Why Is My Base44 App Not Working? What 192 Real Reports Say

More than one in five people who said their Base44 app had stopped working had done nothing wrong. I went through 192 public reports of broken Base44 apps, from Reddit, Base44's own feedback board, Trustpilot and YouTube, and sorted each one by what actually caused it. The biggest group, 42 reports, was Base44 itself having an outage.

I did this because Base44 keeps coming up in the freelance work I look at: founders who built something real with it, then got stuck. Before telling anyone how to fix their app, I wanted to know what actually breaks.

The outage number matters because the usual reaction is to ask Base44's AI to fix the app. During an outage that can't work. It costs credits, and it can break code that was fine. Base44's own docs say credits aren't refunded when the AI gets something wrong.

So below are the causes in the order I'd check them, with the fix for each from Base44's documentation. If your app works but isn't showing up in Google, skip to the last section: I ran 45 live Base44 apps through my free checkers, and 8 of them were telling Google not to index them.

What 192 broken Base44 apps had in common

The reports run from August 2025 to October 2026: 88 Reddit threads, 73 posts on Base44's public feedback board, 16 Trustpilot reviews, and a handful from X, YouTube, GitHub, Hacker News and elsewhere. I put each one in a group based on the cause the thread confirmed, or the fix that worked.

The single biggest cause was Base44 itself being down. Login problems and preview-only issues come next.

What surprised me is how little of this is code. Three groups make up almost half of the list: Base44 outages, login and sign-up problems, and issues that only exist in the editor preview or your browser's cache. You don't fix any of those by rewriting your app. The rest are real problems in an app's settings or code, and many of them come down to a setting you can check in a few minutes. In 22 reports the cause was never found, or didn't fit any group.

Step 1: make sure it is not Base44, or your network

This is the step people skip. Before you touch the app, open status.base44.com and the r/Base44 subreddit. Base44's status feed lists 26 incidents between December 2025 and September 2026, five of them affecting previews or published apps. In the reports, people sometimes posted about an outage on Reddit before the status page showed anything. If your app and other people's apps broke at the same time, wait before you change anything.

When an outage ends, your browser can keep showing the old loading screen. After its September 9, 2026 incident, Base44 told users: "If you still see Loading your app, refresh the page or clear your browser cache." A hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R, or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac) or a private window is the quickest test.

Then I'd open the app on a phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi. Four of the reports turned out to be the visitor's internet provider blocking base44.app addresses: Comcast Xfinity's Advanced Security feature in the US, and an internet provider in the Philippines. The app was fine. Those visitors just couldn't reach it until they switched network or used a VPN.

Step 2: work out which kind of "not working" you have

"Not working" covers very different problems, and the fix depends on which one you have. Find the line that matches what you see, then jump to its section below.

What you see	Most likely causes	Check first
Nothing loads, for anyone, you included	Base44 outage, or a stale cache after one	Status page, hard refresh, another network
It loads for you but not for others	Not published, set to Private, a custom domain, or the visitor's network	App Visibility and the Publish button
It works in the preview, not in the live app	Not republished, test data, a backend function not redeployed	Publish panel, test data switch
Login, sign-up or Google sign-in fails	Login settings, emails in spam, Google OAuth setup	Login settings, spam folder
Data is missing or will not save	Data permissions, or a field that does not match its table	"Act as a user", App Logs
It worked yesterday, broke after an AI change	The AI edit itself	The Revert button, Version History
Emails, AI features or payments stopped	Credits ran out, plan limits, API keys	Credits page, plan, Secrets

Base44 also has a built-in check: type "Something is wrong" in the AI chat and it runs a diagnosis. Read what it says, but don't let it make several rounds of changes before you know the cause.

It works in the preview but not when published

The editor preview and the live app are two different things. According to Base44's editor docs, the live app only changes when you click Publish, and the preview is visible only to you and your collaborators. So my first question is always the boring one: did you click Publish after the change, and did you see the success message?

Test data is not real data

On the Builder plan and up, the preview can use a separate test database. The published app always uses real (production) data, and the two are completely separate, so records you created while testing will never appear in the live app. Base44 explains this on its test data page.

Backend functions and the browser cache

Base44's troubleshooting guide has an official checklist for when published changes don't appear: clear the browser cache, try another browser or device, confirm you clicked Publish, redeploy any backend function you changed, and check the error logs. A backend function you edited keeps running its old version until it's redeployed.

