Stack Cost AI

Educationenterprise 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

Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Enterprise $3000+/mo custom, $0.15/GB over, SSO, SLA / AWS ECS/EKS Multi-AZ Multi-Region Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr, Spot $0.012/vCPU/hr, $100-500+/mo per service + Global Accelerator $0.025/hr + $0.015/GB DT-P / GCP Cloud Run $0.000024/vCPU-sec + $0.0000025/GiB-sec, min-instance $0.10/hr / Fly.io enterprise multi-region $1.94/vCPU/region/mo + dedicated CPU $29/mo

Database (PostgreSQL)

Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS Aurora PostgreSQL Global $500+ Multi-Region: $0.12/ACU-hr primary + $0.12/ACU-hr secondary x2 + $0.20/M I/O + $0.10/GB-mo storage + Global $0.20/M replication / Neon Enterprise custom - autoscale up to 10 CU, active-active $120+/mo per region + $0.16/CU-hr + PITR 90d $200/mo / Supabase Enterprise $599/mo + custom + HIPAA / CockroachDB Serverless Free 10M RUs + $1/1M RUs + $0.375/GB storage / Dedicated $0.34/CCU-hr ~$250/mo

File / Object Storage

Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS S3 Multi-Region Access Points + Replication + MRAP: $0.023-0.026/GB-mo storage, $0.02/GB CRR, $0.09/GB egress (CF $0.085), Object Lock WORM no extra / Cloudflare R2 Enterprise custom $0.015/GB-mo bulk discount + jurisdiction control / Bunny Storage Enterprise $0.01/GB-mo + $0.005/GB egress volume / Wasabi $6.99/TB/mo no egress, $5.99/TB reserved

Authentication / User Management

Pricing & free-tier limitsAuth0 Enterprise $1500-3000+/mo 1k MAU base + $0.07/MAU over + SSO/SCIM/MFA incl, B2B $0.20/org-mo / Okta Customer Identity Cloud $0.07/MAU + Enterprise Connections $0.08/MAU + $6/workforce user/mo + SCIM $4/user/mo + $15k/yr Identity Governance / WorkOS Enterprise $599/mo 500 SSO connections + Directory Sync + Audit Logs / Clerk Enterprise custom $500+/mo + B2B org billing

Video Hosting & Streaming API

Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Enterprise $3000+/mo custom, $0.15/GB over, SSO, SLA / AWS ECS/EKS Multi-AZ Multi-Region Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr, Spot $0.012/vCPU/hr, $100-500+/mo per service + Global Accelerator $0.025/hr + $0.015/GB DT-P / GCP Cloud Run $0.000024/vCPU-sec + $0.0000025/GiB-sec, min-instance $0.10/hr / Fly.io enterprise multi-region $1.94/vCPU/region/mo + dedicated CPU $29/mo

Transactional Email API

Pricing & free-tier limitsBraze Enterprise $1000-2000+/mo custom, $0.001/email volume + $0.0005/SMS + $500/mo onboarding / SendGrid Enterprise $895/mo 100k-500k + dedicated IPs $30/IP + $0.0004/email over, SLA 99.99% / Postmark Enterprise custom 500k+ $0.0008/email + dedicated pool + compliance / MessageBird (Bird) Enterprise $1000+/mo $0.0015/email + Omnichannel

CDN / Edge Delivery

Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Enterprise $5000+/mo min, unlimited bw, 100% SLA, 24/7 support, Workers Unlimited $5 + $0.50/M req, Magic Transit $5000/mo, rate limiting Enterprise, Logan $0 / Fastly Enterprise custom $2000+/mo + $0.04/GB at scale + Compute@Edge $0.20/M + DDoS $0 incl / Akamai Enterprise $10k+/mo $0.02-0.08/GB + $0.01/10k reqs + mTLS $0

