Networking And Content Delivery — small scale 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.
Virtual Network / VPC
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 limitsAWS VPC: $0/mo for VPC/subnets/route tables. Paid add-ons: NAT Gateway $0.045/hr (~$32.85/mo) + $0.045/GB processed. VPC Peering $0.01/GB intra-region, $0.02/GB cross-region. GCP VPC: $0/mo, egress $0.12/GB internet, $0.01/GB intra-zone peering. Azure VNet: $0/mo, peering $0.01/GB. Free Tier: VPC/VNet itself unlimited free; NAT not free. Self-host vSwitch/Headscale $0.
DNS Hosting (Authoritative)
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: Unlimited zones & queries, unlimited records, 20 Page Rules free, Pro $20/mo (20 rules, WAF), Business $200/mo (100 rules, 100% uptime SLA), Enterprise $5000/mo+. Route53: $0.50/zone/mo first 25, $0.40/M queries first 1B, $0.20/M after + $0.50/healthcheck. Bunny DNS: $0.10/zone/mo min $1/mo, $0.20/M queries, 20 global PoPs. Free Tier: Cloudflare unlimited free forever. Route53 no free tier beyond 12mo trial.
CDN / Edge Delivery
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 BW, 330+ PoPs, Tiered Cache free. Pro $20/mo, Business $200/mo, Enterprise $5000/mo+. BunnyCDN: $1/mo min (storage), Volume tier $0.01/GB NA/EU, $0.03/GB APAC/SA, $0.01/GB extra Tier. Fastly: $50/mo min, $0.12/GB NA/EU first 10TB, $0.19/GB APAC, $0.015/10k requests. CloudFront: $0.085/GB first 10TB, $0.02/10k HTTPS req, $0.02/GB origin fetch. Free Tier: Cloudflare unlimited. CloudFront 1TB free/mo 12 mo, 10M requests. Overage: per GB/requests billed.
HTTPS / TLS Certificate Management
Encrypts traffic between your users and your servers. Without it browsers flag your site as insecure and you lose trust and search ranking.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Universal: Free unlimited certs with auto-renew, shared SAN. Pro $20/mo same. Business $200/mo custom upload. ACM Public: $0 free when attached to ALB/CloudFront/NLB/ApiGW. ACM Private CA: $400/mo per CA + $0.75/private cert, $0.10 for short-lived. Let's Encrypt: $0 free, 50 certs/domain/week limit, 90-day. ZeroSSL Free: 3 x 90-day free then $10/mo. Overage: Private CA billing hourly $0.55/hr.
Load Balancer (L7 Application)
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 limitsCloudflare LB Free: 1 LB included with health checks, $5/mo per extra LB, $0.50/M DNS queries for LB. Pro $20/mo same. ALB: $0.0225/hr (~$16.43/mo) + $0.008/LCU-hr (LCU = new conn/sec, active conn, proc bytes, rule evals). GCP L7 LB: $0.025/hr (~$18.25/mo) + $0.008/LCU-hr + $0.008/GB processed. Hetzner LB11: $5.83/mo flat incl 20TB traffic, LB21 $11.66/mo, LB31 $23.33/mo. Free Tier: Cloudflare 1 LB free forever.
DDoS Protection (Network & L7)
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 limitsCloudflare Free: Unmetered DDoS mitigation L3/L4/L7 free, no cap. Pro $20/mo enhanced rules. Business $200/mo advanced analytics. Enterprise $5000/mo+ 100% uptime + 5 sec mitigation SLA. AWS Shield Standard free. Shield Advanced $3000/mo/org + $0.05/GB mitigated + AWS DRT. Fastly DDoS included $50/mo min. Bunny Perma-mitigation included free. Free Tier: Cloudflare unmetered free perpetual, best free DDoS on market.
Edge Compute / Workers Runtime
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 limitsWorkers Free: 100k req/day, 10ms CPU, 128MB, 6* subrequests. Workers Paid $5/mo incl 10M req/mo ($0.50/M after), 30M CPU ms included + $0.02/M ms after, Workers KV extra. Workers Unbound: $5/mo same but 30 sec CPU. Fastly Compute: Free trial $50 credit, then $0.12/GB egress + $0.000015/req ($1.50/M). Lambda@Edge: $0.60/M requests + $0.00000625/GB-sec (128MB = $0.000050/100ms) + $0.085/GB egress. Free Tier: Workers Free forever 100k/day.
Mesh VPN / Private Overlay Network
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 limitsTailscale Free: 100 devices, 3 users, 1 tailnet, unlimited traffic, MagicDNS, subnet routers. Personal Pro $6/mo 1 user 100 dev. Team $6/user/mo min 5 users. Business $18/user/mo (6mo audit logs, ACLs). Enterprise custom. ZeroTier Free 25 nodes free, $5/mo per extra 25, $15/mo Business. Netbird Cloud Free 100 peers 10 users. Netmaker Community self-host free. Overage: Device count hard limit free tier.
DNS Firewall / DNS Filtering
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Gateway Free: 50 users free, unlimited DNS queries, L7 filtering, category blocks, 24h log retention. Zero Trust Teams $7/user/mo seat min $7/mo includes 50GB Gateway logs, 30 days. Enterprise $ custom. NextDNS Free 300k queries/mo then $1.99/mo unlimited devices & unlimited queries + logs. Cisco Umbrella DNS $15/user/mo. Free Tier: Cloudflare 50 users free perpetual, best free DNS filtering.
