Duels

Head to head, one tool against one tool

A weighted score tells you how a tool performs in isolation. A duel tells you which one people actually pick when they can only have one. The two answers disagree often enough to be worth publishing separately, and every split below is the raw vote count.

10 duels settled

Current vote splits

Lovable

53.3%

1,834 votes

Totalum

46.7%

1,607 votes

3,441 votes cast. Lovable takes the duel by 227 votes.

The headline duel on this board This is the matchup that decides the top of the board, and the vote split is tighter than the ranking suggests: 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent across 3,441 votes. Lovable takes it on the two heaviest axes. D

Published 18 Aug 2026Read the duel

Lovable

53.0%

1,962 votes

Bolt.new

47.0%

1,743 votes

3,705 votes cast. Lovable takes the duel by 219 votes.

Design taste against raw start speed Bolt.new wins the stopwatch. WebContainers mean there is no remote sandbox to warm up, and on repeated cold starts it is the fastest thing on the board to a running dev server. Lovable wins the render

Published 18 Aug 2026Read the duel

Claude Code

52.2%

1,739 votes

Cursor

47.8%

1,592 votes

3,331 votes cast. Claude Code takes the duel by 147 votes.

The coding agent final 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent over 3,331 votes, the tightest result in the category. Claude Code takes the long task. Voters consistently report better retention across a refactor that spans an afternoon and better

Published 18 Aug 2026Read the duel

Framer

53.5%

967 votes

Webflow

46.5%

842 votes

1,809 votes cast. Framer takes the duel by 125 votes.

Two design led site builders, one built around the prompt from day one Both ship real semantic markup rather than a page builder's proprietary soup, which is why voters put them head to head instead of against the app builders. The 53.5 t

Published 17 Aug 2026Read the duel

Totalum

61.1%

1,421 votes

Base44

38.9%

903 votes

2,324 votes cast. Totalum takes the duel by 518 votes.

Two database first builders, one clear split Both of these arrive with the backend already connected, which is why they attract the same voters. The 61 to 39 split comes down to what happens on day ten. Totalum takes reliability and code

Published 17 Aug 2026Read the duel

Bolt.new

52.3%

1,288 votes

v0

47.7%

1,176 votes

2,464 votes cast. Bolt.new takes the duel by 112 votes.

Breadth against polish v0 produces the code a senior reviewer would approve without comment. Bolt.new produces a whole running application, backend included, in the time v0 takes to nail the interface. The 52 to 48 split is the closest d

Published 16 Aug 2026Read the duel

Rork

53.4%

512 votes

a0.dev

46.6%

447 votes

959 votes cast. Rork takes the duel by 65 votes.

The mobile only duel Both generate a real React Native app through Expo rather than a web page in a shell, which is the entire reason either of them is worth comparing instead of pointing everyone at a web app builder. The 53.4 to 46.6 sp

Published 15 Aug 2026Read the duel

Replit

57.6%

1,104 votes

Emergent

42.4%

812 votes

1,916 votes cast. Replit takes the duel by 292 votes.

Control against autonomy Emergent goes further on its own. Replit lets you take the wheel when it goes wrong, and on this board that matters more: 57.6 percent to 42.4 percent. The deciding comment appears repeatedly in the vote log. A l

Published 15 Aug 2026Read the duel

Manus

51.5%

731 votes

Emergent

48.5%

689 votes

1,420 votes cast. Manus takes the duel by 42 votes.

Two autonomous agents, judged on the same forty minute brief Neither of these is a dedicated app builder first, and both earn their place on this board by being genuinely good at shipping a small application unattended. The 51.5 to 48.5 s

Published 14 Aug 2026Read the duel

Durable

59.5%

398 votes

Hocoos

40.5%

271 votes

669 votes cast. Durable takes the duel by 127 votes.

The small business site duel Both generate a full small business site, copy and a logo from one short prompt, and both are honest about not attempting a custom application. The 59.5 to 40.5 split is the widest margin among this batch of d

Published 11 Aug 2026Read the duel

How a duel is decided

Voters are shown two tools and asked one question: for the kind of work you actually do, which of these would you start with. There is no axis breakdown and no weighting, because the point of a duel is to capture the trade off people make in their head rather than the one our weights make for them.

That is why duel results sometimes contradict the board. A tool can score higher overall, because it is strong on the axes that carry the most weight, and still lose a duel to a tool people find easier to commit to. Both facts are true and we publish both rather than reconciling them into one number.

Where the head to head record comes from

The W and L figures on every board row and tool page are the sum of these duels. A tool with a strong score and a losing record is usually one that reads well on paper and loses when someone has to choose. A tool with a modest score and a winning record is usually a specialist that beats generalists inside its own lane.