Mocha
Mocha was an AI-powered no-code builder that turned a plain-English description into a full-stack web app, with authentication, database, backend and hosting all included. The service was shut down on 1 August 2026 and no longer accepts new projects.
What is Mocha?
Mocha was an AI-powered full-stack web app builder published by Axilla, Inc., and it stopped operating on 1 August 2026. This entry therefore describes a product that can no longer be signed up for, bought or used; what follows is what it did while it ran. The premise was straightforward: describe the result you wanted in plain English, let an AI agent write the code, then publish in one click. Its central claim was that the output was a genuinely functional application rather than a mockup, with real user accounts, a real database and forms that submitted. What separated it from comparable builders was vertical integration, argued in its own documentation: Mocha is different than other AI powered website builders like lovable because it is fully integrated. It comes with built-in auth, database, backend, hosting. Nothing had to be wired to a third-party account. The stack was fixed rather than chosen: TypeScript and React on the front end, Hono endpoints running on a serverless backend, an SQLite database, and Cloudflare hosting. Two generation modes were available on every tier, Default and MAX Agent, the latter announced on 8 January 2026 and described as powered by the most capable Claude model. Discuss Mode handled conversational planning, could inspect the live application and could draft a product spec; Direct Edit Mode let users click an element and change it without spending credits. Around that sat prompt-based image generation, asset management, secrets for third-party APIs, Custom Knowledge for standing per-project instructions, custom Google Sign In, custom domains, Mocha Email, Mocha Analytics, version history and app duplication, with a dev mode exposing the code for direct editing or download. The lineage runs through Srcbook, a TypeScript notebook for developers that pivoted towards a general audience after Claude 3.5 Sonnet shipped in summer 2024; the rebrand to Mocha landed on 11 June 2025 and version 1.0 on 21 July 2025. The company was founded in 2023 by Nicholas Charriere and Ben Reinhart, went through Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch and employed seven people in San Francisco. Pricing was freemium, metered in credits. The shutdown was announced on 15 May 2026.
What it does
- Describe an application in plain English and get a working full-stack build
- Generate frontend, backend, database and authentication in a single pass
- Iterate by conversation, or click an element to edit it directly
- Plan a complex feature in Discuss Mode before having it built
- Publish in one click to a mocha.app subdomain or a custom domain
- Roll back to an earlier build through version history
- Download the source code and export the production database
When to use Mocha / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Mocha is the right fit.
When to use Mocha
- Non-technical founders who needed a genuinely working product rather than a clickable mockup, with real user accounts, a real database and forms that actually submitted
- Freelancers and creative professionals building client-facing tools around their craft, such as the photographer booking system the site used as its flagship example
- Product managers who wanted to turn a written spec into a live, clickable prototype in about an hour without taking an engineer off the roadmap
- Small business owners after a bespoke internal tool, a lightweight CRM, a client portal or a tracker, instead of another generic SaaS subscription
- Anyone who preferred one vertically integrated tool over assembling authentication, a database and hosting from three separate providers
When not to use Mocha
- Anyone starting a project today: the service was switched off on 1 August 2026, so nothing new can be built, bought or published on it
- Teams that need native mobile apps, since Mocha produced responsive web applications only, with no .ipa or .apk and no App Store or Google Play release
- Developers with an opinionated stack, because TypeScript, React, Hono and SQLite were imposed and could not be swapped
- Anyone who has to deploy to Vercel, Netlify or their own infrastructure, or to keep a project in sync with GitHub, none of which was supported
- Organisations with formal EU data protection requirements: no GDPR reference, no data processing agreement, no sub-processor list and no Article 27 representative appear anywhere on the site
How to use Mocha
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account through Continue with Google, Continue with GitHub, or an emailed magic link
- Type a description of the app into the What do you want to build? field on the home page
- Let the agent generate the complete application and review the result in the preview, switching between desktop (1440px), tablet (768px) and mobile (480px) viewports
- Refine by conversation, or switch to Direct Edit Mode to change a piece of text with a click
- Use Discuss Mode to plan a feature before building it, and Max Mode for the more complex tasks
- Add third-party API keys as secrets through the chat's secure forms, never by pasting them into the conversation itself
- Set Custom Knowledge, the standing instructions on writing style or terminology injected into every conversation on the project
- Publish from the Publish button in the header, on a mocha.app subdomain (paid tiers) or on a connected custom domain
- Connect an existing domain through Entri, or buy one through IONOS
