Education — 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.
Hosting / 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 limitsVercel Enterprise ~$2000/mo custom, $0.15/GB overage, 99.99% SLA / Fly.io Scale $30-100/mo per app + $1.94/vCPU/mo + $0.25/GB RAM, multi-region $0.02/GB cross-region / AWS ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr + $0.004445/GB/hr ~$30/mo per 0.25vCPU 0.5GB, Multi-AZ x2 / Railway Pro $20/seat + $100-500 usage/mo / AWS App Runner $0.007/vCPU-sec + $0.10/GB egress
Database (PostgreSQL)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeon Scale $69-120/mo - 50-100GB, 500+ compute hrs, read replicas $15/replica/mo, autoscale $0.16/CU-hr over, storage $0.11/GB over / Supabase Pro $25/mo + addons: Pitr 30d $100/mo, read replica $75/mo, 8GB DB base + $0.125/GB over / AWS RDS db.t3.medium $0.068/hr ~$50/mo + storage $0.115/GB-mo + backup $0.095/GB-mo / Aurora Serverless v2 $0.12/ACU-hr + $0.10/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 limitsCloudflare R2 $0.015/GB-mo + multi-region auto + $5/mo fee / AWS S3 Multi-region Access Points + Replication: $0.023/GB-mo + $0.02/GB replication + $0.09/GB egress via CloudFront $0.085/GB / ImageKit $49/mo 100GB bw + $0.08/GB over + Transform $49/mo / UploadThing Pro $10/mo 50k uploads + $0.10/GB over / Tigris Enterprise Global $0.02/GB-mo + zero egress, $0.015/GB archival
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 limitsClerk Scale $100/mo + 10k MAU, $0.02/MAU over, SSO + SCIM $50/mo per SSO / Auth0 B2C Professional $240/mo 2.5k MAU + $0.07/MAU over, MFA $0.06/attempt over 10k / WorkOS SSO $99/mo Pro 100 SSO + $8/SSO over + Directory Sync $8/dir over / Supabase Auth Pro $25/mo base + 100k MAU $0.00325/MAU over + custom SMTP
Video Hosting & Streaming API
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 Enterprise ~$2000/mo custom, $0.15/GB overage, 99.99% SLA / Fly.io Scale $30-100/mo per app + $1.94/vCPU/mo + $0.25/GB RAM, multi-region $0.02/GB cross-region / AWS ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr + $0.004445/GB/hr ~$30/mo per 0.25vCPU 0.5GB, Multi-AZ x2 / Railway Pro $20/seat + $100-500 usage/mo / AWS App Runner $0.007/vCPU-sec + $0.10/GB egress
Transactional Email API
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsPostmark $100/mo 125k emails ($0.00135/email over) + 45 days retention + priority support / Resend Scale $200/mo 500k emails $0.0006/email over + SSO + HIPAA / Customer.io $200/mo Pro 12k profiles + 200k emails $0.001/email over, custom + $0.005/extra profile over / SendGrid Pro $89.95/mo 100k + dedicated IP $30/mo + $0.0006/email over / Braze Growth $500/mo 10k MAU + email $0.0009/email
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 Business $200/mo 100 cust rules, 50 page rules, PCI, 100% uptime SLA + Argo $5/mo + $0.10/GB over / Fastly $300/mo incl 1TB + $0.08/GB over 10TB + $0.02/10k reqs + WAF $2500/mo / Bunny + Fastly multi-CDN $50-200/mo avg / Vercel Enterprise Edge custom, 1TB incl + $0.12/GB over, DDoS $0
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 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
Where your source code lives and is collaborated on. Non-negotiable for any team or serious project.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
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 limitsNeon Scale PITR 30d incl + restore to any second + $0.20/GB backup storage over 20GB + point-in-time branches / Supabase PITR Pro 7d + 30d extension $100/mo + custom backup to S3 $0.021/GB over / AWS Backup Vault Lock WORM $0.05/GB-mo + $0.10/GB-mo cross-region + $0.10/GB-mo cross-account + S3 Object Lock $0 + Glacier Vault Lock $0.0036/GB-mo
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Business WAF $200/mo 100 rules + PCI + custom + rate limiting 10 rules ($5/rule-mo over) + Bot $10/mo + managed rules $0 / AWS WAF Enterprise $5/mo ACL + $1/mo rule + $0.60/M + Bot Control $10/mo + $1/M + Account Takeover $500/mo / Fastly NGWAF $2500/mo min + $0.20/100k reqs + $0.05/GB / Azure WAF $0.36/hr + $0.60/M
