Community — 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.
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
Search Infrastructure (Thread Search)
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeilisearch Cloud Free tier: 100k docs, 10k searches/mo 14-day trial (self-host Free OSS - $0 + $10/mo VPS) / Starter $30/mo 1M docs, 100k searches / Pro $100/mo 10M docs, 1M searches / Typesense Cloud Free: 0.5GB RAM 10k docs trial / $14/mo Starter 2GB RAM, 100k docs, 100k searches / $54/mo 4GB RAM 1M docs / $146/mo 16GB, 10M docs / Algolia Free: 10k records, 10k search requests/mo / Grow $150/mo min includes 50k records + 250k searches, $1.00 per 1k records over, $0.50 per 1k searches over, $0.10/1k indexing / Pro custom $500+/mo / Enterprise from $2000-5000+/mo custom SLA / Elasticsearch Elastic Cloud Serverless $95/mo min (~$0.10/GB ingest) + storage $0.10/GB / Self-hosted ES free OSS
Content Moderation API
Manages the content and assets you publish without editing code. Essential for sites with frequent updates.Pricing & free-tier limitsHive Moderation Free: 1000 calls/mo (image/text moderation), up to 2 models / Starter $199/mo 100k API calls, $0.0015/call over, visual moderation + text + audio / Growth $499/mo 500k calls + behaviors / Enterprise $1500+/mo 2M calls + video + Behaviors API + custom models + SSO / Perspective API (Google Jigsaw) Free unlimited (rate limited 100 QPS) toxicity scoring / Sightengine $29/mo starter 12k ops, $0.002/op over / Growth $499/mo 500k / Enterprise $2500+ / AWS Rekognition Moderation $0.001/image (first 1k free), $0.01/video min / Azure Content Moderator $1 per 1000 txn / Spectrum Labs (ActiveFence) Enterprise $999/mo starter, $5000+ enterprise / Two Hat (Microsoft) Enterprise custom from $5000+/mo
Email Digest / Newsletter API
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsLoops.so Free: 1k contacts, 3k emails/mo, audience + transactional / Starter $19/mo 2.5k contacts unlimited email / Pro $49/mo 10k contacts unlimited, advanced segmentation + 5 seats / Enterprise custom 50k+ contacts $300+/mo / Resend Broadcasts/Audiences Free: 1k contacts, 10k email broadcasts/mo / Pro $20/mo per 1k contacts (5k included) = $20 per 1k over - $100/mo for 10k contacts + transactional / Buttondown Free 100 subscribers / $29/mo 1k subs, $49/mo 5k / Customer.io Essentials $200/mo 5k profiles free 1k emails, $0.06/profile over + $0.20/1k data pip / Premium $1000/mo 20k profiles / Enterprise $2000+/mo / Braze Free trial / Growth $1000/mo 10k MAU + $0.02/MAU over, push/email included / Enterprise $3000+/mo / Beehiiv Free 2.5k subs / Grow $34.32/mo 10k subs, $99/mo premium / Mailchimp Free 500 subs / $13/mo 500 subs Standard
Background Jobs / Queue
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash QStash Free: 500 msgs/day, 5 endpoints, DLQ 500, retries / Pro $10/mo 50k msgs/mo ($1.50 per 10k over), unlimited endpoints / Trigger.dev Free: 10k runs/mo, 3 concurrent, 7-day log / Pro $29/mo 50k runs, $0.0005 per run over, unlimited concurrency, 90-day log / Enterprise custom $500+ / BullMQ + Redis self-host Free OSS (MIT) + Redis $10/mo / Inngest Free 15k steps/mo (100 runs) / Starter $20/mo 50k steps, $0.001/step over (~$20/10k runs) / Growth $50/mo 250k steps 1yr log / Scale $199/mo 1.5M steps / AWS SQS Free Tier 1M requests (12mo) / $0.40/M requests after (Standard), $0.50/M FIFO + data transfer / Sidekiq Pro $199 one-time + $99/yr maintenance (OSS sidekiq free) / Temporal Cloud Free 5k actions / Starter $250/mo 100k actions + $0.0001/action over