Secrets Management

Pricing & free-tier limitsdotenv + Vercel Env Vars Free $0 incl with hosting / Doppler Free 5 users, 1 project, 100 secrets, 5 tokens / Infisical Free 2 projects, 5 members, E2E / Doppler Team $18/mo 15 users ($7/user/mo over 15), 25 envs, audit logs + $10/user/mo over / Infisical Team $19/user/mo SSO + audit / HashiCorp Vault Cloud Standard $0.24/hr ~$177/mo 25k ops + $0.03/10k ops over / AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls + KMS $1/key/mo + $0.03/10k reqs / Premium: Vault Enterprise HSM $1.5k+/mo

Repo / Version Control

Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free: unlimited public/private repos, 2000 Actions mins/mo private, 500MB Packages, 120 core-hrs Codespaces / GitLab Free 5 users, 400 CI mins / GitHub Team $4/user/mo 3000 mins + 2GB storage + required reviewers + env protection / GitHub Enterprise Cloud $21/user/mo 50k Actions mins + GHAS $5.75/user/mo Advanced Security (CodeQL, secret scanning) / Enterprise Server $21k/yr 50 seats self-host

Automated Backups

Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS Backup Vault Lock WORM + Cross-Region + Cross-Account immutable + Org policy: $0.05/GB-mo warm, $0.15/GB-mo cross-region, $0.20/GB-mo cross-account, vault $0 + Glacier Deep $0.00099/GB-mo + $0.025/GB restore + 7yr retention / Neon Enterprise PITR 90d + 1hr RPO $200/mo + cross-region $0.10/GB / Veeam Enterprise $1500/yr per 10 workloads + Cloud Connect $0.05/GB / Turso Multi-region incremental $29/mo

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Enterprise WAF + Bot Management Enterprise $5000+/mo min + $10k/yr Bot Mgmt Enterprise + Rate Limiting Enterprise + DDoS unlimited + Magic Transit + mTLS + Custom SLA + 24/7 SOC / AWS WAF + Shield Advanced $3000/mo per org + $0.60/M + $10/mo Bot + $500/mo ATP + DDoS cost protection / Akamai Kona + Bot Manager $15k+/mo

Caching / Redis

Pricing & free-tier limitsRedis Enterprise Cloud Active-Active Global $1000+/mo 5GB+ + CRDT $0.50/GB over + PrivateLink $0 + 99.99% SLA / AWS ElastiCache Global Datastore $0.04/GB replication + Serverless $0.125/ECPU-hr + backup $0.085/GB-mo / Momento Enterprise $1000+/mo $0.30/GB egress volume + $0.05/M ops / Dragonfly Enterprise $500+/mo global active-active

Search API

Pricing & free-tier limitsAlgolia Enterprise $2000-5000+/mo custom 1M+ records, $3/1k records over premium, $2.40/1k searches over, 99.999% SLA, 24/7, VPC / Coveo Enterprise $3000+/mo 100k docs + $0.40/1k queries + AI re-rank / Elasticsearch Enterprise on Cloud $1000+/mo 8GB RAM + $0.60/hr x2 AZ + storage $0.40/GB + support / Typesense Enterprise $2000+/mo SLA + private cluster

Assessment / Quiz Engine API

Pricing & free-tier limitsLearnosity Enterprise $5000-10000+/mo 50k+ sessions + offline + auto-scoring + analytics + SLA + SCIM + $0.05/session over + Proctoring addon $2000/mo / Assessment Systems ASMT Enterprise $10k/yr 10k examinees + psychometrics / PSI Services Proctor $25/exam + API $10k/yr + integration / Questionmark Enterprise $50k/yr unlimited + on-prem

Background Jobs / Queue

Pricing & free-tier limitsTemporal Cloud Enterprise $1000-5000+/mo Namespace HA, 100M actions, $0.02/1k actions over, mTLS, 99.99% SLA, audit / AWS SQS Enterprise $0.40/M + FIFO $0.50/M + Lambda Provisioned Concurrency $0.10/hr + EventBridge Pipes $0.40/M / Inngest Enterprise $1000+/mo 20M steps + dedicated + SAML / Sidekiq Enterprise $1799/yr unlimited + Super Fetch

