Lightning AI Studios vs StackBlitz
Lightning AI Studios
lightning.ai
StackBlitz
stackblitz.comSide by side
| Figure | Lightning AI Studios | StackBlitz |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 9 | 8 |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 9.3 (#6) | 9.4 (#2) |
| Documentation depth | Documentation includes platform guides, CLI references, SDK references, AI Studio tutorials, deployment, cluster and organization material. | Official documentation includes guides, Codeflow, API reference, WebContainers, Teams, Enterprise, browser configuration and troubleshooting sections. |
| Founded | Lightning AI says founder William Falcon started the company in 2019 with Luis Capelo when it was called Grid.ai. | 2017 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Funding news | On June 27, 2022, Lightning AI announced a $40 million Series B led by Coatue with Index Ventures participating. | Contrary Research reports a $105 million Series B announced in January 2025, bringing reported total funding to about $135 million. |
| Integrations | The Studio documentation describes connecting S3 buckets and EFS volumes through Lightning Drive and importing models from Hugging Face and GitHub. | Its integrations page lists a Figma plugin, a Storybook addon, and a browser userscript that opens GitHub projects in Codeflow. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 4 reviews | 4.3 out of 5 from 99 reviews. |
| Rating on Trustpilot | 2.8 out of 5 from 6 reviews | 2.6 out of 5 from 4 reviews. |
| Support | Lightning lists email, Discord, and Twitter as support channels, and a dedicated Slack channel for enterprise support. | The site links to StackBlitz Community, documentation, and Enterprise Sales for support and contact. |
| What it does | AI Studio is a persistent collaborative GPU workspace for training, inference, coding, agents and AI applications. | StackBlitz is a browser-based full-stack JavaScript IDE powered by WebContainers, which run Node.js inside the browser. |
Plans
Lightning AI Studios
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Pro$20 a month
- Pro (annual)$20 a month
- Pro (monthly)$50 a month
- Teams$119 a month
- Teams (annual)$119 a month
- Teams (monthly)$140 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
StackBlitz
- Personal+Price not published
- Enterprise ServerPrice not published
- PersonalFree
- PersonalFree
- Pro$25 a month
- Teams$60 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Enterprise & Self-hostedPriced on request
In their own words
Lightning AI Studios
Lightning AI Studios is a cloud workspace for training models, running inference, building agents and AI apps, and coding collaboratively. Its persistent environments save installed packages, custom Python versions, and downloaded files. Studios offer browser-accessible VS Code and JupyterLab, plus AI copilots for AI and machine-learning work, including CUDA and PyTorch debugging. Teams can collaborate in real time on private projects, use a full-stack runtime, and deploy full-stack applications. Users can connect S3 buckets and EFS volumes through Lightning Drive, import models from Hugging Face and GitHub, or connect local IDEs such as VS Code, Cursor, and PyCharm over SSH. An SDK supports workflow automation. The Free plan is free and includes one active Studio, 50 GB persistent storage, and up to two concurrent GPUs; that Studio requires a restart every four hours. Pro and Teams plans have higher storage and GPU limits. Enterprise offers deployment in a customer VPC using AWS or GCP cloud credits.
StackBlitz
StackBlitz is a browser-based full-stack web IDE for the JavaScript ecosystem. Its WebContainers run Node.js development environments inside a browser tab, and the service lists millisecond startup and offline work. StackBlitz presents rapid prototyping and coding interviews as use cases. Integrations include a Figma plugin, Storybook addon, and userscript for opening GitHub projects in Codeflow. Viewing and editing projects needs no account, but saving or collaborating requires GitHub. WebContainers depend on SharedArrayBuffer and cross-origin isolation. Enterprise options connect GitHub Enterprise, GitLab, Bitbucket, private npm registries, JFrog Artifactory, and Sonatype Nexus. Enterprise code runs in an isolated browser sandbox with SAML2 single sign-on, an admin portal, and self-hosting on bare metal or in a VPC through Kubernetes. Plans include free access and a 14-day trial; listed plan prices are not provided.