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 limitsSentry Free: 5k errors/mo, 10k performance spans, 1GB logs, 30-day retention, 1 seat / Team $26/mo 50k errors + $0.0006/error over ($0.60/1k), 100k transactions $0.0002/span over, 20GB logs, unlimited seats / Business $80/mo 500k errors / Enterprise custom SSO, 90-day retention $2000+/mo / Grafana Cloud Free: 10k metrics series, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 50GB profiles, 3 users / Pro $8/mo per user (min $8) + metrics $8/1k series, logs $0.50/GB, traces $0.50/GB / Advanced custom / DataDog APM Pro $31/host/mo (requires infra $15/host) + $1.70 per 1k analyzed spans, profiles $24/host, Real User $1.50/1k sessions, 15-day retention (+0.10/GB logs ingested) / Free tier infra limit 1 host / New Relic Free 100GB ingest/mo (unlimited hosts) + 1 user / Pro $99/user/mo + $0.35/GB over, $0.50/M synthetic checks / BetterStack Free 10 monitors
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 limitsCloudflare Free WAF: 5 custom rules, basic managed rules, unmetered DDoS (L3/4/7) / Pro $20/mo: 20 WAF custom rules, Cloudflare managed ruleset included, OWASP, rate limiting 10 rules / Business $200/mo: 100 custom rules, advanced managed, custom rule sets, PCI compliance / Enterprise custom from $5000+/mo + Bot Management $3000+, Magic Transit $5000+/mo, Advanced Rate Limiting free, DDoS SLA 100% + 24/7 SOC / AWS WAF $5/mo per ACL + $1/rule/mo + $0.60 per 1M requests processed + Bot Control $10/mo + $1/1M / AWS Shield Standard Free / Shield Advanced $3000/mo org + Data Transfer, DRT access / Sucuri Basic $199.99/yr per site + WAF + CDN + 1-yr cert / Pro $299/yr / Imperva DSF (WAF) Starter $500/mo / Enterprise $7000+/mo + dedicated PoPs
CI/CD Pipeline
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free: 2000 mins/mo Linux (private), macOS 10x multiplier, 500MB artifact storage, unlimited public / Team: 3000 mins included ($4/user) / Enterprise: 50000 mins included ($21/user), self-hosted runners free unlimited, larger runners $0.008/min Linux x64, $0.016/win, $0.08/macOS M1 / Depot.dev加速: Free 2000 mins + $24/mo Team 4000 mins + $0.01/min over, 10x faster builds / CircleCI Free: 6k credits/mo (~1000 Linux mins) / Performance $15/mo 30k credits (30k per $0.00015/credit over = $0.15/1000) / Scale $2000/mo 500k credits / Buildkite Free 1k builds / Starter $15/user/mo + $0.01/min agent time + unlimited minutes if self-hosted agents / Enterprise $500+/mo / Harness Free up to 5 pipelines / Team $500/mo 500 build credits + Enterprise $2000+/mo + unlimited
Staging / Preview Environments
An isolated place to test changes before real users see them. Catches bugs without embarrassing your production users.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Preview Deployments: Hobby Free unlimited hobby previews 1 concurrent build / Pro $20/seat/mo includes 3 concurrent builds unlimited previews, password protected / Enterprise custom $2500+/mo 10 concurrent builds, SSO, private previews, compliance / Netlify Deploy Previews Free 300 build mins/mo / Pro $19/seat - 25k mins $7 per 500 mins over / Railway PR Environments: Hobby $5 credit = ~1 env / Pro $20/mo seat + usage ~$0.05/GB-hr per PR env (~$15/mo per env) + ephemeral auto-delete / Render Preview Envs: Free trial / Starter $7/env/mo 512MB / Pro $29/env/mo 4GB / PlanetScale Branching (DB): Free 2 branches / Pro $39/mo 10 branches then $5/branch over / Neon Branching (Postgres): Free unlimited dev branches, 1GB compute limit / Pro up to 100 branches / Uffizzi Cloud Free 1 cluster / Team $100/mo 5 envs / Enterprise $1500/mo 50 envs preview infra
How this small scale community checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale 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.