Object Storage Edge / Static Asset Acceleration
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 (write), 10M Class B (read), zero egress fees (free BW to internet). Paid $0.015/GB/mo storage, $4.50/M Class A writes, $0.36/M Class B reads. Bunny Storage Edge SSD $0.02/GB/mo, HDD $0.01/GB/mo, $0.01/GB egress min $1/mo. S3 Standard: $0.023/GB/mo first 50TB, $0.09/GB egress first 10TB, $0.0004/1000 GET. Free Tier: R2 10GB forever free, Cloudflare cache unlimited egress free.
Monitoring - Network / CDN Analytics
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 Analytics: 30-day retention, unlimited domains, Web Vitals, cache analytics, firewall events. GraphQL logs 7 days free. Grafana Cloud Free: 10k metrics series, 50GB logs/mo, 50GB traces, 3 users. Better Stack Free: 10 monitors 3-min checks, 100 status pages. Datadog NPM: $5/host/mo + $0.10/GB logs ingested. ThousandEyes $250/mo min. Free Tier: Cloudflare analytics free unlimited domains forever.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: 5 custom rules free, Managed OWASP limited (Free). Pro $20/mo 20 rules + Managed ruleset full + OWASP Core. Business $200/mo 100 custom + 25 managed rulesets. AWS WAF: $5/mo per WebACL + $1/mo per rule (up to 1500 WCUs) + $0.60/M requests processed (up to $6/M after). Fastly WAF $0.12/GB + $0.015/10k + managed rules $0.50/M. Free Tier: Cloudflare WAF 5 rules free forever. AWS no free tier.
Global Anycast Network / Edge PoPs
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: 330+ global PoPs, anycast edge, unlimited anycast queries & bandwidth (same PoPs as Enterprise). Pro $20 same network. Fastly: 90+ PoPs, $50/mo min, $0.12/GB. Akamai Ion: $350/mo min $0.25/GB under 1TB, $0.125/GB after, Enterprise $2500/mo min. BunnyCDN: 115+ PoPs, $1/mo + $0.01/GB (EU/NA). Free Tier: Cloudflare unlimited anycast free forever.
DNS Load Balancing / Failover
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare LB Free: 1 LB, geo/failover/weighted, 2 origins free, health checks 1-min interval, $5/mo per extra LB + $0.50/M LB queries + $1/check/mo. Route53 Failover: $0.50/zone + $0.40/M queries + $0.50/basic health check/mo ($0.75/faster 10s). NS1: $50/mo starter 1M queries + $75/mo traffic steering LB, $0.85/M after. Bunny: $1/mo per LB. Free Tier: Cloudflare 1 LB forever free.
Private DNS Zones / Split-Horizon DNS
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsTailscale MagicDNS: Free unlimited private DNS within tailnet 100 dev, split DNS, search domains. Route53 Private: $0.50/zone/mo + $0.40/M queries standard (same as public). Azure Private DNS: $0.50/zone/mo + $0.40/M queries. GCP Cloud DNS private: $0.50/zone/mo + $0.40/M. Cloudflare Gateway private resolver Free 50 users then $7/user/mo. Free Tier: MagicDNS free 100 dev perpetual.
IP Address Management (BYOIP / Static IP / Elastic IP)
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 limitsAWS Elastic IP: $0 when attached to running instance/NAT/GWLB, $0.005/hr ($3.60/mo) when idle. BYOIP $0 fee to bring /24+, $0.10/hr advertisement? Actually free. GCP Static IP $0 when in-use, $0.01/hr idle ($7.20/mo). Azure Public IP Basic free static dynamic $0? Standard $0.005/hr idle. Hetzner Floating IP free up to 3, Primary IP free with server. Cloudflare BYOIP: Enterprise $5500/mo min includes 1 /24 BYOIP, $5500/mo per extra prefix + Magic Transit $5000/mo required. Free Tier: In-use Elastic IPs free forever.
NAT Gateway / Egress
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 limitsAWS NAT GW: $0.045/hr (~$32.85/mo) + $0.045/GB processed + $0.09/GB internet egress. GCP Cloud NAT: $0/hr? Actually $0.045/hr per GW (~$32.85/mo) + $0.045/GB processed first 1TB. Azure NAT GW: $0.045/hr + $0.045/GB + $0.005/hr per public IP. Self-host: CX11 $3.29/mo + 20TB traffic, pfSense free. Free Tier: No free NAT GW; GCP $0 gateway in some regions? Self-host cheap $3.29.
Service Mesh Ingress / API Gateway Networking
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare API Shield Free: 100k API calls/day schema validation, discovery free, Pro $20/mo 500k, Business $200/mo 5M. AWS API GW: REST $3.50/M requests + $0.09/GB egress, HTTP API $1.00/M + $0.09/GB. GCP Apigee X PayG $4/M API calls. Kong Konnect Free 1 runtime, Plus $250/mo per node. Tyk OSS free self-host, Cloud $75/mo. Free Tier: Cloudflare API Shield Free 100k/day forever.
Uptime Health Checks / Synthetic Probing
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Health Checks: Linked to LB free 1 LB with health checks 1-min, $5/mo per extra monitor (60s), $0.50/M DNS checks. Route53: $0.50/mo per basic check 30s, $0.75/mo fast 10s, $1/mo HTTPS string match. UptimeRobot Free: 50 monitors 5-min interval free forever, Pro $8/mo 50x1-min. Better Stack Free: 10 monitors 3-min, 1 status page, $24/mo 30 monitors 30-sec + incident management. Free Tier: UptimeRobot 50 free forever.
How this small scale networking and content delivery checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale networking and content delivery 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.