Application — professional 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.
Cloud Platform
The underlying cloud account (AWS, GCP, Azure, or an all-in-one like Vercel+Supabase) that everything else is built on. Choose early — it is hard to change later.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: AWS 12mo free - 750h t2.micro, 5GB S3, 1M Lambda invocations; Vercel Hobby $0 - 100GB bw, 6000 exec hrs; Cloudflare Workers Free 100k req/day; Fly.io Free 3x shared-cpu VMs + 3GB vol / Paid: AWS pay-as-you-go EC2 t3.small $15.18/mo, GCP e2-small $13.80/mo, Vercel Pro $20/seat/mo + $40 per 100GB bw overage, DO droplet $6/mo
Web Hosting / Application 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 limitsFree: Vercel Hobby 1 concurrent build, 100GB bw; Render Free 750h web service sleep 15m; Fly.io 3 VMs free / Cheaper: Render Starter $7/mo always-on, Railway $5/mo + usage $0.000231/GB-hr, DO Apps $5/mo / Paid: ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr + $0.004445/GB/hr (~$15/mo for 0.25 vCPU/0.5GB), EKS $73/mo cluster, Vercel Pro $20/seat/mo, Heroku Basic $7/dyno/mo
Database – Managed RDBMS (Multi-tenant Postgres + RLS)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Supabase Free 500MB DB, 1GB file storage, 50k MAU, 2GB bandwidth; Neon Free 0.5GB storage, 10 CU-hr, 1 branch; AWS RDS Free 20GB gp2 750h db.t2.micro 12mo / Paid: Supabase Pro $25/mo - 8GB DB, 100GB bw $0.09/GB overage, 100k MAU $0.00325/MAU over; Neon Pro $19/mo - 10GB storage $0.125/GB over, compute $0.16/CU-hr; RDS db.t3.small $26/mo + $0.115/GB-mo storage
File / Object 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 limitsFree: S3 Free Tier 5GB 12mo, 20k GET, 2k PUT; R2 Free 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops; Supabase Free 1GB / Paid: S3 $0.023/GB-mo storage, $0.0004/1k GET, $0.005/1k PUT, $0.09/GB egress; R2 $0.015/GB-mo storage, zero egress, $4.50/M Class A; B2 $0.006/GB-mo + $0.01/GB egress; DO Spaces $5/mo 250GB + $0.02/GB over
Authentication & User Management
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Supabase Auth 50k MAU, 2FA, OAuth; Clerk Free 10k MAU; Auth0 Free 7.5k MAU, 2 social connections; Firebase Auth Free unlimited email/pass, 10k phone verifs/mo / Paid: Auth0 $35/mo base 500 MAU + $0.07/MAU over, $240/mo for 1k MAU + MFA; Clerk Pro $25/mo + $0.02/MAU over 10k; Supabase Pro $25/mo 100k MAU + $0.00325/MAU over; Firebase phone auth $0.06/verification after free
Caching Layer (Redis)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Upstash Free 10k commands/day, 256MB max, TLS; Redis Cloud 30MB free; ElastiCache Free t3.micro 12mo / Paid: Upstash $0.20 per 100k cmds + $0.25/GB storage; ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr (~$90/mo for 1GB always) + $0.38/M ECPUs; Redis Cloud Essentials $5/mo 100MB + $0.15/100k ops; DO Redis $15/mo 1GB RAM
CDN / Edge Network
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 CDN, 100k Workers req/day; CloudFront Free 1TB transfer 12mo, 10M req; Fastly dev trial $50 credit / Paid: CloudFront $0.085/GB (1st 10TB) $0.02/GB over 150TB, $0.0075/10k HTTPS req; Cloudflare Pro $20/mo + WAF; Bunny.net $0.01/GB NA/EU, $0.03/GB Asia, $1/mo min; Fastly $0.12/GB NA/EU min $50/mo
CI/CD Pipeline
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: GitHub Actions Free 2000 Linux min/mo, 500MB artifact, 120 min macOS; Vercel auto-deploy free; GitLab Free 400 compute min / Paid: GitHub Team $4/user/mo 3000 min; GitHub Enterprise $21/user/mo 50k min; Overage $0.008/min Linux, $0.08/min macOS; CircleCI $15/mo + $15/25k credits ($0.008-0.06/min); CodeBuild $0.005/min small instance