- Retrieve the work with the code download button, or through Settings and Export for a complete zip; get help on the community Discord or at support@getmocha.com, with priority support on Bronze, Silver and Gold
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Vertical integration: authentication, database, backend and hosting came with the product, an argument the site set explicitly against rivals that require connecting a service such as Supabase
- Output that went beyond the prototype stage, with working accounts, databases and forms rather than a front end alone
- No lock-in on the code, which could be downloaded at any time, alongside a complete export of the production database
- One-click publishing on a supplied subdomain, with custom domains and connection assistance on paid tiers
- MAX Agent available from the free tier, and Direct Edit Mode costing no credits for text corrections
- Substantial documentation with concrete integration guides, and a published, readable price grid where subscription credits rolled over up to twice the monthly allowance
- A managed exit, unusually so: an export tool shipped, one-click migration to Anything, USD 20 of credits offered on the receiving platform and founder-level support up to the final day
Cons
- The service was shut down on 1 August 2026, a drawback that overrides every other consideration for anyone evaluating the tool today
- No native mobile applications: web only, with no .ipa, no .apk and no app store distribution
- Imposed stack and imposed deployment target, with no escape route to Vercel or Netlify and no GitHub synchronisation
- No Figma import, no full drag-and-drop editor and no choice of AI model, the publisher making those decisions on the user's behalf
- A minimal privacy policy of seven sections dated 11 November 2024, silent on GDPR, retention periods, hosting countries, sub-processors and model training
- No postal address published, no contact page or contact form, no data processing agreement and no EU representative
- Analytics capped at 10 days of history on every tier, including Gold at USD 200 per month, and credit consumption varying with request complexity, which made the cost per change hard to anticipate
Pricing & Plans
Mocha ran on a freemium model. A permanent free Starter tier provided 20 starting credits, no custom domain, 10 emails per month and 10 days of analytics. The cheapest paid entry point was Bronze at USD 20 per month, or USD 220 per year, for 1,500 monthly credits, with Silver at USD 50 per month and Gold at USD 200 per month above it. As of 24 August 2026 the price grid is still displayed but nothing on it can be bought: the pricing page states Paid plan purchases are no longer available. Existing subscriptions continued at their current rate until 1 August 2026, with no charge after that date and automatic cancellation on it.
- free
- 20 starting credits
- no custom domain
- 10 emails per month
- 10 days of analytics
- included building apps of any size
- publishing them and access to Mocha's AI. Presented by the site as the best way to get started with Mocha
- USD 20 per month or USD 220 per year
- 1
- 500 credits per month
- 5 custom domains
- 500 emails per month
- 10 days of analytics
- adds Max mode. Positioned for individuals who needed additional features
- USD 50 per month or USD 550 per year
- 4
- 500 credits per month
- 15 custom domains
- 2
- 500 emails per month
- 10 days of analytics
- adds custom login and branding plus priority support
- USD 200 per month or USD 2
- 100 per year
- 20
- 000 credits per month
- 25 custom domains
- 10
- 000 emails per month
- 10 days of analytics
- USD 20 each on Bronze (one maximum)
- USD 15 on Silver (up to seven)
- USD 14.25 on Gold (up to twenty-one). Subscription credits renewed monthly and rolled over up to twice the allowance
- purchased or granted credits never expired
- paid plan purchases stopped when the service was sunset on 1 August 2026
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Mocha handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no GDPR implementation to report. The term GDPR appears nowhere on the site: not on the home page, the privacy policy, the terms, the platform rules or the documentation. No Article 27 representative is designated and no data protection officer is named. No data processing agreement is published or offered, and no sub-processor list exists. No right of access, rectification or erasure is stated in those terms; the closest provision is that a user may review or change their account information, or terminate the account, by contacting the publisher. Governing law is that of the State of California, with jurisdiction in the state or federal courts of Contra Costa County. The privacy contact is privacy@getmocha.com. The privacy policy is dated 11 November 2024 and the terms 18 November 2024, and neither was updated when the service closed.
Who owns the data?
The terms of service left ownership of the output with the user: You retain ownership of the applications you create using our Services, subject to our underlying intellectual property rights in the Services. Axilla, Inc. kept the intellectual property in the Site and the Services themselves. That ownership was practically enforceable rather than merely stated: the generated code could be downloaded at any time from the app header, and the shutdown shipped an export tool under Settings, producing a zip of the code, the production database, the application's own end users and links to public assets. The privacy policy, only seven sections long, says nothing about data ownership beyond the user account.
