Base44 free-plan review: a 3D game with real logins in under five minutes

The test is our standard one: Synth Drift, a Three.js synthwave runner, from a single prompt. Base44 planned, wrote the engine, the HUD and the pages, built, then played the game in its own preview to check it. Four minutes thirty-two seconds, send to done.

The first render was a white blur: the glow was cranked so hard the road was invisible. One fix prompt, tone the bloom down, and fifty-five seconds later the game played: road, sun, obstacles. A cosmetic fix; nothing was broken. Cost so far: one credit.

Then the backend: register and log in, every run saved, a global top ten, a private history, access rules enforced on the server. Base44 used its own auth and database, wrote two backend functions and a row-level rule, and tested the whole flow itself. Four minutes, five seconds.

To test it with real users, we published with one click to a public base44.app address. Player one registered, played and crashed; the run saved, the top ten showed it, and My History listed only his runs and survived reload and logout. Player two saw both scores on the leaderboard and only his own history.

Three prompts in, the meter showed 3.8 of 25 monthly credits spent, and 3.8 of the 5 daily ones. Enough for that day, but one more real prompt and the day is over. The daily cap is not on the pricing page.

Signup was email, password and a six-digit code: about two minutes, no phone, no card. Day one greeted us with a service-issue banner and a 30%-off countdown.

What you own on free: you can read every file of your app, and your app stays live. Editing code, export and GitHub start on paid, with GitHub at $40 a month and badge removal at $16. This is a prototype home, not a code generator.

Our verdict: the free plan built a playable 3D game with a real backend in under five minutes, and the backend worked the first time. The catches are the five-credit daily cap and that your code stays on Base44, with no editing or export on free.