The $0 Next.js micro-SaaS
A real app with database, auth, email and analytics — nothing to pay until you have real users.
| Hosting | Vercel (Hobby) | Native Next.js — but non-commercial ToS; switch to Cloudflare when you monetize |
| Database | Neon | Serverless Postgres, 100 projects, generous compute |
| Auth | Better Auth | Self-hosted = no MAU limits, no branding, MIT license |
| Resend | 3,000/mo free — mind the 100/day cap | |
| Analytics | PostHog | 1M events/mo + replays + flags on the free plan |
Vercel Hobby forbids commercial use. The moment you charge money, move to Cloudflare (free) or Vercel Pro ($20/mo).
The $0 AI side project
Ship an AI-powered tool without an OpenAI bill.
| Hosting | Cloudflare Pages | Unlimited bandwidth for your frontend |
| LLM API | Groq | Fast open models, real free quota (1K req/day on most models) |
| LLM fallback | Google Gemini | Frontier model at $0 — accept that free-tier data trains Google models |
| Database | Supabase | Postgres + auth + storage in one free project |
| Analytics | Umami Cloud | 100K events/mo, privacy-friendly |
Free LLM tiers rate-limit hard. Queue requests client-side and degrade gracefully on 429s.
The $0 high-traffic API
An API that can take a Reddit hug-of-death without a bill.
| Compute | Cloudflare Workers | 100K req/day at the edge, no cold starts |
| Database | Cloudflare D1 | 5M rows read/day, same platform |
| Cache / rate limit | Upstash Redis | 500K commands/mo serverless Redis |
| Object storage | Cloudflare R2 | Zero egress fees — the killer feature (card required to enable) |
The all-Cloudflare stack is the most generous default of 2026 — but 10ms CPU per request rules out heavy compute.
The $0 landing page + waitlist
Validate an idea this weekend.
| Hosting | Cloudflare Pages | Unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/mo |
| Waitlist + email | Loops | 4,000 sends/mo, 1,000 contacts, transactional included |
| Analytics | Cloudflare Web Analytics | Free, no cookie banner needed |