Generative AI — 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.
GPU Inference Compute (A10G / A100 / H100)
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 limitsModal: Free $30/mo credit, A10G $0.32/hr ($0.000089/sec), A100 40GB $1.60/hr, H100 $3.95/hr, 0s scale, concurrency auto. Colab: Free 1x T4 (15GB) ~12hr limit, 0$/mo. RunPod: Serverless $0.00021/sec for 24GB (A10G ~ $0.45/hr), $0.00058/sec H100 ~ $2.10/hr, free $5 credit. AWS p5.48xlarge 8x H100 $98.32/hr (~$12.29/hr per GPU). Overage: billed per 100ms.
Inference Hosting Platform (Serverless GPU)
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 limitsTogether AI: Free $25 credit, Llama 3.1 70B $0.88/1M input $0.88/1M output, FLUX.1 schnell $0.0023/image, autoscale included. HF Free: Rate limit ~1k req/day for public models, no GPU guarantee. Replicate: Pay-per-second, Llama 3 70B $0.65/1M tokens, SDXL $0.0023/sec (~$0.00045/run), free $5 credit. Anyscale: $0/mo control plane + $0.15/1M tokens managed + underlying GPU $1.5-4/hr; free trial $10.
Model Hosting & Model Registry
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 limitsHF Endpoints: CPU $0.06/hr, T4 $0.60/hr, A10G $0.90/hr, A100 $1.64/hr, H100 $4.1/hr billed per minute; Free Hub: unlimited public models, 100GB storage free. Replicate: free registry, pay per run as above. Baseten: Free $25/mo credit, then Dedicated $0.08/hr overhead + GPUs (A10G $0.85/hr, H100 $5/hr), TRT-LLM optimized, free 100k inference calls tier deprecated, now usage-based.
LLM API Gateway & Multi-Provider Router
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsPortkey: Free 10k requests/mo, Growth $49/mo includes 50k req + $0.0005/req overage, fallbacks/retries/balancing. LiteLLM: Free OSS self-host, pay infra $5-20/mo VPS, tracks OpenAI $0.005/1k GPT-4o input, $0.015/1k output; Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet $3/1M input $15/1M output. Cloudflare AI Gateway: Free 100k logs/day, $5/mo Workers + $0.50/million requests over. Zuplo: Free 10k req/mo, $250/mo for 1M req, overage $0.0002/req.
Vector Database for RAG (Prompt Context)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsQdrant Free: 1GB RAM, up to 4M vectors x768d (approx), 1 cluster free forever; Starter $25/mo 2GB, $50/mo 4GB; Overage $0.20/GB storage. Weaviate Serverless Free: 14-day trial + free sandbox 1M vectors; Paid $25/mo starter. Pinecone Free: 100k vectors (~400MB), 1 index; Starter $70/mo includes writes $0.20/million + reads $2/1M + storage $0.33/GB; gcp-starter p2. Supabase: Free 500MB DB, pgvector extension free, $25/mo Pro 8GB.
File Storage for Generated Media (S3-Compatible)
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 + 10M Class B ops/mo, 0 egress fee. Paid $0.015/GB-mo storage, $4.50/million Class A, $0.36/million Class B, zero egress. B2 Free 10GB, $0.006/GB-mo, download $0.01/GB, first 1GB/day free egress. S3 Free 5GB for 12mo only, then $0.023/GB-mo, PUT $0.005/1k, GET $0.0004/1k, egress $0.09/GB first 10TB.
Media Delivery CDN (Images/Video/Audio)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: Unlimited bandwidth, 100k cache purge/day, global 300+ PoPs, $0/mo. Pro $20/mo adds WAF + image optimization 5k. BunnyCDN Free 14-day trial then $1/mo min, $0.01/GB NA/EU egress, $0.03 SG, free SSL. Fastly: $0/mo dev $50/mo minimum, $0.12/GB first 10TB, $0.02/10k req overage, free $500 credit first month.
Background Jobs & Async Generation Queue
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsInngest Free: 50k step runs/mo, 1k concurrency, 7-day history. Growth $49/mo 250k runs + $0.16/1k overage, 1yr retention. Trigger.dev Free: 10k tasks/mo self-host unlimited, Cloud $29/mo 50k tasks $0.0006/task over. QStash Free 500 msgs/day, $10/mo 2k/day + $0.02/100 msgs over. SQS: 1M free/mo forever, then $0.40/million req + Step State $0.025/1k transitions.
API Gateway + Rate Limiting for Gen-API
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Rate Limit Free: 10k requests/day (Global). Paid $10/mo 100k/day, overage $0.20/100k. Unkey: Free 2.5k verifications/day, Pro $25/mo 150k + $0.05/1k over. Cloudflare API Shield: Free 1M gateway req, $20/mo Pro + $0.03/10k over. AWS API Gateway: Free 1M calls first 12mo, then $3.50/million + $0.09/GB egress.
Usage Metering (Tokens/Images/Seconds)
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 limitsOpenMeter OSS: Free self-host, unlimited events, metered billing aggregation. Cloud Free 1M events/mo, Pro $250/mo 10M events, $25/million over. Lago OSS Free 100M events self-host, Cloud Free 250k events, Starter $199/mo 1M events + $0.15/1k metered. Metronome: $2k/mo platform fee minimum + 0.5% of metered revenue, free proof-of-concept tier.
Billing & Subscriptions (Usage-Based)
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 limitsStripe Billing: Free 0.7% of recurring volume + 0.5% metered billing fee; Stripe fees 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Free tier: first $1M billing waived? Billing itself free until $100k processed. Lago OSS free, Cloud Free dev, Pro $199/mo as above. Polar: 4% + $0.30 per trans + billing included, free tier unlimited products. Stripe Tax +0.5% per transaction.
How this hobby generative ai checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby generative ai 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.