I initially tried a lot of tools - Bolt, v0, Replit, Lovable, etc. out of which Replit game me the best results (yes, I can be biased due to my selection of applications). But I often paid anywhere from $25-$200/mo. Other costs like API, models, etc. made monthly bills upward of $300/mo. Was it cost effective when compared to hiring a developer? Yes. Was it value for money? NO.
So, over the months, I optimised by complete stack to be either free (or minimal cost) for internal use or stay at a much lean cost for consumer-facing products.
Here's how the whole stack looks today -
- IDE - Google's AntiGravity (100% free + higher access if you use student ID) --> https://antigravity.google/
AI Documentation - SuperDocs (100% free & open source) --> https://superdocs.cloud/
Database - Supabase (Nano plan free, enough for basic needs) --> http://supabase.com/
Authentication - Stack Auth (Free upto 10K users) --> http://stack-auth.com/
LLM (AI Model) - OpenRouter or Gemini via AI Studio for testing and a custom tuned model by Unsloth AI for production. (You can fine-tune models using Unsloth literal in a Google Colab Notebook) --> http://openrouter.ai/ OR http://unsloth.ai/ OR http://aistudio.google.com/
Version Maintenance/Distribution - Github/Gitlab (both totally free and open source) --> http://github.com/ OR http://gitlab.com/
Faster Deployment - Vercel (Free Tier Enough for Hobbyists) --> https://vercel.com
Analytics - PostHog, Microsoft Clarity & Google Analytics (All 3 are free and independent for different tracking, I recommend using all of them) --> Https://posthog.com OR http://clarity.microsoft.com/ OR http://analytics.google.com/
That's the list devs! I know I might have missed something. If yes, just ask me up or list them up in the comments. If you have any questions related to something specific, ask me up as well.
- Access here - - AI SDK - Antigravity- https://antigravity.google/ - AI Documentation - SuperDocs - https://superdocs.cloud/ - Database - Supabase - https://supabase.com - Auth - StackAuth - https://stack-auth.com - LLM/AI Model - Gemini by AI Studio (aistudio.google.com) or Self-trained Unsloth Model (https://unsloth.ai) or Openrouter for testing (openrouter.ai) - Deployment - Vercel (Vercel.com) or CloudFare Pages. - Analytics - PostHog (posthog.com) or Microsoft Clarity
Enjoy
- I doubt if the free tier in Antigravity is generous enough for production usecases, I run into rate limits multiple times a day. Additionally, I generally prefer using cursor for building UI as its inbuilt browser helps a lot with pointing and adding components directly to the chat.
- Thanks for this list!
A couple of questions I have:
1. Why not use supabase auth? I’m using it for a little project and generally like how much you get out of the box with supabase. Curious why you like stack auth.
3. Why 3 analytics tools? I’m thinking about implementing post hog in a little project I’m running right now, and generally would like to avoid having to have a lot of tracking!
- > Was it cost effective when compared to hiring a developer? Yes. Was it value for money? NO.
Is your product making any money?
If so can it scale past the free trial period (Over 10K users a month) and still sustain costs?
Free trials are not forever and limits can change without notice. Maintenance still costs time and money.
So it is not actually $0.
- Thanks for sharing.
Yes, costs can add up. But it’s also about investment / return. Saving $X if it’s less effective a/o costs you $Y, then it might not be the savings it appears to be.
It’s similar to DOGE. DOGE is about Efficiency. But it should have started with Effectiveness. Doing something (financially) efficient doesn’t mean it’s effective.
In short, list some alternatives a/o what you’re giving up by going free would be helpful. For example, Appwrite or Firebase as different (and free tier) backends. Each has their + and -.
Thank again. I will be checking these out.
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