Tech Stack Cost Estimator

For early-stage startups under 10,000 MAU, the cheapest production-ready stack is: Cloudflare Pages (free frontend), Supabase Free (database + auth), GitHub Actions Free (CI/CD), Resend Free (email), Sentry Free (monitoring). Total cost is $0/month. This covers most SaaS needs up to 50,000 MAU. When you hit Supabase free limits, upgrade to Supabase Pro ($25/mo) and Resend Pro ($20/mo) — total $45/month for a full production stack.

For a solo developer, Netlify Pro is $1/month cheaper ($19 vs $20). Both include 1 TB bandwidth and similar features. Vercel has better Next.js integration (same company) and more generous Edge Function limits. Netlify has better form handling and identity features. For teams, Vercel Pro at $20/seat is similar to Netlify Pro at $19/seat. Both offer 100 GB free bandwidth on free tiers — Cloudflare Pages is the cheapest at unlimited bandwidth for free.

Supabase Pro ($25/mo flat) is more predictable than Firebase Blaze (pay-as-you-go). Supabase includes auth, database, storage, and realtime in one plan. Firebase charges separately per read/write/storage/auth MAU which can add up unpredictably under high read traffic. For most apps with under 1 million Firestore reads per day, Firebase Blaze can be cheaper. Above that Supabase Pro is more cost-effective. Supabase also uses Postgres which is easier to query and migrate later.

Supabase Auth is included in your Supabase plan at no extra cost and handles most auth needs — email/password, social login, magic links, MFA. Clerk adds significant value with pre-built UI components, organization management, impersonation, and detailed session management. If you are building a B2B SaaS with org/team features, Clerk saves weeks of development time worth much more than $25/month. For a simple consumer app, Supabase Auth is sufficient and saves $25/month.

Resend is the modern choice — better developer experience, cleaner API, built-in React Email support, and competitive pricing ($20/mo for 50K emails). SendGrid is more established with better deliverability reputation and more advanced analytics, but has a worse developer experience. For new projects, Resend is almost always the better starting choice. SendGrid becomes relevant when you need enterprise-grade analytics, IP reputation management, or dedicated IPs for high-volume sending above 100K emails per month.