I Built the Same App With Five AI Coding Tools—Here’s What Worked

What “best AI coding tools” means when an app goes live

An AI coding tool is software that uses large language models and agent-style workflows to write, refactor, and ship code for real-world applications, from tiny prototypes to production-facing apps, often inside an IDE or browser-based editor. In this hands-on AI coding tools comparison, I built the same event RSVP web app with five tools and pushed them toward a real deployment. Only two finished the project without critical failures, and one produced a serious security flaw that exposed guest names and emails to anyone who loaded the page. That experience shaped which tools I would trust for production work. In short: Claude Code and Google Antigravity shine on complex, structured tasks; Cursor and Copilot serve as flexible daily drivers; and Lovable is still in risky “toy” territory unless you treat security as your own responsibility.

Security is not optional: what the event app exposed

The most important result from this AI coding tools comparison was not which app shipped first, but which one shipped safely. In one run, Lovable finished the RSVP page, then its built-in scanner flagged two critical issues: any stranger could read every guest’s name and email the moment the site went live, and new RSVPs would stream in real time to anyone with the page open. That is a textbook privacy failure. According to RedAccess, more than 5,000 publicly accessible AI-built apps had little or no security, and about 40% exposed sensitive data. This is why AI code generation security has to be a primary evaluation criterion. If a tool makes it easy to publish, but does not enforce safe defaults or clear guardrails, you must assume it will let you deploy insecure code if you are not careful.

Cursor vs Claude Code vs Antigravity vs Copilot vs Lovable

Once Elon Musk’s SpaceX agreed to buy Cursor, it forced a fresh look at the AI IDE market and pushed me to retest its closest rivals. Cursor remains a focused, AI-first coding environment, especially strong if you want an IDE that feels familiar but keeps an AI agent (Composer) always at hand. Claude Code, by contrast, behaves like a senior developer sitting beside you: you write clear instructions, define rules in a Claude.md file, and it reasons through multi-file changes and trade-offs with unusual consistency. Whenever its output went head-to-head with Antigravity, Cursor, or Codex, Claude Code usually won on complex projects where UI logic, structure, and debugging mattered. Google Antigravity, powered by Gemini 3.5, combines a traditional IDE with an Agent view and modern features like slash commands and scheduled tasks, and it was the clear overall winner in one extended test.

Which tool fits each stage of development?

Different AI coding tools proved stronger at different stages of the event app. Cursor feels like a traditional coding environment with Composer built in, so it works well from scaffolding to day-to-day iteration. Claude Code leans heavily into the agentic side; it shines when you can describe the target behavior in detail and let it reason across the codebase, especially for refactors, debugging, and structural cleanups. GitHub Copilot in VS Code has evolved into a serious agentic option with its Agents view, letting you keep your existing extensions, themes, and terminal while agents work in the background. Antigravity sits in the middle: a polished IDE plus an Agent view, powered by Gemini 3.5, that often needed fewer prompts than the others and delivered the best balance overall. None of these tools is universally superior; each fills a distinct slot in a modern dev workflow.

How to choose: security-first, not hype-first

After building the same app five times, one conclusion stands out: the best AI coding tools are the ones that make unsafe deployments harder, not faster. The Lovable incident—where guest names and emails were visible to any visitor—shows how easy it is to hit Publish once the app appears to work. With thousands of AI-built apps scanned and about 40% exposing sensitive data, security and data handling must be your first filter, not an afterthought. Cursor’s SpaceX deal has turned it into a headline tool, but real trust depends on how you configure reviews, scanners, and CI checks, regardless of brand. In practice, most teams will get the best results by pairing tools: for example, Claude Code or Antigravity for reasoning-heavy changes, and Cursor or Copilot for quick loops—while keeping manual security reviews around anything that touches user data.

Buy if / Skip if

• Buy the Claude Code if you need strong reasoning on complex projects where UI logic, structure, and debugging matter most.
• Skip the Claude Code if your workflow is lightweight and you rarely hand over multi-file, agent-style tasks.
• Buy the Cursor if you want a focused AI-first IDE that integrates an always-on coding agent for daily development.
• Skip the Cursor if you prefer staying inside VS Code with your existing extensions and only adding agents as needed.
• Buy the Google Antigravity if you want a balanced mix of traditional IDE control and an Agent view powered by Gemini 3.5, with fewer prompts required in many tasks.
• Skip the Google Antigravity if you do not want to adopt a new IDE, even if it rivals VS Code and Cursor.
• Buy the GitHub Copilot in VS Code if you want a serious agentic coding option that fits into an existing VS Code setup.
• Skip the GitHub Copilot in VS Code if you dislike VS Code’s increasingly crowded interface or prefer a more opinionated AI-first editor.
• Buy the Lovable if you are experimenting with small, non-sensitive apps and are comfortable taking full responsibility for hardening security yourself.
• Skip the Lovable if your app handles names, emails, or any sensitive data and you are not prepared to rigorously audit its output for security flaws.