Monitoring / APM
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Grafana Cloud Free 10k series metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces; New Relic Free 100GB ingest, 1 full user free; Datadog trial 14 days; Sentry Free 5k errors / Paid: Datadog APM $31/host/mo, Infra $15/host/mo, Logs $0.10/GB; New Relic $99/full user/mo + $0.30/GB over 100GB; Grafana Pro $8/user + $0.50/1000 metrics over; Better Stack $24/mo 30 services
Error Tracking & Crash Reporting
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Sentry Free 5k errors/mo, 30d retention, 1k replays; Bugsnag Free 7.5k/mo 90d retention; Rollbar Free 5k/mo 30d / Paid: Sentry Team $26/mo 50k errors + $0.00042/event ($0.42/k) over, Business $80/mo 100k; Bugsnag $19/mo 25k events, $99/mo 100k; Self-host Sentry $0 + S3 $0.023/GB
Basic Secrets 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 limitsFree: Infisical Free 1000 secrets, 3 envs; Doppler Free 3 projects, 10 configs; GitHub Secrets free encrypted; AWS trial 30d / Paid: AWS Secrets $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k calls ($4 per 100k), Vault HCP $0.03/hr cluster ~$22/mo + $0.03/secret; Doppler Starter $8/user/mo unlimited, Team $18/user; Infisical Pro $5/user/mo; Akeyless $20/mo base
API Gateway & Rate Limiting
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: AWS API GW Free 1M REST/mo 12mo; Zuplo Free 10k req/mo 2 keys; Kong OSS free self-host; Cloudflare API Shield free 10k req/min rule / Paid: AWS HTTP API $1/M req, REST $3.50/M first 333M then $2.80/M + $0.25/M connection; Kong Enterprise $250/mo + $0.02/1k traffic; Zuplo $200/mo dev 250k calls + $8/100k over; Apigee X $500/mo + $40/M over
Background Jobs / Task Queue
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Inngest Free 10k steps/mo 1k concurrent; Trigger.dev Free 10k runs/mo; SQS Free 1M req/mo perpetual; QStash Free 500 messages/d; Cloudflare Queues Free 100k / Paid: Inngest $20/mo starter 50k + $0.15/1000 over; Trigger.dev Pro $99/mo 100k runs; SQS $0.40/M req std + Lambda $0.20/M inv; QStash $10/mo 5k/d + $0.50/100k over; Sidekiq Enterprise $179/mo license
Search Service (Full-text)
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Algolia Free 10k records, 10k searches/mo, 1M ops; Typesense Cloud Free 500k docs 2-node 1GB cluster trial; Meilisearch self-host $0 / Paid: Algolia Grow $0.50/1k search + $0.50/1k records (~$100-250/mo min), Standard $250/mo incl 100k records/500k ops + $0.60/1k over; Typesense $23/mo 1GB RAM 10GB storage $0.10/GB over; Elastic Cloud $95/mo 2GB RAM; Meilisearch Cloud Pro $30/mo 10k docs 100k searches
Image Optimization & Media Processing
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: Cloudinary Free 25 credits (25k transforms/mo), 25GB storage/bw; Cloudflare Images Free 5k; Vercel Hobby Image 1000 source, 5k transforms; Imgix trial 14d / Paid: Imgix Starter $10/mo 5k origin + $3/1k extra + $0.08/GB bw; Cloudflare Images $5/mo per 100k stored $1/100k delivered + $6/100k transforms; Cloudinary Plus $89/mo 225 credits + $0.40/GP extra; Vercel Pro $0.50/1k transforms after 5k
Transactional Email Service
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Resend Free 3k/mo 100/day 1 domain; AWS SES Free 3000/mo from EC2 12mo sandbox; SendGrid Free 100/day 3000/mo; Postmark trial 100/mo / Paid: Resend Pro $20/mo 50k + $1/1k over; AWS SES $0.10/1k + $0.12/GB; SendGrid $19.95/mo 50k + $30/mo dedicated IP + $0.25/1k over; Postmark $15/mo 10k + $0.18/1k over to $0.13 at vol; Mailgun $15/mo 10k + $1/1k over
Log Aggregation & Management
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Better Stack Logs Free 1GB/mo 3d retention; Axiom Free 0.5GB/mo 30d; Grafana Cloud Logs Free 50GB/mo 30d; Papertrail Free 50MB/mo 48h / Paid: Better Stack $24/mo 20GB + $0.50/GB over 30d; Axiom Pro $25/mo 100GB incl + $0.50/GB over; Datadog $0.10/GB ingest + $1.70/M retention; Logtail $0.50/GB over
Staging / Preview Environments
An isolated place to test changes before real users see them. Catches bugs without embarrassing your production users.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Vercel Preview free unlimited on Hobby 100GB bw pool; Netlify Previews free 300 build min/mo; Render Free preview sleep 15m; Qovery Community free self-host / Paid: Vercel Pro $20/seat/mo previews included $40/100GB over; Render Standard preview $7/mo always-on + $0.10/GB bw; Qovery Managed $199/mo 5 devs (~$10/dev); Platform.sh $50/env/mo dev; Amplify previews $0.01/min + $0.15/GB
Automated Backup & PITR
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Supabase Free daily backup 7d 1 backup; Neon Free PITR 1d + branch restore; RDS auto backups free up to allocated DB; DO Backups free snap trial / Cheaper: Supabase PITR $100/mo 7d; DO Backups 20% droplet ($1.20 on $6); Neon PITR 7d in Pro $19/mo; SimpleBackups $29/mo 10 servers / Paid: AWS Backup $0.05/GB-mo warm $0.01 cold restore $0.05/GB; Supabase PITR 30d $250/mo; RDS snapshot $0.095/GB-mo
Web Application Firewall (WAF) & DDoS Protection
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: Cloudflare Free WAF 5 custom rules, Managed Rules not incl, unmetered DDoS; AWS Shield Standard free 100 Gbps; Cloud Armor free trial / Paid: Cloudflare Pro $20/mo 20 custom + 1 managed ruleset; Business $200/mo 100 + 25 managed; AWS WAF $5/WebACL/mo + $1/rule/mo + $0.60/M req + $6/mo Bot Control; Shield Advanced $3000/mo + $0.05/10k over; Fastly WAF $250/mo + $20/M req
WebSockets / Realtime Infrastructure
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 limitsFree: Pusher Free 100 conn, 200k msgs/day; Ably Free 200 CCU 6M/mo 200 ch; Supabase Realtime Free 200 concurrent 2M/mo; Socket.IO free / Paid: Pusher $49/mo 500 CCU + $0.03/M over, Growth $189/mo 2000 CCU; Ably $19/mo 500 CCU 1.5M, $99/mo 1000 CCU + $3/1k peak conn + $3/100k msgs over; AWS WebSocket $1/M msgs + $0.25/M conn-min; Cloudflare Durable Objects $5/mo 10M req + $0.15/M over
RBAC / ABAC Authorization Framework
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: OpenFGA Apache2 free unlimited checks; Cerbos OSS free; Permit.io Free 1000 auth API calls/mo 1 env; Oso Free 500 PDP checks/day; AuthZed Free 10k checks/mo / Paid: Permit.io Starter $300/mo 15k + $25/1k over Pro $1000/mo 100k; Oso $100/mo 10k/day + $0.20/1000 over Growth $500/mo 100k/day; AuthZed $25/mo 100k + $0.30/1k over Dedicated $495/mo; Cerbos $250/mo 50k evals
Webhooks Delivery & Retry System
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: Svix Free 50 msg/day 3 apps 7d retention; Hookdeck Free 100k events/mo 7d 3 connections; Webhook Relay free 5 tunnels / Paid: Svix Starter $100/mo 50k + $1.50/1k over Growth $500/mo 500k + $1/1k over Enterprise $2000/mo 5M; Hookdeck $25/mo 100k + $0.15/1k over $99/mo 1M; EventBridge $1/M custom events + $0.80/M cross-account SQS $0.40/M; Webhook Relay $10/mo
Feature Flags & Experimentation
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 limitsFree: Flagsmith Free 500k flag req/mo 10 flags 1 env; GrowthBook Free 10k tracked users/mo 10 envs; Unleash OSS free unlimited; ConfigCat Free 10k req/day 1 prod / Paid: ConfigCat Pro $80/mo 1M/day + $0.02/1k over; LaunchDarkly Starter $10/mo + $8.33/seat 1k MAU + $10/1k MAU over; GrowthBook Pro $149/mo 25k MTU + $0.004/MTU over Enterprise $800/mo; Split ~$2000/mo; Unleash $80/mo base + $20/user
