Svante Gullichsen via Lovable
- Barclays analysts spotted significant traffic declines lately for vibe coding sites.Lovable is among the services seeing big drops, according to Barclays data.The slump happened after a period of hype earlier this year.
The AI-fueled vibe coding boom, in which anyone can create an app or website with a few text prompts, may already be losing steam.
New research from Barclays shows that traffic to some of the buzziest services, including Lovable and Vercel's v0, has slumped after peaking earlier this year.
Google Trends data analyzed by Barclays tells the same story: a summer surge followed by a slowdown.
Barclays Research, Google Trends
The drop-off raises tough questions for startups that flaunted exponential annual recurring revenue growth just months ago. Analysts wrote that much of that revenue comes from month-to-month subscribers who may churn as quickly as they signed up, putting the durability of those flashy numbers in doubt.
"This waning traffic begs the question on whether app/site vibecoding has peaked out already or has just had a bit of a lull before interest ramps up," Barclays analysts wrote in a recent note to investors.
While these young companies have disclosed surging ARR, they could have "questionable economics," the analysts wrote, noting that sales gains like this could come from short-term subscribers who might not stick around. (ARR is a common industry metric that extrapolates monthly revenue streams into an annualized figure.)
Barclays/Company Social Media/The Information/Vercel/Base44/Replit/Lovable/Bolt.
Back in August, I warned you about "inference whales" messing with the business models of vibe coding services. Heavy users racked up huge costs, forcing some leading startups to raise prices and make other changes to avoid big losses.
Raising prices can dent user growth, that's for sure. The Barclays note highlighted recent traffic declines at several top vibe coding sites:
- Lovable, which hit $100 million ARR in June, is down 40%.Vercel's v0 has seen visits plunge 64% since May, according to data Barclays shared with investors this week. (Vercel recently put security measures in place to prevent unauthorized bot access to v0 outputs, so this may have contributed to some traffic decline.)Bolt.new slipped 27% since June.Even Replit, one of the more resilient players, has cooled, with traffic slipping slightly.
Barclays Research, SimilarWeb
Eric Simons, CEO of Bolt.new, told me recently that vibe coding services are seeing higher customer churn and need to expand into stickier offerings.
Indeed, in August Bolt.new rolled out new features and an updated subscription aimed at keeping customers engaged for longer.
"This is the problem across all these companies right now. The churn rate for everyone is really high," Simons said. "You have to build a retentive business."
Don't write off vibe coding yet, though. The tools, which blur the line between drag-and-drop builders and full-on coding, are still in the experimental stage. They're most popular with AI-native early adopters, who use them to sketch out ideas but often hit a wall when the code gets messy. For mass-market users, that last 5% of polish remains a potential sticking point.
Barclays Research, Google Trends
Legacy players still see potential. Wix bet on vibe coding to expand its market with its recent acquisition of Base44, an AI-native site builder. Rivals like GoDaddy are also eyeing the field.
"It seems to us that 'everyday' consumers are still very much in the experimentation stage of AI chat interfaces such as ChatGPT, let alone having familiarity or experimenting with adjacent 'vibe coding' solutions," the Barclays analysts wrote.
Vibe coding might not topple traditional web tools anytime soon. It's not going away either. Expect it to stay part of the AI conversation well into 2026.
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