Monitoring & Logging (APM)

Pricing & free-tier limitsDatadog Enterprise $23/host/mo ~$30k/yr 100 hosts + $0.10/GB logs + $0.15/GB security logs + $1.70/1k spans + $5/10k Synth + $300/mo profiling + $2000/mo Database Monitoring / Splunk Enterprise Cloud $2000+/mo 5GB/day + $0.10/GB over + $15k/yr ES / New Relic Enterprise custom $5000+/mo + $0.40/GB + FedRAMP + BYOC / Grafana Enterprise $2395/mo 100 users

CI/CD Pipeline

Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Enterprise Server + Self-hosted Runners license $21k/yr 50 seats + $5.75/user GHAS + 100k mins + runners $0 self-host + Buildkite Enterprise $15/agent/mo + Harness Enterprise $10000+/mo 10k builds + $0.10/build over + self-hosted + FedRAMP + BYOC / Jenkins Enterprise CloudBees $30k/yr

Uptime Monitoring

Pricing & free-tier limitsDatadog Enterprise $23/host/mo ~$30k/yr 100 hosts + $0.10/GB logs + $0.15/GB security logs + $1.70/1k spans + $5/10k Synth + $300/mo profiling + $2000/mo Database Monitoring / Splunk Enterprise Cloud $2000+/mo 5GB/day + $0.10/GB over + $15k/yr ES / New Relic Enterprise custom $5000+/mo + $0.40/GB + FedRAMP + BYOC / Grafana Enterprise $2395/mo 100 users

Staging / Preview Environments

Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Enterprise Previews global + compliance + audit logs + SAML $0 incl enterprise license $3000+/mo / Neon Enterprise Branching 5000 branches + read replicas + role isolation + SOC2 $0 + custom / AWS Amplify Preview + ECS Blue/Green $0.04/vCPU/hr + CodeDeploy $0.02/deployment + multi-account

LMS Interoperability API (SCORM / xAPI / LTI 1.3)

Pricing & free-tier limitsRustici SCORM Engine OEM Enterprise $75k/yr unlimited learners + SLA + support + on-prem + global / SCORM Cloud Enterprise $3500+/mo 10k regs incl + SSO + LRS Enterprise + 99.9% SLA + $0.20/reg over / 1EdTech LTI 1.3 Certified Platform $10k/yr membership + $20k audit + Moodle Workplace $110/yr per user min 100 users + 24/7 support

Video Transcoding & DRM API

Pricing & free-tier limitsMux Enterprise DRM multi-DRM Enterprise $2000+/mo commit $0.004-0.007/min enc volume + BuyDRM/Verimatrix $500-2000/mo + $0.01/license, SLA 99.9% + Forensic watermark $1k/mo / AWS Elemental MediaConvert Reserved + MediaPackage $0.0075/min + DRM PallyCon Enterprise $1000+/mo 10k licenses $0.005/license over + SPEKE $0.12/hr + Widevine license proxy $0 / Brightcove DRM $1500/mo

Certificate Generation API

Pricing & free-tier limitsPDF-lib + Puppeteer self-host $0 OSS / Certifier.io Free 20 certs/mo / Accredible Free trial 20 certs / PDFMonkey Free 100 PDFs / Certifier.io Pro $12/mo 250 certs, $0.04/cert over / Certopus $39/mo 500 certs + $0.08/cert over + 100 templates / PDFMonkey Pro $29/mo 500 PDFs + $0.06/PDF over / Moodle Certificate plugin $0 / Accredible Essentials $480/yr 500 certs $1.50/cert over + blockchain + API / Docupilot $49/mo 500 docs $0.10/doc over / Zapier $29/mo

