Codemagic Pricing for a Lovable iOS App

Codemagic gives you 500 free macOS build minutes a month on an M2 Mac mini, one build at a time, and then charges $0.095 a minute (M4 machines are $0.114, Linux and Windows $0.045). That’s from Codemagic’s pricing page, checked October 30, 2026. For a Lovable app wrapped in Capacitor, it’s the easiest way to get an iOS build into TestFlight when you don’t own a Mac, and for most founders the free minutes cover a normal month.

The question people actually ask us is a little different, though. It’s “I have a Lovable app and a Windows laptop, how do I get it on the App Store?” Codemagic is one answer. There are three others worth knowing about, and one that people still search for but can’t buy.

What a month of builds costs

Say a Capacitor iOS build takes 12 minutes from clone to TestFlight upload: install packages, build the web app, npx cap sync ios, archive, sign, upload. That number is our assumption for a small app, not a benchmark. Your first builds will be slower while you fight signing.

Builds a month	Codemagic (M2, after 500 free min)	GitHub Actions macOS ($0.062/min)	Xcode Cloud (25 h included)
20 (240 min)	$0	$14.88	$0
60 (720 min)	$20.90	$44.64	$0
150 (1,800 min)	$123.50	$111.60	$49.99 for the 100 h plan

GitHub’s price is the standard macOS runner from its Actions runner pricing reference, before any free minutes your GitHub plan includes. Xcode Cloud prices are from Apple’s Xcode Cloud page: 25 compute hours a month come with the $99 Apple Developer Program membership, and the paid plans start at $49.99 a month for 100 hours.

Codemagic only costs more than GitHub above roughly 120 builds a month. Nobody shipping a Lovable app to the App Store does 150 iOS builds a month, so in practice it’s free or close to it. And Codemagic also has a fixed annual plan from $3,990 a year with unlimited minutes, which is for agencies, not you.

Decision tree for building a Lovable Capacitor app for iOS: Mac available leads to Xcode Cloud, no Mac leads to Codemagic, existing GitHub workflow leads to Actions, and Appflow is closed to new customers

Xcode Cloud is cheaper, but you need a Mac once

Apple’s 25 free hours is 125 of those 12-minute builds. That’s the cheapest option on the page by a distance.

The catch is setup. Apple says you configure the workflow in Xcode, so somebody needs a Mac at least for the afternoon you set it up. And Xcode Cloud doesn’t know anything about npm. A Capacitor project needs a ci_scripts/ci_post_clone.sh that installs Node, runs your build and npx cap sync ios before Xcode takes over. Twenty lines of shell, and the first three attempts fail because Homebrew’s Node isn’t on the PATH you expected. We’ve done it enough times to stop being annoyed by it. Mostly.

If you or a friend has a Mac, use Xcode Cloud. If not, read on.

Codemagic: the no-Mac route

Codemagic runs the whole thing on its Macs and handles signing for you if you give it an App Store Connect API key. The codemagic.yaml for a Lovable Capacitor app is short. The scripts part looks roughly like this:

scripts:
  - npm ci
  - npm run build
  - npx cap sync ios
  - xcode-project use-profiles
  - xcode-project build-ipa --project ios/App/App.xcodeproj --scheme App

New Capacitor 8 projects use Swift Package Manager, so it’s the .xcodeproj. An older app on CocoaPods builds the .xcworkspace instead, with a pod install step first. Mixing those two up is the most common first failure we see, along with a bundle id in Xcode that doesn’t match the one registered with Apple.

Two things on the free tier to know: builds run one at a time, and unused minutes don’t roll over. Neither matters for a founder shipping one app.

GitHub Actions: if your repo already lives there

Lovable syncs your code to GitHub, so Actions is right there. A macOS runner is $0.062 a minute, and Linux is $0.006, which makes Android builds almost free. You write and maintain the signing steps yourself (certificates and profiles as encrypted secrets), and that is the part that eats a day. We’d only pick it if you already have a developer who likes YAML.

What about Appflow?

Ionic’s Appflow was the default answer for Capacitor builds for years, and “appflow pricing” still gets searched. In February 2025 Ionic announced it stopped selling new subscriptions to its commercial products, Appflow included, with existing customers keeping access through December 31, 2027. So if you’re starting today, it isn’t an option, and if you’re on it, plan the move before 2027 rather than during the last week.

The part none of these do

Every service on this page builds what’s in your repo. None of them add the native features Apple wants to see in a wrapped web app, write your privacy labels or answer the reviewer when it comes back with guideline 4.2. Build minutes are the cheap part of getting a Lovable app into the stores.

If you’d rather have that done for you, we publish Lovable apps to the App Store and Google Play at fixed prices: $300, $600 or $1,000 depending on the number of screens, builds and submission included. Rejected already? The App Store rejection fix is $350 flat. Or just tell us about the app.