Reuse rights
Users could reuse everything they built without asking permission. The terms grant ownership of the applications created with the Services, and the site confirmed the code could be downloaded at any time to be reloaded into another tool such as Cursor or Windsurf, with no clause restricting commercial use of the result. On the provider's side, the privacy policy, effective 11 November 2024 and never revised since, states that Mocha collected personal data volunteered by the user, chiefly the email address, and used it to create and manage the account, send account or site-update emails, improve the site's efficiency and operation, and carry out other necessary business activities. Disclosure was reserved for legal obligation or the protection of rights, property or safety. Administrative, technical and physical safeguards are claimed, with an explicit caveat that no measure is infallible. No page on the site mentions training AI models on customer data. The site's HTML carried Plausible, Google Ads gtag, Meta Pixel, Twitter conversion tracking, Sentry and Rewardful trackers.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Applications built with Mocha were hosted on Cloudflare infrastructure, and only there. The documentation is explicit: We support publishing to our own infrastructure only which is hosted on Cloudflare. Publishing to an external platform such as Vercel or Netlify was expressly refused, and public apps were served from *.mocha.app subdomains or from a connected custom domain. Beyond the name Cloudflare, the site names no hosting country and no hosting region: the jurisdiction in which user and application data physically sat is never stated anywhere. The site's own resolved IP address, 104.18.21.81, is a Cloudflare anycast node (AS13335) and locates nothing. No compliance certification is displayed, with no mention of SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA. The privacy policy limits itself to claiming administrative, technical and physical safeguards, without describing any of them. For a reader subject to European data rules, that leaves the essential questions unanswered: where the data rested, under what transfer mechanism, and with which sub-processors.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Mocha.
- The service closed on 1 August 2026: no sign-up, no new project and no purchase is possible, so every capability described here should be read as historical
- The migration link to Anything and the export tool were guaranteed for only 30 days after the shutdown, a window closing at the end of August 2026; anyone who has not exported their code and database by then risks losing the work entirely
- The site is still online and still displays the full price grid, which no longer corresponds to anything purchasable, an easy trap for a reader arriving from a search engine
- The legal documents were never updated (privacy policy 11 November 2024, terms 18 November 2024) and say nothing about what becomes of user accounts or application data once the service is gone
- Complete silence on the GDPR, on model training, on retention periods and on sub-processors, with no postal address and no contact page: three email addresses were the only route to the publisher
- A wider risk with agent-built software: letting a tool write, host and deploy the whole stack can leave a user with a product they do not understand. When the platform disappears, as it did here, the ability to maintain, secure or debug that code has to be found somewhere else at short notice
- Two details worth keeping in mind: the Y Combinator directory lists the company as Acquired while the site speaks only of a sunset, and the domain getmocha.com was registered on 17 February 2011, long before the company was founded in 2023, making it a second-hand domain
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. Nothing to install, everything ran in the browser, and sign-up went through Google, GitHub or an emailed magic link. The first application was generated from one sentence with no configuration, the product being designed for zero technical background, with technical choices made on the user's behalf. A landing page took minutes; the documentation put a serious project at one to two hours. Only three steps got technical: connecting a custom domain (assisted by Entri), adding third-party API keys as secrets, and creating a Google OAuth client. Help came from a Discord community, email support and video tutorials.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Mocha
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Mocha.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mocha still running?
What happened to applications already built on Mocha?
What exactly was Mocha?
Did you need to know how to code to use it?
Could you build native mobile apps with it?
What technology stack did it generate?
Did you own the applications you built?
What did it cost, and what was a credit?
Was GDPR compliance covered?
Who published Mocha, and how could the company be contacted?
Should you pick Mocha?
Mocha was a coherent product with a defensible idea: full vertical integration, applications that actually worked rather than front-end mockups, and no lock-in on the code, which could be downloaded or exported in full at any moment. For a non-technical founder or a product manager wanting a live prototype by the end of the afternoon, that combination was genuinely useful, and the documentation and integration guides were better than the category average. None of that is available any more. The service was shut down on 1 August 2026, three months after the announcement, and the founders were unusually candid about why: high acquisition costs, an expensive unit economy driven by AI token spend, heavy support costs, and a funding round they could not close. The exit was handled far better than this sector usually manages. Three months of notice, a working export tool covering both code and production database, an identified and tested destination platform in Anything with credits offered to anyone migrating, and founder-level support until the last day. Users who acted in time kept their work; those who did not are up against a 30-day post-shutdown window that closes at the end of August 2026. As it stands on 24 August 2026, this entry documents a tool with historical and comparative value and no remaining practical use. A reader who arrived here looking for something to build with should note that the publisher itself points to Anything as the successor, and that the site's own comparison pages name Lovable, Bolt.new, Replit, v0, Bubble and Webflow as the field Mocha was measuring itself against. The price grid still visible on getmocha.com corresponds to nothing that can be purchased.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.