Board report17 Aug 2026

Framer and Firebase Studio debut straight into S tier

Two of this week's 34 new entries cleared the S tier bar on their first appearance. Neither one is competing for the same job as Lovable or Totalum.

By Nadia Brandt

Of the 34 tools added to the app builder board this week, two cleared the S tier bar on debut: Framer at 889 and Firebase Studio at 881.

Framer is not an app builder, and voters know it

Framer generates marketing sites and content pages, not database backed applications with authenticated users. It sits in S tier anyway because the brief for that specific job, a fast, distinctive site with a real CMS behind it, is close to solved. Voters compared it directly against the newer app builders on design and it held its own, which is the whole reason it earns a row on this board rather than sitting somewhere else entirely.

Firebase Studio brings a full IDE, not just a chat box

Firebase Studio is Google's cloud workspace: a real VS Code style editor and terminal sit next to the App Prototyping Agent, and Firebase and Genkit are wired in with no service account detour. That integrations story is what carries it into S tier despite a first render voters called competent rather than distinctive.

What this means for the rest of the board

Neither tool displaced Lovable, Totalum or Bolt.new, whose own scores did not move. The practical effect is on the tools just below them: see the roster expansion piece for which of the original 11 tools picked up new competition this week.

Check the numbers yourself

Every figure quoted here comes from the live board. The full dataset is public under a CC-BY licence, so you can verify a claim, disagree with it, or reweight the axes and get a different answer.

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