I wanted to compare V0 and Replit, which are both tools that you can use to create software in a browser IDE environment, via an AI chat bot, which will also deploy your code for you to a URL. This post compares my experience with each for the same task. I used the desktop version of each, though both have mobile apps (v0 only for Apple, not Android).
Example Project
The prompt given to each was:
create an app that uses the spotify api to get a song, when given a voice command to get a song of a faster or slower tempo than the current song
The reason I used Spotify is that it does provide the tempo of a song, whereas SoundCloud for example does not - see my other post comparing the two APIs.
I also kept the prompt pretty vague, so wanted to see how it would fill in the gaps - for example, was there an an initial song, and how would it get songs?
The process, after entering the prompt in to each one:
| Replit | V0 | |
|---|---|---|
| prompt process | no questions throughout | had optoins to choose from while prompting, explained that some Spotify endpoints were deprecated and provided alternative |
| stack | Express, React, Vite, PostgreSQL, Tailwind, shadcn\ui | Next.js, React, Tailwind, shadcn/ui |
| name of app | Tempo Tuner then TempoShift | Tempo DJ for project, Spotify song finder for code project |
| does it work | UI works, but not everything | UI works, but not everything |
| model | Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet | often Claude-based, uses Vercel API |
| monitoring | On the console only in an IDE tab, I think | Logs and deployment info on vercel.com page |
v0 UI
Replit UI:
More Generally
Of note is that v0 is known for making UIs - and comparing the two more generally, not just for this project:
| Replit | V0 | |
|---|---|---|
| deployment | IDE that deploys | creates code but need vercel to deploy |
| usual stack | many languages and frameworks | React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, does not typically create backend code - you add Next.js routes, external db services, serverless functions etc |
To note is that:
- Vercel also created Next.js.
- The use of Tailwind CSS and shadcn makes sense for AI - shadcn/ui allows you to edit component code rather than use a library, and tailwind makes styling composable text which AI is good at
- I asked replit to create a fitbit watch face - which requires a very certain stack, the fitbit sdk - and it simply said it would make me a web app for this, which was disappointing. For this, things which assist coding, rather than generate entire apps, are better, such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot etc.