Open research project
The State of AI-Built Apps 2026
Help us publish the first real founder-survey data on what actually happens to apps built with Lovable, Cursor, Bolt, and Replit. Survey takes 4 minutes. Anonymous. Respondents get the full report free, 6 weeks before public release.
Take the 4-minute survey
17 questions about your AI-built app journey. Identifying info optional. Respondents get the report before anyone else.
Open the surveyWhy we are doing this
Lovable, Cursor, Bolt, and Replit have changed how founders ship software. But there is almost no real data on what happens after the demo: how many of these apps make it to revenue, what breaks, what gets rebuilt, what gets abandoned. The platforms themselves do not publish this. The press writes feature reviews, not outcome data.
We work with these apps every week. We see the patterns. But anecdotes are not data. We are running this open survey to put the first real numbers on the table.
What we are measuring
- What % of AI-built apps make it to paying customers
- How long until founders hit a wall they cannot solve in the tool
- Average rebuild cost when founders migrate off
- Most common failure modes by tool (Lovable vs Cursor vs Bolt vs Replit)
- Hours per week founders spend debugging vs. building
- How founders decide whether to rebuild, refactor, or abandon
How the data will be used
- Aggregated only. No individual responses will ever be published.
- Email addresses (optional) only used to send the report.
- The full report will be free for anyone to read once published.
- Raw aggregate data will be published alongside, in CSV, for others to reanalyze.
- If you want to be quoted by name, there is a separate opt-in at the end.
Timeline
- NowSurvey open. Aiming for 100+ respondents.
- +4 weeksAnalysis complete. Draft report shared with respondents for fact-check.
- +6 weeksPublic report and dataset released.
Help spread it
The bigger the sample size, the more useful the report. If you know other founders who built with these tools, please share: