Community — 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.
Hosting / Compute 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 limitsVercel Hobby: $0 - 100GB bandwidth, 6000 execution hrs, unlimited hobby projects, 1000 GB-hrs / Pro $20/seat/mo + $40 per 100GB bandwidth overage / Enterprise custom from $2500+/mo / Netlify Free 100GB BW, 300 build mins / Starter $19/mo, Pro $19/seat/mo + $55/500 mins over / Railway Hobby $5/mo ($5 credits included), Pro $20/seat/mo + usage ($0.000231/GB-sec, $0.10/GB egress) / Render Free 750hrs/mo / Starter $7/mo 512MB RAM, Pro $29/mo 4GB / Fly.io Free allowance: 3 shared-CPU VMs, 3GB RAM, 160GB egress then $0.02/GB egress + $1.94/mo per VM / AWS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr + $0.004445/GB/hr ~$15-30/mo per 0.25vCPU task, ECS Cluster $0.10/hr (~$73/mo) / DigitalOcean App Platform $5-12/mo starter, $0.02/GB over, Droplets $6-48/mo / Hetzner CX32 $35/mo 4vCPU 8GB
Primary Database (Relational)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Free: $0 - 500MB DB, 50k MAU, 1GB file storage, 2GB bandwidth, 2 active projects / Pro $25/mo - 8GB DB per project, 100k MAU (then $0.00325/MAU), 100GB BW, 100GB file storage, $0.125/GB DB overage, $0.09/GB egress over / Team $599/mo / Neon Free: 0.5GB storage, 100hrs compute (CU), 10GB transfer / Launch $19/mo - 10GB storage, 300hrs compute, 50GB egress, $0.10/GB over / Scale $69/mo 50GB, 750hrs / Turso Free 9GB storage, 500M rows read/mo, 25M writes / Scaler $29/mo 24GB, 100M rows/day / Enterprise $ custom / PlanetScale Free 5GB storage, 10M reads/mo, 10M writes / Scaler Pro $29/mo 10GB, 100M reads, $1.50/GB over, $5/extra branch / AWS RDS db.t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.5/mo + $0.115/GB-mo storage + $0.095/GB backup / db.m6g.large $0.115/hr ~$84/mo / Aurora Serverless v2 $0.12/Acu-hr min $43/mo + storage $0.10/GB + I/O $0.20/M / CockroachDB Serverless Free 10GB / Dedicated $0.20/CU-hr ~$100+/mo
Object Storage / File 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 limitsCloudflare R2 Free: 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops, 50M Class B ops, zero egress fees / Standard $0.015/GB-mo storage, $4.50/M Class A, $0.36/M Class B, free egress (vs S3) / Enterprise $ custom + dedicated / Supabase Storage Free 1GB / Pro 100GB included then $0.021/GB over, $0.09/GB egress over / AWS S3 Standard $0.023/GB-mo first 50TB, $0.09/GB egress first 10TB (down to $0.05), $0.005/1k PUT $0.0004/1k GET / Backblaze B2 $0.006/GB-mo storage, $0.01/GB egress (free via Cloudflare Bandwidth Alliance), $0.005/1k downloads / Bunny Storage $0.01/GB-mo (HDD $0.01, SSD $0.02) + $0.01/GB egress (volume discounts) / Wasabi $6.99/TB/mo (min 1TB) no egress, $0.004/GB deletion / S3 Glacier Deep $0.00099/GB-mo
Authentication + Social Logins API
