboration seats | Collaboration approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airtable | Free | 5 editor/creator seats | Also supports up to 50 commenters and unlimited read-only collaborators |
| Framer | Free / Basic | 3 editor seats on Free | Multiple editors can collaborate before additional paid editors are required; viewers remain free |
| Webflow | Core Workspace, about $19/mo | Up to 100 reviewer seats | Reviewer, guest, and limited-seat models separate feedback access from full development access |
| Supabase | Pro, $25/mo | ∞ Unlimited seats | Dashboard team membership is not restricted to one or two collaborators |
| Figma | Professional | ∞ View seats, paid seats added as needed | Full, Dev, Collab, and View roles allow teams to pay according to the access each person actually needs |
| Replit | Core, about $18/mo annually | 5 seats | A small development team can collaborate on the same project without moving to a large enterprise tier |
| GitHub | Team, about $4/user/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Developers are added incrementally on a per-user basis rather than through major plan jumps |
| GitLab | Free | 5 seats | Small teams can collaborate before needing a paid upgrade |
| Jira | Free | 10 seats | Small software teams can collaborate with up to 10 users before paying |
| Netlify | Pro, about $20/mo | ∞ Unlimited seats | Team members can collaborate without adding separate seat costs to the Pro subscription |
| Railway | Pro, about $20/mo | ∞ Unlimited seats | Unlimited workspace seats are included |
| Miro | Free / Starter | ∞ Unlimited team members on Free | Teams can collaborate broadly while paid tiers expand functionality rather than simply unlocking basic participation |
| ClickUp | Free / Unlimited | ∞ Unlimited members on Free | Team participation is widely available before higher-level features are required |
| Linear | Free / Basic | ∞ Unlimited members | Member count is not used as a restrictive collaboration gate |
| Notion | Plus, about $10/member/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Members are added incrementally and guests can participate without requiring the same level of paid access |
| Trello | Standard, about $5/user/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Users can be added individually without forcing the workspace onto a dramatically higher infrastructure plan |
| monday. com | Basic, about $9/seat/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Paid members scale separately while viewers can participate without full seats |
| Coda | Maker-based pricing | ∞ Editor and viewer seats | Editors and viewers can participate without being billed as Doc Makers |
| Asana | Starter, about $11/user/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Team members can be added incrementally, with extensive guest collaboration available |
| Canva | Business, about $20/person/mo | ∞ Scalable seats | Teams can add people according to actual collaboration needs rather than upgrading the entire workspace tier |
Figma is particularly relevant because it separates collaboration roles very clearly. On Figma Professional, teams can use different seat types for different responsibilities.
The Agency Plan Has a Similar Issue
Bubble’s Agency account is approximately “$78/month per developer seat” when billed annually.
That works out to:
| Developers | Approx annual Agency cost | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 seat | $936 | |
| 2 seats | $1,872 | |
| 3 seats | $2,808 | |
| 5 seats | $4,680 | |
| 10 seats | $9,360 |
The Agency account does offer meaningful value.
It includes premium development applications, advanced version control, development access to paid plugins, security functionality, agency discovery features, lead generation, and other professional tools.
But Agency apps are still development applications. A client application ultimately needs its own appropriate paid Bubble plan to operate in production.
For agencies and professional Bubble developers, the concern is therefore not that Agency provides no value. The concern is whether collaboration itself should require every participating developer to carry such a significant annual subscription.
A two-person Bubble development team can already be looking at roughly $1,872 per year before considering the production subscriptions of the applications they are actually building.
Recommendation
I think Bubble should separate collaborator capacity more clearly from workload and infrastructure capacity.
A possible structure could be:
| Bubble plan | Suggested included editors | |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 3 seats | |
| Growth | 5 seats | |
| Team | 10-15 seats (or 20) |
Then if a pricing is absolutely needed for this, allow additional collaborators to be purchased independently.
For example:
Additional Full Editor: $5-$10/month
Bubble could also introduce different collaboration roles.
| Role | Suggested access |
|---|---|
| Full Editor | Complete editor, data, workflow, and application development access |
| Developer Seat | Development access without sensitive account or billing administration |
| Designer Seat | Design, responsive editor, styles, components, and UI-focused functionality |
| Reviewer / QA Seat | Preview, debugger, issue reporting, testing, and commenting |
| Client Seat | Progress visibility, review, commenting, and approval access |
| Read-only Seat | Project inspection without editing privileges |
These roles do not all have to be free.
The important change would be allowing teams to purchase the collaboration they actually need without forcing an infrastructure upgrade that may have little to do with their requirements (if an only if this must be infused into a pricing model).
Why This Matters More Now
Software development is increasingly collaborative. Even a relatively small Bubble application may involve: A founder, A Bubble developer, A UI designer, A second developer, A QA specialist, A client or product manager…
That could easily mean 5 or 6 people contributing to one product, but those people do not necessarily need 5 or 6 identical full editor accounts.
Bubble should consider doing the same.
This becomes even more relevant as Bubble expands further into native mobile development, AI-assisted development, agencies/Power users, and larger product teams.
Better collaborator access could also help Bubble grow, rather than moving to other platforms.
- A founder could invite a developer.
- A developer could invite a designer.
- An agency could bring in QA.
- A client could review development.
- A junior developer could participate without requiring another major plan commitment.
That’s more people to Bubble and makes the platform easier to adopt inside professional teams.
The Recommendation in One Sentence
Keep Starter, Growth, Team, workload limits, version control, infrastructure, logs, security, and scaling differences,
But stop making collaborator count one of the primary reasons teams are forced into dramatically more expensive plans.
Starter having only 1 editor seat feels particularly restrictive for a platform increasingly positioned as a serious application development environment.
Moving from $29/month to $119/month on Web takes a project from 1 editor seat to OOONLY “2” editor seats, while increasing annual spending from $348 to $1,428.
That is a $1,080 annual increase.
On Web + Mobile, moving from Starter to Growth takes annual spending from $708 to $2,508, an increase of $1,800 per year.
Again, Growth provides additional capabilities, but a team whose primary requirement is simply adding another person has no smaller collaboration step available.
The same concern applies to professional developers paying significant Agency seat costs when collaboration across client projects is fundamental to how agencies operate (talkless of the current trivial times for Bubble developers right now).
$9,360 for 10 Agency seats could be used for bringing more clients to Bubble that’ll pay way more.
I would strongly recommend that Bubble review this part of the pricing structure and consider:
-
Increasing included collaborators across Starter, Growth, and Team.
-
Introducing separately purchasable editor seats.
-
Adding free or inexpensive reviewer, QA, client(important distinction) roles.
-
Giving Agency accounts more flexible team collaboration economics.
-
Separating infrastructure scaling from human collaboration wherever possible.
Bubble has invested heavily in making the platform more capable for serious product development. Its collaboration model should evolve with it.
What does the community think?
- Would 2 or 3 editor seats on Starter significantly improve how you build with Bubble?
- Would you prefer additional editors to be purchasable separately instead of upgrading an entire application plan?
- For agencies, what collaboration structure would make the Agency plan more practical for multi-developer teams?
- And should Bubble introduce separate roles for designers, developers, QA, reviewers, and clients rather than treating nearly everyone as a full editor?
I think this is an area Bubble should take a serious look at as the platform continues moving toward larger, more professional, and more collaborative development workflows.
Blessup to all and we’ll love to get your feedbacks as well as Bubble’s response.