Caching / Redis
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsRedis Cloud Pro $50-200/mo 1-5GB + $0.50/GB over + $0.20/100k ops, VPC peering $0, persistence $0 / Upstash Pro $80/mo 1M cmds/day global + $0.20/100k over + Redis with Query $0.30/100k / Momento Cache $0.50/GB egress + $0.30/M ops free then $0.05/GB storage / AWS ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr ECPU + $0.125/GB-mo storage + $0.02/GB snapshot / Upstash fixed $180/mo 10M cmds
Search API
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsAlgolia Growth $150+/mo 100k records + 500k searches + $1/1k records over + $0.50/1k searches over + DSN $0 / Typesense Cloud Pro $200/mo 4GB RAM 1M docs incl + re-rank + curation / Meilisearch Cloud Pro $200/mo 2M docs + 5M searches + 99.9% SLA / Elasticsearch Serverless $0.15/GB ingest + $0.40/GB storage + $0.60/hr compute
Assessment / Quiz Engine API
Interactive assessments, quizzes, or forms that capture structured input from users.Pricing & free-tier limitsLearnosity Author + Ask API $1k+/mo 10k sessions $0.10/session over + Assessment $0.15/session + Analytics $200/mo / Typeform Enterprise $99/user/mo + $0.15/response over 10k + SSO + HIPAA / Questionmark On Prem $2000/mo 10k tests / OpenEd + custom $0 + LMS integration $5k/yr / Formbricks Pro $99/mo 20k responses
Background Jobs / Queue
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsInngest Pro $100/mo 2.5M steps, 1000 concurrency, $0.00015/step over + Fan-out $20/mo / Trigger.dev Pro $100/mo 250k runs, 100 concurrency, $0.0003/run over + Realtime + $0.50/GB logs over / AWS SQS $0.40/M req + SNS $0.50/M + Lambda $0.20/M + $0.00001667/GB-sec + Temporal Cloud Pro $250/mo 5M actions $0.04/1k actions over
Monitoring & Logging (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 limitsDatadog Pro $15/host/mo + $0.10/GB logs ingest + $0.10/GB indexed + $1.27/1k APM spans + $15/M custom metrics + $5/10k Synthetics $2/test over / Sentry Business $80/mo 100k errors $0.0003/error over + 500k spans + 1yr retention / New Relic Pro $0.40/GB ingest + $0.60/user/mo + $49/host core + Data Plus $0.50/GB / Better Stack Pro $100/mo 100GB
CI/CD Pipeline
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Enterprise Actions $21/user/mo + 50k mins incl + Hosted Runners $0.16/8-core-hr + $0.004/min cache + $0.25/GB storage over / CircleCI Scale $2000+/mo $40k credit + $0.06/credit over + concurrency $1/min / Vercel Enterprise CI unlimited + concurrency 10 + $0.40/build-hr over / Buildkite Enterprise $15/agent/mo + $0/hr self-hosted + concurrency
Uptime Monitoring
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsDatadog Pro $15/host/mo + $0.10/GB logs ingest + $0.10/GB indexed + $1.27/1k APM spans + $15/M custom metrics + $5/10k Synthetics $2/test over / Sentry Business $80/mo 100k errors $0.0003/error over + 500k spans + 1yr retention / New Relic Pro $0.40/GB ingest + $0.60/user/mo + $49/host core + Data Plus $0.50/GB / Better Stack Pro $100/mo 100GB
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 Enterprise Previews unlimited + custom domains + SSO + audit $0 incl + $0.30/branch-hr over high volume / Neon Scale Branching 500 branches + autoscale + PITR 30d + $0.16/CU-hr + $0.11/GB over / Supabase Enterprise Branching 20 branches incl $0 + $75/mo per extra + HIPAA + custom VPC
LMS Interoperability API (SCORM / xAPI / LTI 1.3)
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 limitsRustici SCORM Engine + Content Controller $20k/yr license 10k learners $0.10/learner over + LRS $10k/yr + Content Controller $12k/yr / SCORM Cloud Pro $3500/mo 10k regs $0.20/reg over + LRS + Analytics $0 / LTI 1.3 Advantage + Deep Linking $3000/yr cert + development $5k/yr / xAPI Watershed Pro $3000/mo 500k stmts $0.01/stmt over
Video Transcoding & DRM API