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 limitsSupabase Auth Free: 50k MAU included per project, unlimited social providers (Google, GitHub etc), email OTP / Clerk Free: 10k MAU, unlimited social logins, SAML SSO trial, 3 orgs / Pro $25/mo + 10k MAU included, $0.02/MAU overage, B2B organizations $0.02/MAU, SAML $25/mo / Scale $99/mo 1k MAU extra orgs, $0.02/MAU over / Enterprise custom (SAML 100+ connections, audit logs, SLA) ~$500+/mo / Auth0 Free 7.5k MAU, 3 social connections, 1k M2M / Essentials $35/mo up to 500 MAU + $0.07/MAU over, $0.18/MFA SMS / Professional $240/mo 1000 MAU + $0.07/MAU, custom DB, MFA / Enterprise custom from $1000+/mo, unlimited social, enterprise connections $75/conn / Firebase Auth Free first 50k MAU free (phone $0.01/SMS verification) then $0.01/MAU / WorkOS AuthKit Free 1k MAU / Starter $125/mo 10k MAU / Enterprise SSO $300/mo unlimited connections + Directory Sync SCIM $0.05/user/mo / Okta Customer Identity $0.02-0.07/MAU tiered, Workforce $4-9/user/mo
Commenting / Discussion API (Basic)
User-generated content, discussion, and keeping it safe. Needs moderation once you have real volume.Pricing & free-tier limitsGiscus Free: $0 unlimited (uses GitHub Discussions) - zero cost, data in GitHub / Commento.io self-host Free OSS (MIT) - VPS cost $5/mo + self-maintain / Commento++ cloud $0 trial / Hyvor Talk Free: 1 website, 3000 pageviews/mo, data import / Basic $5/mo 50k pageviews, $5 per 50k over / Pro $15/mo 500k PV / Business $49/mo 2M PV + white-label / Disqus Basic Free with ads (ad-supported) / Plus $12/mo 50k PV ad-free / Pro $49/mo 500k PV / Business $99/mo 2M PV / Coral Talk self-host Free OSS + VPS $20/mo / Coral Cloud custom from $100+/mo / Viafoura Community $299/mo starter 500k PV / $500/mo Pro 2M PV / Enterprise $2000+/mo custom moderation, AI / Stream Feeds (for comments) $499/mo Enterprise 5M activities, $0.10/1k over
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 bandwidth, 5 WAF rules, 3 page rules, DDoS unlimited, 2.5M Workers reqs / Pro $20/mo - 20 page rules, 20 WAF rules, managed rules, image resize 20k images / Business $200/mo - 100 page rules, 100 WAF, PCI, custom SSL, 50% faster / Enterprise custom from $5000+/mo (typically $5k-20k) + Magic Transit, Bot Mgmt, 24/7 SLA, unlimited rules, logs / Bunny.net Pay-as-you-go $1/mo min, $0.01/GB NA/EU ($0.06 Asia, $0.03 SA), volume $0.005/GB after 50TB, storage $0.01/GB / AWS CloudFront $0.085/GB first 10TB NA/EU (down to $0.02), $0.0075/10k HTTPS reqs, $50/mo Security Savings Bundle / Fastly $50/mo minimum, $0.12/GB NA, $0.19 Asia, $0.0075/10k reqs, Image $0.009/image / Akamai Enterprise $1000+/mo custom, $0.10/GB
Transactional Email API
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsResend Free: 3k emails/mo, 1 domain, 1 API key / Pro $20/mo 50k emails included, $0.40 per 1k overage, unlimited domains, audit log 7d / Scale $95/mo 100k + $0.40/1k over, 30d log / Enterprise custom / Amazon SES $0.10 per 1k emails + $0.12/GB attachment data, Free Tier 3k/mo if on EC2 + Data transfer $0.09/GB, Dedicated IP $24.95/mo / SendGrid Free 100/day (3k/mo) trial / Essentials $19.95/mo 50k emails, $0.0004/email over ($0.40/1k) / Pro $89/mo 100k emails, dedicated IP $30/mo, subuser / Postmark Free 10k (trial) + 100/mo ongoing / $15/mo 10k emails $1.25/1k over / $100/mo 100k $0.80/1k over, 45-day retention / $300/mo Enterprise 500k + dedicated IP / Mailgun Free trial 5k then Flex PayG $15/mo min + $1/1k over, Foundation $35/mo 50k / Scale $90/mo 100k
