Physics And Simulation — 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.
Physics Simulation Compute (High CPU Bare Metal for Physics)
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 limitsEquinix m3.large.x86 $550/mo flat (2026). Hetzner AX161 €189/mo (~$205/mo). AWS c6i.32xlarge $5.44/hr (~$3,960/mo sustained), spot $1.63/hr (70% off). Oracle Free: 4 OCPU/24GB free forever, 200GB boot free. Overage: AWS $0.172/vCPU-hr, Equinix bandwidth $0.05/GB over 20TB.
GPU Compute for Cloth / Fluid / Soft-Body Simulation
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 limitsVast.ai RTX 4090 $0.65/hr, RunPod 4090 $0.89/hr / A100 $1.99/hr, Colab Free 12hr/day T4 / Pro $11.99/mo 100 CUs. Lambda A100 $1.50/hr on-demand. CoreWeave H100 $4.25/hr. AWS g6e.48xlarge $13.347/hr. Free: 100GB egress. Overage: storage $0.10/GB-mo, $0.59/hr interruption discount lost.
Build Farm for Physics Library Compilation
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free 2000 min Linux + 500MB Packages. Paid $0.008/min Linux 2c, $0.016/min 4c, $0.032/min 16c, $0.064/min 64c. BuildJet 50% cheaper $0.03/min for 64c + free cache 10GB. Cirrus Free 100 min/mo. Incredibuild $45/dev/mo + $0.15/min remote. GitLab credits $10=1000 min. Overage minutes roll to next tier at $0.006/min.
Version Control for Physics Assets (Large Binaries > Git)
Where your source code lives and is collaborated on. Non-negotiable for any team or serious project.Pricing & free-tier limitsPerforce Free: 5 users / 20 workspaces. Paid $39/user/mo ($468/yr) min 20 users 2026 price. GitHub Free: 500MB LFS storage, 1GB bandwidth. GitHub LFS pack $5/mo = 50GB extra at $0.0875/GB/mo storage + bandwidth. Azure free 5 users, $6/user/mo over. Gitea self-host $0 + VPS $6/mo. Helix Cloud $48/user/mo managed.
Artifact Storage for Physics Builds & Binaries
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsS3 $0.023/GB-mo, $0.005/1k PUT, $0.09/GB egress. R2 Free: 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops, 10M Class B, zero egress. Over: $0.015/GB-mo storage. B2 Free 10GB, $0.006/GB-mo storage, $0.01/GB egress (free via Cloudflare). Wasabi $6.99/TB/mo no egress/API fees, min 1TB. JFrog Free 2GB, Pro $38/mo 10GB, Enterprise $135/mo 300GB + $0.09/GB overage.
Crash Reporting for Physics Crashes & Determinism Violations
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 limitsSentry Free: 5k errors/mo, 10k replays, 1 user, 30 days retain. Team $26/mo 50k errors ($0.00052/error over $0.0015 replays). Business $80/mo 100k errors + $0.0006 overage. Backtrace Free 1k dumps/mo, $99/mo 25k dumps ($0.0035/dump over). GlitchTip self-host $0 + $6/mo VPS. Bugsnag Lite $19/mo 15k sessions.
Physics Profiler & Frame Analysis
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 limitsTracy MIT free unlimited. RenderDoc free. Optick free MIT. Superluminal Indie $199/yr 1 seat (sales < $500k). Pro $1,499/yr per seat (2026). RAD Telemetry $2,500/seat/yr min 5 seats + $500 support. Intel VTune free community, Premium $799 one-time + $179/yr support. PIX free (Microsoft). Overage: Superluminal license transfer $99, extra build nodes $299/yr.
CI/CD for Physics Regression Testing
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free 2000 min Linux, macOS 240 min. $0.008/min Linux, $0.08/min macOS. Buildkite free 1 agent, $35/agent/mo billed annually ($15 overage agent-hr). Drone.io free OSS self-host $0. Woodpecker free AGPL. Harness free 1 pipeline, Team $25/mo, Enterprise $1,500/mo + $0.25/build-min over 15k. Cirrus free 100 build-min.
Monitoring for Physics Simulation Performance
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsGrafana Cloud Free: 10k metrics series, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 14d retain. Pro $29/mo 25k series. Datadog Infra $15/host/mo (2026) up to 200 custom metrics, $17 reserved. APM $31/host/mo. Custom metrics $0.05/100 metrics/mo over. Logs $0.10/GB ingest, 15d retain $1.70/M indexed. New Relic Free 100GB ingest/mo, $0.30/GB over. Netdata free open-source.
Secrets Management for Simulation Keys
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 limitsVault OSS free. Vault Cloud Dev $0.03/hr (~$21.60/mo) up to 25 secrets. Standard $0.32/hr (~$230/mo) 1000 secrets. Plus $1.23/hr (~$885/mo) HSM. AWS Secrets $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls. Doppler free 5 projects/20 secrets, $18/mo team 100 secrets + $0.07/secret over. Infisical self-host free, Cloud $18/mo team. CyberArk $35k/yr platform. Overage Vault transaction $0.0005/request.
