A whole industry now exists to fix apps that AI builders started and could not finish. Here is that industry with its real prices, from €99 bug fixes to $150,000 takeovers, and the arithmetic for the decision the rescue shops rarely mention: sometimes rebuilding is cheaper than rescuing.
The scale of the problem is measured, not anecdotal. Veracode's testing across more than 150 models finds AI-generated code fails security checks roughly half the time, a rate that has stayed flat between 45 and 55 percent across model generations while syntax correctness passed 95 percent. The code runs. That is different from the code being safe.
The consequences are concrete. In 2025, researchers scanned 1,645 Lovable-built apps and found 170 exposing names, emails, financial data and API keys, a vulnerability logged with a 9.3 critical score. And in Stack Overflow's survey of 49,000 developers, the top frustration with AI tools, at 66 percent, is solutions that are almost right but not quite. That gap between almost right and right is where stalled projects live, and where this market sells.
Eleven services, ordered by published price. We are in the table because a rebuild is one of the options, and we sell it. Read the focus column first: an audit shop, a finish-the-build shop and a takeover shop are different products, and most stalled founders need exactly one of them.
| Service | What it is | Published price | Timeline | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fix My Lovable App | Single fixes and small rebuilds | €99 to €499+ | 48 hours on the lower tiers | Finish and fix |
| VibeCodeBlue | À la carte checks and fixes | $99 to $499 per item | Under 48 hours to 5 days | Audit single issues |
| VibeRescue | Unstick and finish stalled builds | From £999 | 2 to 4 weeks | Finish the build |
| Beesoul | Fixed-scope audit with a fix-or-rebuild verdict | From $1,500 to $3,000+ by codebase size | 3 to 10 business days | Audit only |
| Red Leg Dev | Audit, then production hardening | $1,500 audit, rescues $15,000 to $50,000 | 2 to 6 weeks | Audit and harden |
| 1Week5K (this is us) | Complete rebuild: redesigned, re-architected, redeployed | $5,000 | 1 week | Rebuild |
| Wavect | Audit and harden, keeps what works | Not published, fixed-scope quote | Audit in days, rescue in weeks | Audit and harden |
| Pragmatic Coders | Optimization, security, QA, design | Not published, free assessment | Not published | Audit and harden |
| Vibe Code Rescue | Reviews, audits, database fixes, rewrites | Not published | Kickoff possible same week | Audit and harden |
| ISHIR | Enterprise cleanup with retained support | Not published | Weeks to several sprints | Enterprise takeover |
| MetaCTO | Production takeover in 30 days | Free audit, rescues $50,000 to $150,000 | 30 days | Full takeover |
Verified on each provider's own site, July 27, 2026. Be careful with third-party rescue directories: we found several quoting prices that do not appear on the providers' own sites, and one agency ranking itself first for a rescue service that its own services page does not list. Tell us if a row is out of date and we will fix it.
The cheap tiers are genuinely good value for the right problem. One bug, a security scan before launch, a stuck deployment: pay €99 to $499, get it fixed in days, move on. If your app mostly works, start there, not with us.
The math changes when the problem is the codebase itself. The serious rescue tier runs $15,000 to $50,000 at Red Leg Dev and $50,000 to $150,000 at MetaCTO, and those prices are honest for what the work is: senior engineers reading someone else's generated code line by line, deciding what is salvageable, and rebuilding the rest around it. Reading bad code is slower than writing good code. That is why rescue costs more than building.
Which is the option the rescue framing hides: a complete rebuild by two senior engineers costs $5,000 and takes a week. Redesigned, re-architected for scale, deployed on your accounts, all the code yours. If you are stuck in the loop where every fix breaks something else, you are not choosing between rescuing and losing your work. The product thinking survives the rebuild. Only the tangled code does not, and the tangled code was the problem.
The published market, low to high: single bug fixes from €99, à la carte audits at $99 to $499, finishing a stalled build from £999, professional audits at $1,500 to $3,000, serious hardening at $15,000 to $50,000, and full production takeovers at $50,000 to $150,000. Many providers publish no price at all, and third-party directories often quote figures the providers themselves do not.
Measured, not anecdotal: Veracode tested over 150 models and found AI-generated code fails security checks roughly half the time, a rate flat across model generations even as syntax accuracy passed 95 percent. In 2025, researchers scanning 1,645 Lovable-built apps found 170 exposing user names, emails and financial data, logged as CVE-2025-48757 with a 9.3 critical score. The code running is not evidence the code is safe.
Arithmetic first: an audit costs $1,500 and serious fixes start around $15,000, while a complete senior rebuild costs $5,000 in a week. If the app mostly works and needs specific fixes, the cheap tiers above are genuinely good value. If you are stuck in the loop where every fix breaks something else, the codebase has no architecture to save, and paying rescue rates to keep it is sentiment, not strategy.
The numbers say mostly no. Stack Overflow's 2025 survey of 49,000 developers found the top AI frustration, at 66 percent, is solutions that are almost right but not quite, and 45 percent say debugging AI code takes longer than expected. Professional developers hit this wall too. The difference is they can read the code underneath. Past a certain complexity, someone has to.
Everything that earned its place: your product decisions, your validated demand, your users, your content and data where migration makes sense. What we rebuild is the software itself, redesigned and re-architected by two senior engineers, deployed on accounts in your name with all the code yours. The stalled version was your prototype, and it did its job: it proved the product deserves to be built properly.
Related: Lovable vs hiring a developer, fixed-price MVP companies compared, and what it costs to build an app.
A free 20 minute call. We will tell you honestly whether your app needs a $200 fix, a rescue shop, or a week.
Or see how the week works.