Caching Layer (Redis / Memcached)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Redis Free: 10k commands/day, 256MB max DB size, 500MB storage, single region / Pay-as-you-go $0.20 per 100k commands + $0.20/GB storage / Pro $10/mo per 100k cmd/day included, 1GB / Scale $50/mo 1M cmds/day / Enterprise custom / Redis Cloud Free: 30MB RAM, 30 conns / Essentials $5/mo 100MB, $0.20/100 ops? Actually $0.095/GB+ / Pro $50/mo 1GB, 24/7, multi-AZ / Pro+ $300+/mo / DigitalOcean Managed Redis $15/mo 1GB 1vCPU - $2.50/GB over / AWS ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr (~$90/GB-mo) + $0.0034 per ECPUs (1M reqs ~$2) / t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.5/mo / Dragonfly Cloud Free trial / $15/mo 1GB / Self-host OSS Free + VPS $10/mo / Momento Serverless Free 5GB transfer / $0.50/GB data-out
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 limitsVercel Env Vars Free unlimited per project / Doppler Free: 5 users, 3 projects, 1000 secrets, community support / Team $10/user/mo - unlimited projects, audit logs, branching, integrations, 90-day log / Scale $30/user/mo - 365-day logs, SLO, HIPAA / Enterprise custom $1000+/mo SSO, SCIM, VPC / Infisical Cloud Free: unlimited secrets, 5 users, 1 env / Pro $20/mo per org + $7/user/mo pro features, self-host Free OSS / Enterprise $500/mo / HashiCorp Vault Cloud Starter Free: 25 secrets, 2 namespaces / Standard $0.035/hr (~$25.20/mo cluster) + $0.03/secret-mo / Plus $0.053/hr + HSM / Enterprise $1.50/hr cluster + $1.45/hr HSM + license / AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls / AWS KMS $1/mth key + $0.03/10k reqs / Azure Key Vault $0.03/10k ops
Repository Hosting / Version Control
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 limitsGitHub Free: unlimited public/private repos, 2000 Actions mins/mo (Linux), 500MB Packages, 3 collaborators (private) unlimited after / Team $4/user/mo - 3000 Actions mins, 2GB Packages, code owners, branch protection / Enterprise Cloud $21/user/mo - 50k Actions mins (included), 50GB Packages, SAML, audit log, 99.9% SLA, data residency / Enterprise Server self-host $ custom ~ $21000/yr for 100 users / GitLab Free: 5 users/group, 400 CI/CD mins/mo, 5GB storage / Premium $29/user/mo - 10k mins (2000 per user), 100GB / Ultimate $99/user/mo - 50k mins, security compliance / Bitbucket Free 5 users / Standard $3/user/mo / Premium $6/user/mo - deployment, merge checks
Backups / Snapshots (Basic)
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 limitsSupabase Free: daily logical backups, 7-day retention for 500MB DB / Pro $25 includes PITR 7-day physical + daily logical, 14-day PITR add-on $100/mo, 30-day $300/mo / Neon Free PITR 7-day (branch restore) / Launch $19/mo PITR 14-day / Scale $69/mo PITR 30-day + branching / pg_dump + cron self-managed Free (script) + storage R2/B2 $0.005/GB-mo / SimpleBackups $19/mo 3 servers 1 daily job, $49/mo 10 servers / DigitalOcean Backups 20% of droplet cost (~$1-12/mo), 4 weekly retained / AWS Backup $0.05/GB-mo warm, $0.01/GB cold (Glacier), $0.01/GB data transfer cross-region / RDS Automated $0.095/GB-mo backup storage beyond 100% of DB / Veeam Cloud $150/mo starter 500GB / Enterprise $1500/yr 100 instances + object lock WORM / S3 Glacier Deep $0.00099/GB-mo ($1/TB/mo), retrieval $0.02/GB
How this hobby community checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby community 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.