Containers And Kubernetes — 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.
Container Runtime (Developer Workstation)
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 limitsDocker Personal Free (<250 employees & <$10M revenue), Pro $21/mo per user (5000 pulls/day, unlimited private repos), Team $35/user/mo + SSO + audit, Business $24/user/mo billed annually $252/yr min 5 seats. containerd/Podman OSS Free unlimited containers. Docker Hub anonymous 100 pulls/6h, auth Free 200/6h, Pro 5000/day. Overage: $0.05/GB after 200GB pulls.
Container Registry (Private Image Storage)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsGHCR Free 500MB storage + 1GB egress/mo + 2GB packages (Pro), then $0.008/GB-mo storage + $0.12/GB egress over. Docker Hub Free 1 private repo, Pro $5/mo 5 repos unlimited pulls. ECR $0.10/GB-mo storage (0.5GB free 12mo new), $0.09/GB egress + $0.20/1k API calls, ECR Public Free 50GB-mo bandwidth. GAR $0.10/GB-mo storage + $0.09-0.12/GB egress.
Managed Kubernetes Control Plane Cluster
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 limitsK3s Free OSS $0 control plane fee self-hosted. AKS Free tier $0 cluster mgmt, SLA tier $0.10/hr ~$72/mo per cluster. GKE Standard 1 free zonal cluster no SLA, Enterprise $0.10/hr ~$73/mo + $0.10/hr per cluster for SLA uptime. EKS $0.10/hr ~$73/mo per cluster + EC2/Fargate compute, new account 1 EKS free 6mo credits. GKE Autopilot $0.10/hr cluster + $0.0445/vCPU-hr + $0.004995/GB-hr. Workers not incl.
Kubernetes Worker Nodes (Virtual Machines)
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsOracle Free Tier Ampere A1 4 vCPU 24GB RAM + 200GB storage forever free. Hetzner CX11 $4.15/mo, CX22 $7.50/mo. AWS Spot 60-70% off ~$0.015/hr t3.micro spot vs $0.0104 on-demand $0.034/hr e2-medium. GCP Spot $0.010/vCPU-hr ~60% discount. On-demand GKE e2-standard-2 $48.55/mo, e2-standard-4 $97/mo. EBS gp3 $0.08/GB-mo + $0.005/prov IOPS-mo over 3000, egress $0.09/GB.
Serverless Containers (Container-as-a-Service)
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 limitsCloud Run Free 2M req/mo + 360k vCPU-sec + 180k GiB-sec + 1GB egress/mo, then $0.40/M reqs after + $0.00002400/vCPU-sec ($0.0864/vCPU-hr) + $0.00000250/GiB-sec ($0.009/GB-hr). Fly.io Free 3x shared-cpu-1x 256MB VMs + 3GB vol + 160GB egress, then $1.94/mo per VM $0.000014/sec + $0.15/GB vol. ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr + $0.09/GB egress, Fargate Spot 70% off ~$0.01214/vCPU-hr.
Container Orchestration for Batch / Jobs
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 limitsK8s Jobs/CronJobs Free built-in OSS unlimited. Nomad OSS Free unlimited jobs self-hosted, Enterprise $0.10-$0.30/hr per client via HCP $35k/yr. AWS Batch Fargate $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr, Free 5k vCPU-hrs credits new accounts, no control plane fee. GCP Batch $0.01/vCPU-hr + $0.001/GB-hr + $0.003/hr scheduling.
Service Mesh / mTLS (L7 Traffic 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 limitsIstio/Linkerd/Cilium OSS Free unlimited sidecars/proxies self-hosted. Cilium OSS Free eBPF mesh. Enterprise: Cilium EE $49k/yr per cluster up to 100 nodes + $350/node/yr over 100 + support, includes Hubble, encryption. Tetrate Istio Subscription $50k/yr per cluster, Service Bridge $75k/yr per mesh. No per-request fee OSS.
Ingress Controller / K8s Load Balancer
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 limitsingress-nginx/Cilium OSS Free. Cloudflare Tunnel Free unlimited tunnels, Zero Trust $7/user/mo free 50 users. AWS ALB $0.0225/hr ~$16.20/mo + $0.008/LCU-hr + $0.09/GB egress. GKE Ingress Free controller + $0.025/hr forwarding rule + $0.008/GB processed + $0.09/GB egress. NGINX Plus $2500/instance/yr optional.
Container Image Build Service
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsBuildx/BuildKit OSS Free unlimited local builds. GitHub Actions Free 2000 min/mo (3000 Pro) + 500MB artifact cache free, then Linux $0.008/min ($0.48/hr), Windows $0.016/min, macOS $0.08/min, 10GB cache over $0.25/GB-mo. Cloud Build Free 120 build-min/day, then $0.003/min (~$0.18/hr). CodeBuild Free 100 builds/mo 3mo trial, then $0.005/min small Linux $0.30/hr. Depot Free 20hr/wk, Team $50/mo 200hr/wk.
CI/CD for Container Deployment
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free 2000 min Linux + 500MB cache, Pro 3000 min, Team $4/user/mo + overage Linux $0.008/min macOS $0.08/min. GitLab SaaS Free 400 credits (~800 Linux min), Premium $29/user/mo 10k credits. Buildkite Free 1 agent trial, Teams $15/user/mo + $15/host/mo, Enterprise $29/user/mo. CircleCI Free 6000 credits/wk, Performance $30/mo + $0.00008/credit. Harness Free 1 cluster.
Kubernetes Monitoring & Metrics
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsPrometheus+Grafana OSS Free unlimited metrics self-hosted + storage $0.023/GB S3. Grafana Cloud Free 10k Prometheus series + 50GB logs + 50GB traces + 10k synthetic checks/mo, Pro $29/mo base + $8/1000 series over + $0.50/GB logs over, Scale $4200/mo. Datadog Infra $15/host/mo + $0.10/container/mo (100 free containers/host) + $0.10/custom metric/mo (100 free), APM $31/host/mo, logs $0.10/GB ingested $1.70/GB indexed.
How this hobby containers and kubernetes checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby containers and kubernetes 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.