Asset Storage for Collision Meshes / SDF / Heightmaps
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 reads free, egress $0. Wasabi $6.99/TB/mo min 1TB no egress fee. S3 $0.023/GB Standard, IA $0.0125/GB retrieval $0.01/GB. B2 $0.006/GB storage, $0.01/GB egress free to Cloudflare. MinIO AGPL free, Enterprise $10/TB/mo official support + $0.10/GB over 500TB. Egnyte $20/user/mo 1TB pooled.
Replay & Determinism Validation 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 limitsS3 $0.023/GB-mo. ClickHouse Cloud free 10GB storage 100M rows, $0.25/GB over + $0.45/compute-hr. Snowflake on-demand $2-4/credit (1 credit=1 node-hr), storage $23/TB/mo. Hetzner Storage Box 1TB €9.90 (~$10.77/mo). Axiom free 500MB/day (~15GB/mo). Over: S3 retrieval $0.01/GB, ClickHouse egress $0.09/GB.
Telemetry & Event Logging for Vehicle / Movement
Lets external services notify you of events in real time. Core to integrating payments, KYC, and third-party workflows.Pricing & free-tier limitsPostHog free 1M events/mo, Groups free, $0.000248/event over ($248/M). Axiom free 500MB/day (~15GB/mo), $25/mo Starter 30GB then $0.50/GB over. Loki self-host free. Datadog logs $0.10/GB ingest + $1.70/million events indexed, $0.02/GB 30d retention over. Segment free 1k MTU, Team $120/mo 10k MTU ($0.01/MTU over).
Time-Series DB for Physics Metrics (FPS, solver iterations, NaN count)
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 limitsInfluxDB Cloud Serverless free 30GB/month write/read, $0.002/MB ingest over, $0.01/query over 300 queries. Timescale free 25GB storage (90d retain), Pro $199/mo 500GB storage $0.10/GB over, compute $0.25/hr. Prometheus free OSS. Grafana Cloud free 10k metrics series, 50GB logs. Timestream $0.036/GB-hr memory + $0.50/M writes over.
Container Registry for Physics Simulation Images
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 limitsGHCR free 500MB storage + 1GB bandwidth, $0.25/GB storage over + $0.50/GB bandwidth. ECR $0.10/GB-mo storage, egress $0.09/GB via internet (free via CloudFront). Docker Hub free 1 private repo, Pro $9/mo 5k pulls/mo $0.05/100 pulls over. Quay free 1 private org. Harbor self-host $0 (+ VPS $6/mo). JFrog free 2GB, $38/mo 10GB.
Documentation Hosting for Physics Systems
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 limitsCloudflare Pages free unlimited sites, bandwidth, builds. Mintlify free 1 site community, Pro $120/mo 1k pages + $0.10/page over. GitBook free 1 private space 5 editors, Pro $8/editor/mo + $0.05/MAU over 1k. Confluence free 10 users, Standard $61.75/mo for 11-100 ($5.75/user avg), Premium $121/mo. Notion free 10 guests, Plus $10/user/mo.
Distributed Cache for Baked Physics Results (Convex hulls, BVH)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash free 10k commands/day, $0.40/100k commands over. Redis Cloud free 30MB, Essentials $5/mo 1GB $0.50/GB over, Pro $350/mo 10GB. Momento free 5GB transfer/mo, 50k req, $0.50/GB over + $0.15/M ops. ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr + ECPU $0.0034/1k req, min $90/mo. Dragonfly free OSS, Cloud $15/mo 1GB.
Backup & Disaster Recovery for Physics Assets
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsRestic/Rclone free OSS. B2 free 10GB, $0.006/GB-mo storage + $0.01/GB download. Wasabi $6.99/TB/mo no egress/fees. Hetzner Storage Box 1TB €9.90/mo (~$10.77). AWS Backup $0.05/GB-mo warm + $0.10/GB restore over free tier. Veeam $150/socket/yr community free 10 VMs. Metallic $70/mo 1TB + $0.07/GB over.
Cost Monitoring / FinOps for Physics Compute
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 limitsInfracost free 2000 runs/mo via GitHub, Cloud $200/mo team unlimited. OpenCost free OSS self-host. Kubecost free 1 cluster 15d retain, Enterprise $500/cluster/mo + $0.02/node-hr over. CloudZero free <$50k spend, Starter $850/mo up to $250k, $1,500/mo $500k + 0.5% savings commission. Vantage free 1 account, Pro $1,500/mo 10 accounts. CloudHealth $30k/yr min.
How this small scale physics and simulation checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale physics and simulation 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.