Bubble app hitting its limits? What to do next
When to keep scaling your Bubble app and when to rebuild in code, what a migration involves, and realistic costs.
By the v1build engineering team · Published · 5 min read
Bubble has launched thousands of real businesses. Unlike code-generating builders, a Bubble app lives inside Bubble: you can’t export it as source code. That shapes the decision when things start to strain.
Optimise or rebuild?
| Keep improving it in Bubble if | Rebuild in code if |
|---|---|
| Slowness comes from a few heavy workflows | Costs rise faster than revenue as usage grows |
| Your team edits it daily and that speed matters | You need features or integrations Bubble can’t support well |
| Investors aren’t asking about the stack | Enterprise customers ask for security reviews you can’t answer |
What a rebuild involves
Because there is no code to export, a rebuild is a new build that copies the behaviour of the old one. The good news: the hard product decisions are already made, so it goes faster than the original.
- Map every page, workflow and data type in the Bubble app.
- Export data through Bubble’s data export or API.
- Rebuild the backend and interface in a conventional stack.
- Migrate users and data, with a cut-over plan and a rollback.
- Run in parallel briefly before switching off the old app.
Time and cost
| App size | Typical time | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Small (under 20 pages) | 3 – 4 weeks | $8,000 – $15,000 |
| Medium | 4 – 8 weeks | $15,000 – $30,000 |
| Optimise in Bubble instead | 1 – 2 weeks | $2,000 – $5,000 |
If you’re looking to hire Bubble developers for optimisation rather than a rebuild, we can tell you honestly whether that is the better spend.