Sixteen reports were problems that existed only in the editor preview or the browser cache, such as a preview that kept going white after every AI change while the live app worked. Revert the last change first. If both the preview and the live app fail with a 500 error, Base44's guide calls that a server-side problem the builder usually can't fix, and that one is for support.

It loads for you but not for your users

This is the most confusing one, because everything looks fine when you test it. As the owner, you can see things your users can't.

Check App Visibility

Every app has a visibility setting in Dashboard, then Overview, then App Visibility: Public (anyone, no sign-in), Private (only people you invited) or Workspace (only your Base44 workspace). People who weren't invited to a Private app see an error or a request-access pop-up. Private applies to every page, including a landing page, and since February 6, 2026 new Private apps need the Starter plan or higher. The details are on Base44's access page. Invites also do nothing until the app is published, so an invited person can still be locked out of an unpublished app.

Data that only you can see

On any app with user accounts, this is the one I'd check first. Base44 protects each table with data permissions, and a blocked read doesn't show an error. Its security docs say a denied read behaves as if the data doesn't exist: the list just comes back empty. So a page can be full for you and empty for a normal user, with nothing in the console. The built-in Users table is a common trap: only the owner and collaborators can read it, so member profiles and leaderboards work for you and break for everyone else.

To see what a normal user sees, use "Act as a user" or "Test Permissions in preview", and run the Security scan, which flags missing or wrong rules. If saving fails with a 403 error, the user doesn't have permission to write to that table.

Custom domains

Ten reports were custom domain problems: stuck on "Pending verification", or a Bad Gateway error on the domain while the base44.app address worked. Base44's domain guide says to remove any AAAA (IPv6) records, allow up to 48 hours, and, if your DNS is on Cloudflare, set Base44's records to "DNS only" (grey cloud). Proxying them through Cloudflare can cause SSL errors and pages that load on base44.app but not on your domain. I always test the base44.app address first: if that works, the problem is the domain, not the app.

Login and sign-up problems

Login failures were the second biggest group, with 27 reports: verification codes that never arrived, invites that skipped the set-password step, Google sign-in errors and redirect loops. Base44's login docs cover the common causes:

• Emails in spam. Verification and reset emails come from [e-mail] unless you set up your own sending domain. Ask users to check spam and allowlist that address.
• A renamed reset page. Apps built since June 2026 have their own login pages, and the reset link always points to /reset-password. If the forgot-password or reset-password page is renamed or deleted, password resets break.
• Google sign-in. By default the Google window says base44.com. Showing your own domain needs the Builder plan, a connected custom domain, the right redirect address and Google's approval, which can take up to five days.
• Self sign-up on a Private app. If people can register but then see access denied, the app is probably Private. Make it Public and protect the pages that need a login.

It worked yesterday, and an AI edit broke it

Fifteen reports describe the same loop: the app worked, someone asked the AI for a change or a fix, and something else broke. Each new fix broke something new and spent more credits.

The most important rule comes from Base44's own troubleshooting guide: asking the AI chat to revert never undoes anything. Only the Revert button on a message, or Version History, rolls the app back. Base44 also advises trying the automatic fix once or twice, then switching to Discuss mode (about 0.3 credits a message) to describe the problem instead of letting the AI keep editing. One warning if you use GitHub sync: after you connect it, Version History can't restore versions from before the connection.

This is the group that worries me most, because the worst report in it wasn't a crash. In a client portal built on Base44, the AI "fixed" a display bug by changing how files were looked up, and two weeks after launch one company could see another company's files. Nothing looked broken, which is why nobody noticed.

When I built Client Approvals, I wrote a test that checks one workspace can never see another workspace's requests. After any AI change that touches data, that's the check I'd run by hand: sign in as a normal user and look at what they can see.

Features that quietly stop: credits, plans and keys

Some failures look like bugs but are really limits. Base44 has two kinds of credits, explained on its credits page: message credits, spent when the AI builds or edits your app, and integration credits, spent when the live app uses Base44's built-in services such as email, AI calls and file uploads.

• Running out doesn't take the app down. Actions that use credits pause until your next reset. Since August 27, 2026 every email the app sends uses integration credits, so at the limit, workflow emails fail. Reading and writing your own data never uses credits.
• Credits are shared. They come from one pool for the whole workspace, so one busy app can use them up for all your apps. The Free plan is capped at 5 credits a day.
• Some features need a plan. Backend functions need the Builder plan or higher. Downgrading, or a disputed card payment that moves the workspace to Free, stops them, along with every integration that depends on them.
• Keys and webhooks. API keys for other services go in Secrets. In one report, a function kept using an old key after it was changed, until the app was republished. Webhooks from services that can't sign in, such as Telegram or WhatsApp, return 403 unless the function is public.

