About us
About Stack Cost AI.
We help first-time founders find out what their software project will actually cost — before they build it. Free, plain-language, and free-options-first, always.
Why we exist.
Every year, thousands of side projects and startups die of a preventable cause: the cost estimate came in low. Not because founders can't do math — because nobody hands you the full list. Auth, database, LLM API, payments, SMS, storage, monitoring, hosting… miss one category and your budget is fiction.
And the content that does exist tends to be selling something. Comparison posts rank whichever provider pays the affiliate commission, and "free tier!" turns out to expire the moment your project gets users. We wanted the tool we wished existed: complete, free-first, and honest about the catch.
What we make.
01 · Estimate
Pick a domain, a project type and a build size, then watch every stack category price itself out live — monthly and one-time.
02 · Compare
Providers sorted free → freemium → paid, with trade-off notes explaining why one costs more than another — browsable any time.
03 · Share
Finish with an itemized summary you can print or save as PDF — ready for co-founders, clients or investors.
How we research prices.
By hand, mostly. We read providers' official pricing pages, record the numbers relevant to early-stage projects, and note where each free tier realistically breaks. Every price shows when it was last verified, anything not re-checked recently gets flagged, and vendor pricing changes are folded in during regular re-verification passes.
The result is an estimate for planning — not a quote. Always confirm current pricing with the provider before committing budget. That caveat isn't legal wallpaper; it's how we actually think about the numbers.
What we believe.
Free-first, always.
Rankings favor free and freemium providers by default. Paid options are never hidden — just never pushed. If affiliate links ever appear, they'll be disclosed and will never change the ranking.
Honest about the catch.
No "free" badge without a note on where the free tier stops being free. A wrong price undermines everything, so data is hand-checked and re-verified regularly.
Private by default.
No accounts, no signup, no trackers. Your estimates are computed in your browser and never sent to our servers — there's simply nothing to leak.
What's next.
More domains, more project types, more re-verification passes. New research sheets appear automatically as they're finished — today that's AI products, software development and website development, with mobile and e-commerce on the way.