Cost Planning

Make informed infrastructure decisions that balance capability with budget.

Cost-Conscious Mindset

Solo/Bootstrap Priorities

1. Start free - Use free tiers aggressively
2. Pay for value - Only upgrade when free limits hurt
3. Avoid lock-in - Prefer portable solutions
4. Right-size - Don't over-provision "just in case"
5. Monitor early - Set billing alerts before you need them

Cost vs Time Trade-off

Cheap but manual     vs    Expensive but automated
─────────────────────────────────────────────────
Self-hosted DB            Managed database
Manual deployments        CI/CD platform
DIY monitoring            SaaS observability

Rule: Automate only when manual becomes painful.
Your time has value, but cash constraints are real.

Free Tier Strategies

Compute

Provider	Free Tier
Fly.io	3 shared VMs, 3GB storage
Railway	$5/month credit
Render	Static sites, 750 hours/month
Vercel	Unlimited static, 100GB bandwidth
Cloudflare Workers	100k requests/day

Database

Provider	Free Tier
Supabase	500MB, 2 projects
PlanetScale	5GB, 1B row reads
Neon	512MB, unlimited projects
MongoDB Atlas	512MB shared
Turso	9GB, 500M rows read

Other Services

Service	Free Tier
Cloudflare	DNS, CDN, basic DDoS
Sentry	5k errors/month
PostHog	1M events/month
Resend	3k emails/month
Upstash	10k requests/day Redis

Cost Estimation

Monthly Cost Template

## Infrastructure Budget: [Project Name]

### Compute
- Web server: $X/month
- Background workers: $X/month
- Serverless functions: $X/month

### Data
- Database: $X/month
- Object storage: $X/month
- Redis/cache: $X/month

### Services
- Email: $X/month
- Error tracking: $X/month
- Analytics: $X/month

### Operations
- Domain: $X/year ÷ 12 = $X/month
- SSL: $0 (Let's Encrypt)

### Total: $X/month
### With 2x buffer: $X/month

Scaling Cost Projection

Users    Requests/mo    Est. Cost
─────────────────────────────────
100      10k            Free tier
1,000    100k           $20-50
10,000   1M             $100-200
100,000  10M            $500-1000

Note: Costs vary wildly by architecture.
These are rough estimates for typical web apps.

Architecture for Cost

Cheap Patterns

Static-first
- SSG/SSR to static files
- CDN-served (often free)
- API only for dynamic data

SQLite + Litestream
- Single-file database
- Replicated to S3 ($0.023/GB)
- No managed DB costs

Serverless for bursty
- Pay per request
- Scale to zero
- Good for side projects with variable traffic

Expensive Patterns to Avoid

Always-on compute for variable traffic
- Kubernetes cluster (overkill for small apps)
- Multiple redundant servers (before you need them)

Managed services for simple needs
- Managed Redis for basic caching (use in-memory)
- Managed Kafka for simple queues (use Postgres)

Premium tiers before limits hit
- Upgrading "just in case"
- Features you don't use yet

Cost-Effective Stack Example

Solo Project Stack ($0-20/month)
├── Frontend: Vercel/Cloudflare Pages (free)
├── Backend: Fly.io free tier or Railway
├── Database: Turso/Supabase/PlanetScale free
├── Auth: Built-in or Clerk free tier
├── Email: Resend free tier
├── Monitoring: Sentry + UptimeRobot free
└── DNS/CDN: Cloudflare free

Growth Stack ($50-100/month)
├── Frontend: Same (still free)
├── Backend: Fly.io/Railway paid ($10-20)
├── Database: Managed Postgres ($15-30)
├── Cache: Upstash Redis ($10)
├── Storage: S3/R2 ($5-10)
└── Monitoring: Basic paid tiers ($10-20)

Billing Protection

Set Alerts Early

Configure before you need them:
- 50% of expected budget: Notification
- 80% of expected budget: Warning
- 100% of expected budget: Alert
- 150%: Hard limit if possible

Prevent Surprise Bills

AWS
- Enable AWS Budgets
- Set billing alarms in CloudWatch
- Consider AWS Organizations for hard limits

GCP
- Set budget alerts
- Enable quota limits
- Use committed use discounts carefully

General
- Remove unused resources monthly
- Check for orphaned storage/volumes
- Review bills line by line monthly

Common Surprise Costs

Data transfer (egress)
- Often free in, expensive out
- CDN can reduce origin egress

Storage that accumulates
- Logs that aren't rotated
- Old backups not deleted
- Unused container images

Idle resources
- Dev/staging environments left running
- Load balancers with no traffic
- Reserved capacity unused

Optimization Tactics

Quick Wins

1. Delete unused resources
   - Old deployments
   - Test databases
   - Orphaned volumes

2. Right-size running resources
   - Drop to smaller instance
   - Reduce over-provisioned storage

3. Use spot/preemptible (where appropriate)
   - 60-90% discount
   - Good for stateless workers

4. Reserved instances (only if stable)
   - 30-60% discount
   - Requires commitment

When to Optimize

Don't optimize prematurely:
- Traffic < 10k requests/day: Focus on building
- Cost < $50/month: Not worth the time
- Pre-product-market-fit: Features > cost

Do optimize when:
- Costs growing faster than revenue
- Hitting provider limits
- Architecture clearly wasteful

Provider Comparison

For Side Projects

Best value: Fly.io, Railway, Render
- Simple deployment
- Generous free tiers
- Good developer experience

Best for static: Vercel, Cloudflare Pages
- Free for most use cases
- Built-in CDN
- Edge functions available

Best for full-stack: Supabase, PocketBase
- Database + auth + storage
- Single provider simplicity

For Growing Apps

Consider:
- AWS/GCP/Azure for complex needs
- DigitalOcean/Vultr for simple VPS
- Hetzner for best price/performance (EU)

Evaluate:
- Actual feature needs (not marketing)
- Egress costs for your traffic pattern
- Support quality for your tier

Cost Review Checklist

Monthly review:

• Check billing dashboard for anomalies
• Delete unused resources
• Review largest cost items
• Check for better pricing tiers
• Verify billing alerts are working

Quarterly review:

• Compare current vs 3 months ago
• Evaluate alternative providers
• Consider reserved capacity if stable
• Update budget projections