Live Classroom / WebRTC API

Pricing & free-tier limitsLiveKit Enterprise $2000+/mo custom 20TB+ $0.05/GB over + $0.002/participant-min vol + Dedicated + HIPAA/BAA + SAML + SLA 99.99% + support 24/7 / Agora Enterprise $5000+/mo $0.30/1000 mins vol + dedicated + compliance + 99.99% / Daily.co Enterprise $500+ 500k mins + HIPAA + SSO + SLA / Chime SDK Enterprise $0.0017/min attendee + PSTN $0.015/min + SIP media $0.002/min + analytics

Payment & Subscription Billing API

Pricing & free-tier limitsStripe Enterprise Enterprise+ $0 + 2.2-2.6%+30c negotiated $1M+ vol + Billing custom 0.3% + Radar $5k/mo + Connect Custom $0.25/payout + Instant $0.50 + Capital + Treasury + Tax $0.4-0.5% + $199/mo portal + B2B SaaS discount + SLA + ICS $10k/yr / Chargebee Enterprise $1500+/mo + 0.6% over + $1.50/invoice + RevRec + $0.30/dunning + SOC1 / Paddle Enterprise $5% custom or $3000/mo flat + tax

Tax Compliance API

Pricing & free-tier limitsAnrok Free up to $100k taxed sales tracking + nexus 5 states $0 / TaxJar Free 100 orders/mo / Stripe Tax $0.5% per txn + $0.50/txn filing + $19/state filing, Dash $199/mo / Anrok Starter $399/mo + 0.5% of taxed sales over 100k + $50/state filing + API $0 / TaxJar Pro $19/mo 1000 orders + $0.15/order over + AutoFile $19/mo filing + $0.15/state/mo / Avalara Core $19k/yr + $0.30/return + sales tax $0.20/order / Quaderno Growth $99/mo 500 txs + $0.25/tx over + OSS $49/mo 200 tx

API Gateway & Rate Limiting

Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Enterprise Gateway $5000+/mo min, 100M+ reqs, $0.20/M reqs vol, 99.99% SLA, Logpush, PrivateLink, mTLS $0 / AWS API Gateway Enterprise $3.50/M + cache $0.24/hr + PrivateLink $0.01/hr + $0.01/GB + Shield Advanced $3000/mo org + WAF Enterprise $0 / Kong Enterprise $2500+/mo custom 10M+ reqs + ded support + multi-region + FedRAMP / Apigee Enterprise $5000+/mo $4.75/100k calls + $0.60/GB + analytics

Security Scanning (SAST, Dependency, Secrets)

Pricing & free-tier limitsdotenv + Vercel Env Vars Free $0 incl with hosting / Doppler Free 5 users, 1 project, 100 secrets, 5 tokens / Infisical Free 2 projects, 5 members, E2E / Doppler Team $18/mo 15 users ($7/user/mo over 15), 25 envs, audit logs + $10/user/mo over / Infisical Team $19/user/mo SSO + audit / HashiCorp Vault Cloud Standard $0.24/hr ~$177/mo 25k ops + $0.03/10k ops over / AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls + KMS $1/key/mo + $0.03/10k reqs / Premium: Vault Enterprise HSM $1.5k+/mo

Feature Flags System

Pricing & free-tier limitsLaunchDarkly Enterprise custom $15k+/yr min, $12/user/mo vol, 100k MAU + $5/1k over, experiment, migration, release guard, FedRAMP, dedicated, SLA 99.9% / Unleash Enterprise $1500+/mo 10M evals + $0.05/100k over + dedicated + SSO + SAML + 24/7 + audit WORM / Flagsmith Enterprise $1000+/mo 100M reqs + on-prem license + SAML + audit + SLA / Split.io (Harness) Enterprise $15k/yr

