50,000,000 Lovable projects can't be wrong

On LinkedIn I saw a graphic celebrating the runaway success of the vibe-coding app Lovable. 50 million projects! Unsure if it said they had all shipped or if they just sat at some indeterminate stage of completion. Either way, the news was shared, and received, as though this metric were valuable. It is not.

Conveniently, a similar graphic has also been making the rounds which shows that the number of app store submissions has skyrocketed, while the number of apps downloaded and reviewed has remained flat, or even declined slightly. On one hand we have the power of building any app your imagination can conjure, and on the other we have the reception for these apps. Which number do you think is more indicative of their value?

The Lovable graphic also suggested that 35% of projects were generating revenue. That’s over a third, or around 16,666,667 revenue-generating apps made in Lovable. First question, prove it. I just don’t believe this number on its face. But extending the courtesy of assuming that nobody would lie about this kind of thing, at the very least one must think that this number has been tortured to within an inch of its life. Who knows how, but certainly an app that earns one cent would count as “generating revenue,” and I wouldn’t put it past them to be presenting an average as a percentage or something like that.

Again though, even if the huge spike in submitted apps can be said to track with Lovable projects (and other vibe-coded horrors), you’re telling me that this is creating revenue that wouldn’t have existed otherwise? Who’s paying for these apps? What are they doing with them? Have you, yourself, used a Lovable project that was worth your time and money?

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!