What differs from the hosted service

The honest version of this comparison, which is that the difference is mostly operations rather than features. There is no reduced build of the builder: the source that runs app.vibld.com is the source in the repository.

The same either way

• Generation, iteration, standing instructions and style direction.
• Running a project in a sandbox, sharing it, and revoking the share.
• Exporting the project, and pushing it to a repository as a branch and a pull request.
• Saving your work, connecting Git, bringing your own model keys, and exporting. None of these is behind a paid plan, by policy and not by accident.

What you take on by running your own

• The provider bill. You pay the model provider directly, at their rates, with no plan in between. For one person this is usually cheaper. It is also uncapped unless you set the ceilings yourself.
• Setting those ceilings. The deployment-wide daily ceiling ships with a default that is a starting point, not a measured figure. Nobody else is going to notice a runaway loop on your account.
• Migrations. Every schema change has to be applied before the Worker that expects it is deployed. Getting this backwards takes the deployment down.
• Secret rotation, for the provider key, the Clerk keys, and the two internal shared secrets.
• Sandbox capacity. Queueing, expiry and cleanup are yours to watch.

What the hosted service is actually selling

Not the code. It is the operating: a provider key that is topped up, a sandbox fleet somebody is watching, migrations applied in the right order, a spend ceiling tuned against real usage rather than a guess, and somebody to ask when it breaks.

If you would rather do that yourself, the source is there and it is meant to be run. If you would rather not, that is what a plan buys. Either way the project you build is a conventional codebase you can pick up and take elsewhere.

Things only the hosted service has

• Billing and plans. Stripe integration exists in the source, but a self-hosted copy with no Stripe configuration simply has no billing: everyone gets whatever Free-tier allowance you set.
• Publishing to a vibld URL. Self-hosted, this becomes publishing to your own domain, which is a different thing wearing the same button.
• Referral credit. It pays out of the hosted service’s own ledger, so it is meaningless without one.

What the terms say

The licence covering the core, the templates and what you generate is set out on the Open-Source Notices page. This page is a description of how the two deployments differ in practice, not a statement of what you are permitted to do.