Webhooks & Event Bus Infrastructure

Pricing & free-tier limitsSvix Enterprise $2000+/mo 10M+ events + BYOC + SOC2 + HIPAA + 99.99% SLA + dedicated + region failover + audit / AWS EventBridge Global + Archives + Cross-account $1/M + $0.20/M schema + $0.10/GB-mo + PrivateLink $0.01/hr + $0.01/GB + Pipes $0.40/M / Hookdeck Enterprise $999+/mo custom 10M+ + 99.99% SLA + dedicated + SSO + audit / Confluent Event Bus Cloud $500+/mo 10M+ + $0.10/GB

Analytics Warehouse / Product Analytics

Pricing & free-tier limitsPostHog Enterprise $1000-3000+/mo custom 10M+ events + $0.00015/event vol + 7yr retention + BYOC + HIPAA + BAA + SAML + SLA 99.9% + support / Snowplow Enterprise $5000+/mo 100M+ events + $0.08/1000 vol + dedicated + SLA + 7yr retention / Mixpanel Enterprise $20k+/mo 500k MTU + $0.40/MTU vol + SOC2 + HIPAA + dedicated / Databricks + Snowflake $2-4/credit ~$200/mo + storage $0.023/GB-mo + compute

Enterprise Video Platform API (OTT)

Pricing & free-tier limitsMux Enterprise $2000-5000+/mo commit $0.004-0.007/min encoding vol + $0.02/min delivery vol + Signed+DRM + Multi-CDN + Analytics + SLA + $0.10/GB over / Brightcove Enterprise $5000+/mo 5k plays incl + $0.10/play over + Live $500/event + DRM $1500/mo + SSAI $2000/mo + player $0 / Kaltura CE OSS $0 self-host + Cloud $1000/mo starter + $0.12/GB delivery + $0.01/min transcoding + DRM $500/mo / JW Player Enterprise $1000+/mo custom + DRM + SLA / Cloudflare Stream Enterprise $1000/mo min + $2/1000 min stored + $0.50/1000 delivered

LMS Enterprise Platform (SCORM Cloud Enterprise / xAPI LRS)

Pricing & free-tier limitsSCORM Cloud Enterprise $3500+/mo 10k registrations $0.20/reg over + SSO + LRS + 99.9% SLA + dedicated + API + reporting / Rustici Engine OEM Enterprise $75k/yr unlimited learners + on-prem + SLA + support + $0 + Content Controller $12k/yr / Watershed LRS Enterprise $3000+/mo 500k xAPI stmts $0.01/stmt over + advanced analytics + BI / Learning Locker Enterprise Cloud $1500/mo 1M stmts + SSO + SLA / Moodle Workplace $110/yr per user min 100 users + 24/7 + mobile / Totara Learn $35k/yr 1k users + hosting extra + SCORM

Proctoring & Identity Verification API

Pricing & free-tier limitsPersona Enterprise $5000-15000+/mo 10k+ verifs + $0.30/verif vol enterprise + database $0.03/verif + fraud graph $0.10/verif + SLA 99.99% + BYOC + SOC2 + HIPAA + dedicated + support 24/7 / ProctorU Enterprise $50k+/yr 5k exams + $15/exam vol + live + recording + API + LTI + SLA / Proctor360 Enterprise $100k+/yr 10k exams + AI + live + integration + storage $0.02/GB-mo + GDPR / PSI Services Proctoring $25/exam + $10k/yr platform + psychometrics

Enterprise SSO / SCIM / Directory Sync

Pricing & free-tier limitsWorkOS SSO Free up to 5 connections + 1M API calls/mo / AuthKit Free 10k MAU + SSO free / WorkOS SSO Pro $199/mo 100 SSO connections + $8/SSO conn over + Directory Sync $8/dir over + Audit Logs $15/mo / WorkOS Enterprise $599/mo 500 SSO + 500 dir + SAML + SCIM + SLA + support / Auth0 Enterprise $1500-3000+/mo 1k MAU + SSO/SCIM incl + $0.07/MAU over + MFA $0.06/attempt / Okta Workforce $6/user/mo 1k min + $4/user/mo Lifecycle + SCIM + $4/user/mo + CIC $0.07/MAU + $2000/yr Identity Governance + Entra ID P1 $6/user/mo + P2 $9/user/mo + External ID $0.000075/MAU after 50k free

