Education — 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
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 Pro $20/seat/mo + $40/100GB bw overage, 1TB edge incl, $0.18/vCPU-hr over / Netlify Pro $19/seat/mo + $55/100GB overage, 25k edge funcs / Render Starter $7/instance/mo + $0.10/GB bw over 100GB / Railway Pro $20/seat/mo + $5 credit + PAYG ~$10-30/mo typical / Fly.io Scale $29/mo incl $29 usage + $1.94/vCPU/mo over / Fly Machines $0.0000133/sec
Database (PostgreSQL)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Pro $25/mo - 8GB DB, 100GB storage, 100k MAU, 5GB bw, 7d PITR, $0.125/GB DB over + $0.021/GB storage over / Neon Launch $19/mo - 10GB, 100 compute hrs, 10M queries / Neon Scale $69/mo - 50GB, 600 compute hrs, $0.16/CU-hr over, $0.11/GB storage over, autoscale 0.25-4 CU / Railway Postgres $15/mo 8GB + $0.20/GB over
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 storage + $4.50/M Class A, $0.36/M Class B, 0 egress + $5/mo if >10GB / Tigris $0.02/GB-mo free egress, Global infer / Supabase Storage Pro incl 100GB then $0.021/GB over / Bunny Storage HDD $0.01/GB-mo SSD $0.02/GB-mo + $0.01/GB egress / S3 Standard $0.023/GB-mo first 50TB + $0.09/GB egress + $0.005/1k PUT + $0.0004/1k GET / ImageKit Free 20GB bw + $49/mo 100GB
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 Pro $25/mo + 10k MAU incl, $0.02/MAU over 10k, extra app $25/mo, MFA $0 free / Supabase Auth Pro incl with $25/mo base, 100k MAU $0.00325/MAU over 100k / Auth0 B2C Essentials $35/mo 500 MAU incl, $0.07/MAU over, $0.10/mMFA over / WorkOS Free 1M API calls, then $99/mo Pro
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 Pro $20/seat/mo + $40/100GB bw overage, 1TB edge incl, $0.18/vCPU-hr over / Netlify Pro $19/seat/mo + $55/100GB overage, 25k edge funcs / Render Starter $7/instance/mo + $0.10/GB bw over 100GB / Railway Pro $20/seat/mo + $5 credit + PAYG ~$10-30/mo typical / Fly.io Scale $29/mo incl $29 usage + $1.94/vCPU/mo over / Fly Machines $0.0000133/sec
Transactional Email API
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsResend Pro $20/mo 50k emails incl, $0.0008/email over, unlimited domains / Postmark $15/mo 10k emails + $0.0018/email over (1.80/1000) + $0.25/extra domain / Amazon SES $0.10/1k + SNS bounce $0.02/1k / SendGrid Essentials $19.95/mo 50k, $0.0008/email over + dedicated IP $89/mo / Customer.io Essentials $200/mo 12k profiles + 200k emails, $0.001/email 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 Pro $20/mo 20 WAF rules, 20 page rules, image resize, Polished + Mirage / Bunny CDN $1-10/mo min commit, $0.01/GB NA/EU ($0.03 Asia, $0.06 SA) + storage extra, volume $0.005/GB over 5TB / Fastly $50/mo min commit, $0.12/GB NA/EU + $0.02/10k requests over + Shield $0 / Vercel Edge $0.15/GB over 1TB incl
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 limitsSupabase Pro PITR 7d incl + 30d $100/mo add-on $0.021/GB over + daily full + WAL / Neon Launch PITR 7d + branches 7d, Scale 30d $0.20/GB backup storage over + restic to R2 $0.006/GB-mo / AWS Backup $0.05/GB-mo EC2 + $0.10/GB-mo cross-region + Vault Lock $0 / Restic + S3 $0 + storage
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 Pro WAF $20/mo 20 custom + managed OWASP + Cloudflare managed ruleset $0 + Bot mitigation free / Cloudflare Business $200/mo 100 rules + custom + PCI + rate limit 10 rules / Vercel Firewall Pro $20/mo + $10/mo Advanced + $0.30/10k blocked over / AWS WAF $5/mo ACL + $1/mo rule + $0.60/M + Bot $10/mo + $1/M over
Caching / Redis
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Redis $10/mo 100k cmds/day incl, $0.20/100k cmds over + $0.25/GB storage + Global $0.10/GB replication / Redis Cloud Essentials $10/mo 250MB, $0.15/GB over + $0.20/100k ops over + $15/mo Pro 1GB / Dragonfly Cloud $5/mo 1GB + $0.10/100k over / AWS ElastiCache t4g.micro $0.019/hr ~$14/mo + backup $0.085/GB
Search API
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeilisearch Cloud $30/mo 100k records, 500k searches, $0.06/1k records over, $0.50/10k searches over / Typesense Cloud $50/mo 1GB RAM 100k docs + $0.40/hr extra + $0.10/100k searches over / Algolia Growth $60/mo min incl 50k records + 100k searches, then $1/mo per 1k records + $0.50/1k searches over
Assessment / Quiz Engine API
Interactive assessments, quizzes, or forms that capture structured input from users.Pricing & free-tier limitsTypeform Basic $25/mo 100 responses/mo + $0.15/response over + API $0 / Tally Pro $29/mo unlimited + API + webhooks / Formbricks Self-host Free + Cloud $49/mo 5k responses $0.01/response over / OpenEd.io API Free 100 req/mo + $0.05/req over / Learnosity Starter $499/mo 5k sessions
Background Jobs / Queue
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsTrigger.dev $29/mo 50k runs/mo + 10 concurrency + $0.0004/run over + 30d logs / QStash Pro $10/mo 50k msgs, $0.10/10k over + DLQ $0 / Inngest Launch $20/mo 250k steps $0.0002/step over + 50 concurrency / BullMQ self-host + Upstash Redis $10/mo 100k cmds / Sidekiq OSS free + Sidekiq Pro $179 one-time + $179/yr
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 limitsSentry Team $26/mo 50k errors $0.0006/error over, 50k replays $0.0002/over, 100k spans $0.0001/over / Axiom Pro $25/mo 5GB/day $1.50/GB over + $0.05/10k queries over / Better Stack $24/mo 30GB logs $0.40/GB over + 10k metrics $0.01/100 over / Grafana Cloud Pro $8/user/mo + $0.50/GB logs + $8/1k metrics + traces $0.50/GB
CI/CD Pipeline
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Team 3000 mins/mo $0 incl + $0.008/min Linux over + $0.016/min Win + $0.08/min macOS + $0.25/GB storage over / Vercel CI incl with Pro $20/seat + 1000 build hrs $0.40/hr over / Cloudflare Pages Pro 5000 builds/mo / CircleCI Pro $15/mo 5x concurrency + $0.008/min over
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 limitsSentry Team $26/mo 50k errors $0.0006/error over, 50k replays $0.0002/over, 100k spans $0.0001/over / Axiom Pro $25/mo 5GB/day $1.50/GB over + $0.05/10k queries over / Better Stack $24/mo 30GB logs $0.40/GB over + 10k metrics $0.01/100 over / Grafana Cloud Pro $8/user/mo + $0.50/GB logs + $8/1k metrics + traces $0.50/GB
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 Pro Previews unlimited, $20/seat/mo + $0.40/branch-hr over 1000 hrs + password protect $0 / Neon Branching Launch $19/mo 50 branches $0.11/branch-hr over + restore $0 / Supabase Branching $20/mo per preview branch + usage $0.125/GB over / Render Preview Free 1 + $7/env over
How this small scale education checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale 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.