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsMux Encoding Pro $200+/mo commit: SD $0.008/min vol, HD $0.016, 4K $0.032 + DRM KeyOS $500/mo + $0.01/license + multi-DRM / AWS Elemental MediaConvert Pro $0.0075/min SD + $0.015 HD + DRM BuyDRM $500/mo + SPEKE server $0.12/hr / Zencoder $0.04/min + DRM PallyCon $1000/mo 10k licenses $0.005/license over / VdoCipher $500/mo 500GB + DRM
Certificate Generation API
Encrypts traffic between your users and your servers. Without it browsers flag your site as insecure and you lose trust and search ranking.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
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 limitsLiveKit Cloud Pro $500+/mo 5TB + $0.08/GB over + $0.003/participant-min vol + Enterprise SLA 99.95% / Daily.co Scale $400/mo 100k mins $0.003/min over + HIPAA $500/mo / 100ms Scale $199/mo 200k mins $0.0008/min over + RTMP $5/mo + Vault $50/mo / Agora Enterprise $0.60/1000 mins SD vol + recording $0.01/min + analytics + SLA
Payment & Subscription Billing API
Moves money — charges, payouts to sellers, taxes, fraud checks. Highest-stakes integration: get it wrong and you break compliance or lose revenue.Pricing & free-tier limitsStripe Enterprise custom 2.6%+30c vol discount 500k+ MRR + Billing Scale $0.4% recurring + Radar for Fraud Teams $2k/mo + Connect Custom $0.50/payout + Sigma $20k/yr + Revenue Recognition $0 / Chargebee Growth $599/mo $120k MRR incl 0.75% over + $0.99/extra 100 subs + invoicing + dunning / Paddle $5%+50c custom fee 5% + tax compliance + $0 chargeback / Recurly Pro $1100/mo + 0.75% over $200k MRR
Tax Compliance API
Moves money — charges, payouts to sellers, taxes, fraud checks. Highest-stakes integration: get it wrong and you break compliance or lose revenue.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
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS API Gateway $3.50/M REST + $1/M WS + $0.24/hr cache + $0.02/GB transfer + WAF $5/mo + $1/rule + $0.60/M + throttle 10k RPS / Cloudflare Enterprise Workers $5/mo + $0.50/M reqs vol + rate limiting 1M reqs $5/mo + $1/10M over + API Shield schema validation $0 / Kong Enterprise $500+/mo + $0.05/M over + Service Hub + Vitails / Fastly Edge Rate Limit $0 with WAF $2500/mo + DDoS
Security Scanning (SAST, Dependency, Secrets)
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 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
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 limitsLaunchDarkly Pro $20/user/mo + 10k MAU incl (then $10/1k MAU over) + 10 envs + SSO + audit + $0.05/extra MAU vol + Experimentation $10k/mo / Unleash Enterprise $250+/mo 1M evals + 50 users + SSO + SAML + Private + audit + $0.08/100k over / Flagsmith Scale $200/mo 10M reqs + $2/1M over + HIPAA / ConfigCat Enterprise $1200/mo 5M calls + SLA
Webhooks & Event Bus Infrastructure
Lets external services notify you of events in real time. Core to integrating payments, KYC, and third-party workflows.Pricing & free-tier limitsSvix Scale $500/mo 1M events + $0.01/1k over + 100 apps + dedicated + SAML + 90d retention + region failover / Hookdeck Enterprise $400/mo 1M events + $0.30/1k over + transformations + 30d retention + SSO / AWS EventBridge Enterprise $1/M + Pipes $0.40/M + PrivateLink $0.01/hr + archives $0.10/GB-mo / Pusher Beams $199/mo 1M msgs + dedicated
Analytics Warehouse / Product Analytics
Understands your users and supports them. Drives product decisions and retention.Pricing & free-tier limitsPostHog Scale $248/mo 1M events + $0.000248/event over + group analytics $0 + 1yr retention + SAML addon $500/mo / Mixpanel Enterprise $5000+/mo custom 100k MTU + $0.80/MTU over + SSO + SLA + 2yr retention / Amplitude Enterprise custom $5000+/mo 100k MTU + $0.20/MTU vol + experimentation + SLA 99.9% / Snowplow Cloud $800/mo 5M events + $0.15/1000 over + warehouse load $0 / Rudderstack Pro $500/mo 2M events + $0.10/1000 over
How this professional education checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a professional 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.