bolt.diy

Dyad and bolt.diy are both free, open-source AI app builders, and both let you pick your own AI model, including local ones. The difference is what you install and where your app lives. Dyad is a desktop app: it runs your app on your computer and saves it as a normal folder there. bolt.diy, the open-source project that grew out of Bolt.new, is a web app you start yourself and use in your browser, and it also comes as a desktop build. Either way, it runs your app in a browser sandbox and saves your work in the browser's storage.

Dyad vs bolt.diy at a Glance

What Each Difference Means

• Getting started. You install Dyad like any desktop app, install Node.js, and connect an AI model. A banner on Dyad's home screen shows which of those setup steps are left. bolt.diy's setup guide starts in a terminal, with or without Docker. Its desktop build skips the terminal, but it's still v1.0.0, so it doesn't have the features added on GitHub since. Running bolt.diy from a terminal also lets you host it on a server and open it from any browser, which Dyad, as a desktop app, doesn't do.

• Where your project is saved. Each Dyad app is a folder on your disk, and every AI edit is a Git commit you can restore. You can open that folder in VS Code or Cursor whenever you like, then come back to Dyad. bolt.diy saves your chats and file snapshots in the browser's own storage. If you clear the site's data, they're gone unless you pushed them to GitHub or exported a ZIP first, and they don't follow you to another browser or computer. Its Sync Files button (Chrome and Edge) copies your code to a folder, but only one way: edits you make there don't flow back into bolt.diy.

• Where your app runs. bolt.diy's browser sandbox keeps a bad package away from the rest of your computer. The cost is that packages with parts built for your operating system, rather than JavaScript, won't load there. Dyad runs your app with Node.js like any project on your computer, so those packages work. That's less isolation than a sandbox, so Dyad installs every package through Socket Firewall, which blocks known malicious packages before they install.

• AI models. bolt.diy has more providers built in. Dyad can also build with a ChatGPT or Claude Code plan you already pay for (Claude Code is experimental), where bolt.diy's cloud providers each need their own key. A ChatGPT plan and the OpenAI API are billed separately, so this saves you paying for both. In Agent mode, Dyad charges up to 1.5 of its AI credits per million tokens on top of the plan (Pro's $20 a month includes 200 credits).

Is bolt.diy Completely Free?

Yes. bolt.diy is free under the MIT license. You pay your AI provider for cloud models, or nothing for a local model. If you host it on a server, you pay for the server. A for-profit company that uses it in production, for its staff or customers, also needs a commercial WebContainers license; prototypes don't.

Dyad is free too. Building with your own API key has no Dyad message limit. Agent mode, where the AI also reads your code and fixes its own errors, is free for 20 messages per 24 hours, and the optional Pro plan adds AI credits.

Who Dyad Is For

Dyad fits you if you'd rather not run a builder from a terminal, want your project in a folder that doesn't depend on your browser, or already pay for ChatGPT or Claude and want to build with that plan. Download Dyad to try it. Coming from bolt.diy? Tell us on r/dyadbuilders what you'd want Dyad to do next.

Sources

bolt.diy's README, documentation and code for storage and Sync Files, and the GitHub release lists for both projects, read October 8, 2026.