Uptime Monitoring & On-Call Incident Management
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: UptimeRobot Free 50 monitors 5m checks 90d logs; Better Stack Free 10 monitors 3m; PagerDuty Free 1 user 5 stakeholders; Grafana OnCall OSS free; StatusCake free 10 monitors / Paid: Better Stack Team $24/mo 50 monitors 30s + 500 SMS; Business $99/mo 200 monitors; UptimeRobot Pro $7/mo 80 monitors 1m $29/mo 200; PagerDuty Team $29/user/mo Pro $41/user 500 SMS $0.15/SMS; Opsgenie $22.50/user; Datadog $5/10k tests
Real User Monitoring (RUM) & Frontend 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 limitsFree: Cloudflare Web Analytics Free unlimited sites no cookies; Vercel Free 2.5k page views/mo Speed Insights 4k; Sentry Performance Free 1k tx/mo; New Relic Free 100GB ingest / Paid: Vercel Analytics Pro $20/seat + Web Vitals $10/10k over 25k; Sentry Team 50k tx @ $26/mo base + $0.00060/tx over; Datadog RUM $1.50/1000 sessions + $1.25/1k Frustration Signals; LogRocket $99/mo 10k + $0.008/session over; New Relic $0.60/1k page view after 100GB
Security Scanning (SAST, SCA, Dependency)
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 limitsFree: Dependabot free unlimited alerts; CodeQL Free public 200 min/mo private; Snyk Free 200 OSS + 200 IaC tests/mo; SonarCloud Free public unlimited; Trivy OSS free unlimited; npm audit free / Paid: GitHub AdvSec $49/committer/mo; Snyk Team $25/dev/mo min $98/mo ($492/mo 20 devs) + container $0.50/image/mo; SonarCloud Team $18/mo 100k LoC + $25/100k over; SonarQube Enterprise $150k/yr; Checkmarx $30/dev/mo + $2000 base; Veracode $15000/yr
Container Registry & Artifact 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 limitsFree: GHCR Free 500MB storage 1GB egress/mo private public unltd; Docker Hub Free 1 private repo 200 pulls/6hr anon 1000 auth; ECR Free 500MB/mo 12mo; GCP 0.5GB/mo / Paid: GHCR $0.25/GB-mo storage + $0.50/GB transfer over 10GB; Docker Pro $5/mo 5k pulls/day unltd; ECR $0.10/GB-mo + $0.09/GB transfer; JFrog Cloud Pro $44/mo 10GB + $6.50/GB over $0.50/GB tx; Harbor self-host $0 + VM $15/mo
Product Analytics & Event Tracking
Lets external services notify you of events in real time. Core to integrating payments, KYC, and third-party workflows.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: PostHog Free 1M events/mo 5k replays 500 surveys; Mixpanel Free 100k MTU 1yr ret; Amplitude Free 50k MTU; Segment Free 1000 MTU 30d 2 sources; Plausible trial 30d / Paid: PostHog Scale $0.000248/event ($24.80/100k) + $0.005/replay + $0.20/1k flag req; Mixpanel Growth $28/mo $0.28/1000 MTU over Enterprise $500/mo+; Amplitude Growth $250/mo ~125k MTU; Segment Team $120/mo 10k MTU + over $10-0.12; PostHog boost $450/mo 5M events
SaaS Billing & Entitlements 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 limitsFree: Stripe Billing no free monthly, pay per tx 2.9%+30c + billing 0.5% recurring volume (first $1M? Actually no free); Clerk Billing Free 10k MAU; Lemon Squeezy free start fees deducted / Paid: Stripe 0.5% recurring ($1000 MRR=$5 billing fee) Scale 0.8%->0.3% vol + 2.9%+30c, $0.03/invoice; Paddle 5%+50c per tx all-in ( $50 sale=$3 fee); LemonSqueezy 5%+50c + 2.9%+30c ~8%; Chargebee Growth $599/mo up to $600k ARR + $0.60/invoice over; Lago OSS free self-host $0
How this professional application checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a professional application 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.