Not showing up on Google? What I found on 45 live Base44 apps

Sometimes "not showing" means the app works fine but can't be found or shared. I build free website checkers, so I wanted to see how live Base44 apps look from the outside. I took 45 of them from Base44's own showcase, its templates and Hacker News posts, ran each one through my sitemap checker, Open Graph checker and security headers checker, and fetched each home page the way Googlebot does.

Eight apps their makers had shared publicly were telling Google not to index them.

Eight of the 45 apps sent Google a noindex instruction on their home page, which tells search engines to leave the page out of their results. These were apps their makers had shared publicly. Base44's SEO docs describe the usual source: switching off the main SEO setting adds noindex and stops Base44 from writing your page content into the version crawlers read. Three more apps showed Google a page with no text on it at all. If your app isn't showing up in Google, check that setting first.

The same docs say Base44's search features (sitemap, robots.txt and social previews) are built for apps on a custom domain. The free base44.app address can be crawled, but it isn't meant for search traffic, so if Google matters to you, connect your own domain.

Share previews were mostly there but often weak. Base44 builds them from the title, description and logo in your app settings, which is why many apps share a square logo, and many apps show a square image as a small thumbnail instead of a large card. Nineteen of the 40 share images were over 300 KB, and WhatsApp often skips images that big. My Open Graph checker shows exactly what your link looks like before you post it. On security, Base44 sets HTTPS correctly for every app, but 44 of 45 sent no Content-Security-Policy, the header that limits which scripts a page may run.

When to stop prompting and get help

Work through the causes in order: Base44 and your network first, then who can see the app, then its data and logins, and only then the code. It's the same rule I use for chatbots that give wrong answers: find the stage that breaks, and fix only that.

If you need Base44 support, send them the app link, the time it happened, the errors from your browser console and what App Logs shows (Dashboard, then Logs, with the Errors only filter). Their guide asks for exactly that.

If you're thinking of leaving Base44, know what export gives you. Downloading the code or syncing it to GitHub needs the Builder plan, and you get a standard React and Vite project. But that code still talks to Base44 for your data, logins and backend functions, so moving off Base44 means rebuilding the backend, not just downloading files. More guides like this one are in Fix an AI-built app.

And if you'd rather hand it over, I take these on as client projects: send me the app link and what's broken.

Common questions

Why is my Base44 app stuck on "Loading your app"?
Most often because Base44 itself is having trouble: check status.base44.com and the r/Base44 subreddit. If the outage is over and you still see the loading screen, do a hard refresh or clear your browser cache, which is what Base44 told users after its September 2026 incident. If it only fails on one network, try mobile data, because some internet providers have blocked base44.app addresses.

Why does my Base44 app work in the preview but not when published?
The live app only changes when you click Publish, so the usual cause is an edit that was never published. If you use test data, the preview reads a separate test database while the live app always uses real data. Backend functions also need to be redeployed after changes, and a stale browser cache can show an old version.

Why can other people not open my Base44 app?
Check that the app is published and that App Visibility (Dashboard, Overview) is set to Public. A Private app only lets in people you invited, and invites do nothing until the app is published. If you use a custom domain, test the free base44.app address too, and ask the person to try another network.

Why is data missing for some users of my Base44 app?
Usually data permissions. When a permission rule blocks someone from reading a table, Base44 returns an empty list with no error, so the page looks empty to them while it looks fine to you as the owner. The built-in Users table can only be read by the owner and collaborators, which breaks member profiles and leaderboards for regular users.

Does a Base44 app stop working when credits run out?
The app stays live, but features that use credits pause until your credits reset: built-in email, AI calls, file uploads and similar. Reading and writing your app's own data does not use credits. Credits are shared across every app in the workspace, so one busy app can use them up for all of them.

Why is my Base44 app not showing up on Google?
Check that the app is not telling Google to stay away: Base44 adds a noindex tag when its main SEO setting is switched off, and 8 of 45 live apps I checked had one. Base44's search features are also built for apps on a custom domain rather than the free base44.app address.

Can I export my Base44 app and host it myself?
You can download the code or sync it to GitHub on the Builder plan or higher, and you get a standard React and Vite project. But it still talks to Base44 for data, logins and backend functions, so moving fully off Base44 means rebuilding that backend, not just downloading the code.

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This post first appeared on tusharbhendarkar.com. I fix apps built with Lovable, Replit, Bolt and Base44, and I build free checkers for live apps. If something here is broken for you, email me at [e-mail].