Infrastructure — 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 Compute Rental (A100 / H100 / B200 Fleet)
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: Modal $30/mo credits, 1x T4/A10G dev; Colab T4 12h session. Paid: RunPod T4 $0.22/hr, A100 40GB $1.19/hr, H100 $3.49/hr; Lambda A100 $1.50/hr, H100 $3.99/hr (on-demand), $2.49/hr 1yr reserved; CoreWeave H100 $4.25/hr OD, $2.99/hr reserved, B200 $7.50/hr OD $4.99/hr 3yr; Overage: Idle keep-alive $0.05/hr, egress $0.08/GB
Bare Metal Provisioning & Fleet Management
Enterprise single sign-on and user provisioning. Usually required to sell to larger organizations.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: MaaS self-hosted $0, Ironic open-source. Cheaper: Vultr BM from $120/mo (1x RTX 4000), Latitude.sh c3.large $0.75/hr. Paid: Equinix Metal c3.medium $0.85/hr ~$550/mo, GPU BM g2.large A100 $2,200/mo + $1.5/hr metering; OVH A100 BM €1,800/mo. Overage: Provisioning API $0.01/call after 10k/mo, support $500/mo
GPU Virtualization / Fractional GPU (MIG, vGPU)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: KVM+MIG self-host $0, up to 7x MIG slices per A100/H100. Open tools free. Cheaper: Modal 0.1 GPU $0.15/hr fractional. Paid: Run:ai $0.45/GPU/hr license ($350/GPU/mo), VMware Bitfusion $500/GPU/mo. Overage: Extra MIG profile $0.10/slice/hr, Run:ai over-quota $0.55/GPU/hr
Kubernetes for GPU Workloads (GPU Operator & Scheduler)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: K3s OSS $0, GPU Operator OSS $0 (self-manage). Cheaper: DOKS GPU $1.10/node/hr includes control plane $0. EKS $0.10/hr cluster + EC2 p4d H100 $4.56/hr. Paid: Run:ai $450/GPU/mo platform fee, OpenShift AI $0.50/GPU/hr. Overage: Karpenter scale-up 30s, extra control plane $0.10/hr, GPU Operator enterprise support $2k/mo
Serverless GPU Platform / Model Hosting Platform
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: Modal $30/mo credits, 100 GPU sec free; Replicate free $5 credits, 500ms cold start. Cheaper: Baseten $0.0005/sec per A100 ($1.80/hr effective), Banana $0.00008/sec. Paid: Anyscale $1.00/hr worker + $1.50/A100/hr, Replicate $0.000725/s A100 40GB, Together $0.90/hr L4 + token pricing. Overage: Scale-to-zero wake $0.02, concurrent limit $5 per extra concurrency over 10
Inference Server Engine (vLLM, TGI, Triton)
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: vLLM/TGI OSS $0, self-host on existing GPU. Cheaper: Ollama $0 + $10/mo managed. Paid: NVIDIA NIM $0.45/GPU/hr license ($1/hr with H100 included via NGC), Baseten $1.80/hr managed vLLM. Overage: 8k RPS license +$0.10/GPU/hr, enterprise support $3k/mo for Triton
Inference Autoscaling (Scale-to-Zero, KEDA)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: KEDA/Knative OSS $0, scale-to-zero <2s on self-host. Cheaper: Fly.io scale-to-zero $0.10/hr min + $1.50/A100/hr active. Paid: Anyscale $50/mo autoscaler addon + GPU costs, Run:ai $100/GPU/mo autoscale license. Overage: KEDA queue lag scaling $0.001/s metric poll, excess scale events $0.02 per 1k over 100k/mo
Vector Database (Embedding Store for RAG)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Qdrant OSS $0 unlimited self-host; Qdrant Cloud Free 1GB, 1M vectors, 1k QPS; Pinecone Free 100k vectors, 1 pod p1.x1. Cheaper: Qdrant Cloud $25/mo 5GB, Chroma $30/mo 5M vectors. Paid: Pinecone Starter $70/mo 1M vectors + $0.40/1M queries, $0.20/1M writes; Zilliz Standard $0.25/hr cluster. Overage: Pinecone $0.20 per 1M vectors over, Qdrant $5/GB over, $0.20/1M searches over 10M
Model Registry & Versioning (HuggingFace-like)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: HF Hub Free: public models unlimited, private 1 model, 100GB bandwidth; MLflow OSS $0. Cheaper: W&B Free 100GB artifact. HF Pro $9/mo, 50 private models. Paid: HF Enterprise $50/user/mo, private unlimited, 2TB/mo bandwidth, SSO; CoreWeave registry $0.20/GB/mo stored. Overage: HF $0.10/GB bandwidth over 2TB, $0.05/GB storage over 500GB
Object Storage for Multi-GB Model Weights
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: MinIO self-host $0, B2 Free 10GB storage. R2 Free 10GB store, 10M Class B ops/mo, zero egress. Cheaper: B2 $0.006/GB/mo, R2 $0.015/GB/mo store, $0 egress. Paid: S3 Standard $0.023/GB/mo store, $0.09/GB egress, $0.005/1k PUT; R2 $15/mo 500GB included. Wasabi $7.99/TB/mo no egress. Overage: S3 egress $0.09/GB, R2 $0 egress, ops $0.36/M, Wasabi over 1TB $7.99/TB
CDN / Edge Distribution for Model Weights
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Cloudflare Free: unlimited egress, 100GB R2 fetch free. Cheaper: Bunny CDN $0.01/GB, $1/mo min; CF Pro $20/mo 20% more edge. Paid: Fastly $0.12/GB first 10TB, $0.08/GB next, $50/mo min; Cloudflare Enterprise $5k/mo + custom bandwidth. Overage: Fastly $0.12/GB, Bunny $0.02/GB over 10TB, CF no overage on free but $0.05/GB cache reserve
How this hobby infrastructure checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby infrastructure 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.