HeyPuter open-sourced Builder, an Apache 2.0 alternative to Lovable, Replit and v0, and it took 105 stars in two days

A team looking at Lovable, Replit and v0 has, up to this week, been choosing between three closed products. HeyPuter released Builder on 21 September 2026, an Apache-2.0 licensed AI website and application builder that describes itself in its own README as "an open-source alternative to Lovable, Replit, v0, and similar platforms". The repository on GitHub reports 105 stars and 24 forks measured on 23 September, two days after its first commit, with the most recent push at 22:14 UTC on 22 September.

HeyPuter has run the Puter open-source browser operating system for several years. Builder is a new subproject that sits on top of it and turns a plain-language prompt into a hosted website or web application inside the browser, with the storage, database, authentication, hosting and AI calls served by the Puter.js runtime.

What the template does

The README lists what a user can do without writing code: describe a website or application in plain language and get a running one back; ask for changes through chat, or click an element in the live preview and describe the change; save versions and roll back; publish the finished project to a public URL. HeyPuter says the apps built this way "run securely and scale effortlessly without requiring you to manage infrastructure or API keys", with everything served through Puter.js.

The pitch on the batteries is the more concrete part. HeyPuter says Puter.js provides authentication, storage, databases, AI, networking, realtime capabilities and serverless functions inside one runtime, so a Builder-produced application has those services wired in from the first request and does not need a separate cloud account. A live demo runs at builder.puter.com.

Where the source stops

The trade-off with a batteries-included platform is what the batteries assume. HeyPuter says the apps run "on Puter's Open-source Internet OS technology", so a project built inside Builder inherits that runtime. Moving it to a different backend later is not a matter of copying the JavaScript out: the storage, auth and database calls it made through Puter.js have to be rewritten against whatever replaces them.

For a team evaluating this against the closed builders, three questions matter more than the star count. Does the model that generates the code produce something a human can read and change? What happens when the AI is wrong: is the fix a plain-language followup, a manual edit in the preview, or a fork of the repository? And is the Puter runtime the right dependency to inherit for the specific project, or is a closed builder that lets you export code closer to the finish line?

The Reveneau read: an open template is worth more than a closed product when the licence lets a serious team read the source, fix a bug the vendor has not fixed, and keep running the build after the vendor loses interest. 105 stars in two days is early interest rather than proven adoption, so the honest way to price this option is to try it on a real brief and see whether the output is something you would keep.

Source

HeyPuter, builder repository README and live demo, star count and repository timestamps read from the GitHub REST API on 23 September 2026.