Multi-Region Active-Active & Global Accelerator

Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS Global Accelerator $0.025/hr per accel ~$18/mo + $0.015/GB DT-Premium + $0.025/DNS query + Endpoint $0.015/hr + Health $0.50 per check / CloudFront multi-origin free + Lambda@Edge $0.60/M req + $0.000050/GB-sec + origin failover $0 / Cloudflare Load Balancing Free 1 origin + $5/mo 2 origins + $5/origin over + $5/1M queries steering + Geo routing + $0.50/health check/min over / Neon Read Replicas $15/replica/mo + compute $0.16/CU-hr / Fly.io multi-region $1.94/vCPU/region + $0.02/GB cross-region + Anycast $0 / Vercel Multi-region Enterprise $3000+/mo custom + $0.15/GB over + SLA 99.99%

Disaster Recovery & Cross-Region Failover (RTO/RPO)

Pricing & free-tier limitsDependabot OSS Free $0 unlimited alerts / GitHub Advanced Security Free for public, private: GHAS $5.75/user/mo + $0.25/GB secret storage + CodeQL 3000 mins / Snyk Free 200 tests/mo + Open Source + IaC / Snyk Team $25/user/mo 500 tests $0.01/test over + Container + Code + $20/user/mo over / Semgrep Free 10 users + 2000 scans / Team $55/user/mo 5000 scans + $100/user/mo Pro + supply chain / Socket.dev Free 100 deps / Pro $20/user/mo + $0.02/dep over / Detectify $200/mo 1 app + $50/app over / Acunetix $4495/yr 1 target + $1495/extra / SonarQube Community $0 / Cloud $15/mo 100k LOC

WORM Audit Logs & Compliance Vault (SOC2 / FERPA / GDPR)

Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS CloudTrail Lake $2.50/GB ingested + 7yr retention $0.023/GB-mo + S3 Object Lock WORM $0 + $0.023/GB storage + Glacier Vault Lock $0.0036/GB-mo long-term + $0.10/GB restore + 99.99% immutability / S3 Object Lock + Versioning $0 + MFA Delete $0 + Governance mode $0 + Compliance mode $0 / Supabase AuditLogs Pro $25/mo 7d + Enterprise 90d $250/mo + SOC2 logs $250/mo + custom export $0 / Better Stack Log Vault WORM $24/mo 30GB WORM $0.40/GB over + 7yr retention $0 / Vanta SOC2 $7500/yr + $100/user/mo over 25 + FERPA add-on $2000/yr + Drata SOC2 $12k/yr + $3000 GDPR / Papertrail compliance $250/mo 50GB WORM + $5/GB over

Pricing & free-tier limitsTeleport Community OSS $0 self-host + Cloud Team $15/user/mo 10 users + $2/conn-hr over + Enterprise $2500/mo 50 users + $15/user over + HSM + PAM + Session recording $0.10/hr over / CyberArk PAM $200k/yr base + $800/user/yr vault + PTA $50k/yr / HashiCorp Vault Enterprise HSM $3000+/mo + Boundary Enterprise $0.30/session-hr + audit device $0 / Cloudflare Zero Trust Access $7/user/mo + Gateway $7/user/mo + CASB $10/user/mo + DLP + Browser isolation $0 / Cloudflare Enterprise Bot Mgmt $5000+/mo min + Super Bot Fight $10k/yr + Magic Transit $5000/mo DDOS unlimited / Statuspage Atlassian $29/mo 100 subs + $1/100 extra + $500/mo Enterprise + Opsgenie $29/user/mo + PrivateLink AWS $0.01/hr AZ + $0.01/GB processed

Options and prices come straight from our research sheets for a enterprise education project. Prices are estimates and change often — always confirm on the provider's page before committing.

How this enterprise education checklist works.

Each requirement below is something a enterprise education 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.