Applications — hobby stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Web Hosting / Frontend Deployment
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Vercel Hobby 100GB BW, 6000 exec hrs; Cloudflare Pages unlimited free. Paid: Vercel Pro $20/seat/mo + $40/100GB BW overage, $20/1000 GB-hrs overage. Amplify $0.15/GB served + $0.30/build min. 2026 Pro ~$20-25/mo
Primary Database (Postgres - User Data)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Free: 500MB DB, 50k MAU, 2GB egress, 50MB file. Pro: $25/mo incl 8GB DB, 100k MAU, 250GB egress, 100GB file. Overage: $0.125/GB DB, $0.09/GB egress, $0.021/GB file. Neon Free 0.5GB, paid $19/mo 10GB. RDS db.t3.medium ~$60/mo + storage $0.115/GB
Authentication (User Auth + SSO)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsClerk Free: 10k MAU, 10 orgs. Pro: $25/mo base + $0.02/MAU over 10k, SSO $100/mo add-on B2B. Auth0 Free 25k MAU, B2C Pro $35/mo + $0.07/MAU 1k-10k, Enterprise SSO $0.10/MAU. Auth.js free self-host + DB cost.
File Storage (User Uploads / Assets)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2 Free: 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops, 10M Class B, $0 egress. Paid: $15/mo base? Actually $0.015/GB-mo storage, $4.50/M Class A, $0.36/M Class B, $0 egress. S3: $0.023/GB-mo storage, $0.09/GB egress, $0.005/1k PUT, $0.0004/1k GET. Supabase Free 1GB, Pro 100GB incl $0.021/GB overage
Vector Database (RAG - User Docs)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsPinecone Free: Starter $0 - 100k vectors (~400MB), 1 index. Serverless: $0 base, min $70/mo effective - $0.08/GB stored, $0.20/1M reads, $2/1M writes. Qdrant Free: 1GB RAM, 100k vectors, 1 cluster. Paid: $28/mo 2GB RAM cluster. Supabase pgvector free within DB. Weaviate Serverless free 1M vectors 14d, paid $25/mo + $0.09/1k queries
LLM API Gateway / Router (Multi-provider failover)
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsLiteLLM self-host free - only VM cost $10-20/mo. OpenRouter no sub: GPT-4o $2.50/1M in $10/1M out (via OR), Claude 3.5 Sonnet $3/1M in $15/1M out, 5% markup. Portkey Free 10k req/mo, Pro $199/mo 1M req incl + $0.0001/req overage, cache saves 60%. Bedrock $0 per gateway + model fees
LLM Inference Provider - Chat (Core)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limits2026 pricing: OpenAI gpt-4o $2.50/1M input $10/1M output; gpt-4o-mini $0.15/1M in $0.60/1M out; o1 $15/1M in $60/1M out. Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet $3/1M in $15/1M out, Haiku $0.25/1M in $1.25/1M out. Groq free: 14.4k req/day Llama 3.1 8B @ 1000 tok/sec. Together $0.18/1M Llama 8B. $5 trial credits each. Overage = token usage
Inference Caching (Redis Prompt/Response Cache)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Free: 500k commands/mo, 256MB max, 1k req/day limit, 20 conn. Pro: $10/mo 100k cmds/day, 10GB, $0.20/100k cmds overage. Redis Cloud Free 30MB. ElastiCache Serverless: $0.125/GB-hr storage + $0.34/1M ECPUs (Redis). Cache hit saves 80% LLM cost, avg 40% hit rate for AI app
Background Jobs & AI Task Queue (Async generations)
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsInngest Free: 50k steps/mo, 100 concurrency, 10k events. Pro $20/mo incl 250k steps + $0.00008/step overage ($80/1M steps). Trigger.dev Free 10k runs/mo, Pro $29/mo 25k runs + $0.0006/run overage. BullMQ self-host free + Upstash Redis $10/mo
Secrets Management
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsInfisical Free: 5 projects, unlimited secrets self-host, Cloud Starter $19/mo 15 projects, 3 envs. Doppler Free: 25 secrets, 1 project, Team $12/user/mo unlimited. Vault HCP: $0.03/hr (~$21.90/mo) cluster + $0.05/1k API ops, free tier 25 secrets dev
CI/CD & Git Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free: 2000 min/mo Linux x64 (500MB cache), 500MB Packages. Team $4/user/mo 3000 mins + $0.008/min Linux overage, $0.08/min macOS. CircleCI free 6000 credits/wk, Pro $15/mo 30k credits. Vercel builds included in Pro plan
How this hobby applications checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby applications build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.