Bolt, Lovable, Replit, and Cursor — what we looked for when prototyping with commercial teammates, and how each tool stacks up for sharing, handoff, and ease of use.
With AI tools making it easier to spin up high-fidelity prototypes, we wanted to quickly test ideas with our commercial team. But which tool fits best? We looked for something:
• Easy for both tech and non-tech teammates to use
• Shareable across teams and with external testers
• Simple to hand off to the engineering team
• Free to try out
Here's my take after trying a few:
Bolt
• Fast and prompt-friendly.
• It auto-generates interactions and works best when using official Figma libraries (like MUI).
• Full access to generated code.
• Enables one-click deployment to platforms like Netlify — shareable via generated URLs.
• However, it doesn't grab as many graphic elements (such as the logo PNG in the design) and visual editing after generation is limited.
• A non-technical person can use this, but it's not the most intuitive.
Lovable
• Grabs visual components from screenshots; feels easy to a designer.
• Allows direct post-generation visual editing — great for polishing visuals.
• Offers easy deployment options with shareable links.
• Allows code export; integrates with GitHub for version control and collaboration.
• But it doesn't add basic interactions (such as highlighting a button on hover), and can feel more design-heavy than flow-focused.
Replit
• Surprisingly great for fast idea-to-prototype workflows, especially if code is involved.
• Supports real-time collaboration and integrates with GitHub.
• It debugs and improves prompts well.
• Supports over 50 programming languages.
• Deployment is easy for a non-technical user — just press a button.
• Easy to share with others before and after deployment, internally and externally, with just a link.
• But it gets fragile with feature-heavy projects, and design fidelity is basic.
Cursor
• Built on VS Code — supports direct code edit and natural-language prompts.
• Great for high-level control of code files.
• Deployment is not as easy for a non-technical user.
• Projects can be shared with team members for collaborative development. Not easy to share with external users in the prototype phase.
Figma Make (on our radar)
It's new! We haven't tested it yet — but we're excited. The idea of combining Figma's design depth with generative UI sounds powerful. Stay tuned.
Summary
All four tools are free to start with.
• Bolt: Ideal for teams who are comfortable with natural-language prompts and have a simple design to start with.
• Lovable: Best suited for non-technical users who also need a high level of control over visuals.
• Replit: Great for non-technical users to start simple prototypes and share with external users — but more tailored to technical teams that need a robust coding environment with real-time collaboration.
• Cursor: Ideal for development teams seeking an AI-enhanced code editor.
Which hi-fi prototyping tool are you using?
