The Solo Founder's Tech Stack (Reference)
This chapter is your reference guide to the tools and services you need. I have organized them by function, listed free-tier details, and marked my recommendation for each category.
Prices and free tiers below were checked on each vendor's own pricing page in November 2026 (US list prices). They change often, so click through before you commit. Where I could not confirm a figure, the table says "see pricing page" instead of guessing.
Use this chapter as a lookup table. Bookmark it. Come back whenever you need to choose a tool.
Infrastructure and Hosting
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | Website hosting | 500 builds/month, 1 concurrent build, up to 100 projects | Paid Cloudflare plans raise build limits | Best for marketing sites |
| Cloudflare Workers | Serverless functions | 100K requests/day, 10 ms CPU per invocation | $5/month minimum (Workers Paid) | Best for simple APIs |
| Vercel | Full-stack hosting | Hobby: 100 GB data transfer, personal and non-commercial use only | $20/month (Pro) | Best for Next.js apps (a paying product needs Pro) |
| Railway | App hosting | One-time $5 trial credit (30 days); Free plan with $1/month of usage | $5/month Hobby, includes $5 of usage | Best for full-stack MVPs |
| Fly.io | Container hosting | No free tier for new organizations; short free trial | Pay as you go, billed by the second | Best for custom backends |
| Render | PaaS hosting | Static sites free | See pricing page | Good general option |
My pick: Cloudflare Pages for marketing site + Cloudflare Workers or Railway for the product backend.
Databases
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Postgres + Auth + Storage | 500 MB database, 1 GB file storage, 50K auth MAUs; pauses after 1 week idle | $25/month (Pro) | Best overall for MVPs |
| Cloudflare D1 | SQLite at the edge | 5M rows read/day, 100K rows written/day, 5 GB | Included with Workers Paid ($5/month), then $0.001 per million rows read | Best with Workers |
| PlanetScale | Postgres or MySQL (Vitess) | No free tier (removed in 2024) | Postgres from $5/month (single node); MySQL from $39/month | Good, but not free |
| Neon | Serverless Postgres | 1 GB storage per project, 100 compute-hours/month per project | Launch plan: pay as you go, no monthly minimum | Best serverless Postgres |
| Turso | Edge SQLite | 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month | $4.99/month (Developer) | Best for edge-first |
| MongoDB Atlas | NoSQL | 512 MB (M0) | Flex from about $8/month; dedicated from $56.94/month | If you need NoSQL |
My pick: Supabase. The free tier is generous, it includes authentication and file storage, and the Postgres foundation scales well. Free projects pause after a week of inactivity, so move to Pro before real customers depend on it.
Authentication
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase Auth | Auth with your Supabase DB | 50,000 MAUs | Included with Supabase plans | Best if using Supabase |
| Clerk | Drop-in auth | 50,000 monthly retained users per app | $25/month Pro ($20/month billed annually) | Best developer experience |
| Auth0 | Enterprise-grade auth | 25,000 MAUs | B2C Essentials from $35/month (500 MAUs) | More than most MVPs need |
| Firebase Auth | Google's auth | 50,000 MAUs (phone/SMS auth billed per SMS) | Identity Platform rates above 50K | Good, but ecosystem lock-in |
| Custom (JWT) | Roll your own | Free | Free | Only if you know what you are doing |
My pick: Supabase Auth (if using Supabase) or Clerk (if you want the fastest setup).
Do not roll your own auth unless you have security expertise. Authentication is the one area where "good enough" is not good enough. A bug in your auth system means unauthorized access to user data. Use a proven service. At $0-25/month, it is the cheapest security investment you will make. For a vendor-by-vendor view, see CIAM Compass.
Payments
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Payment processing | Free until you charge | 2.9% + $0.30 per US card transaction, plus 0.7% of volume for Stripe Billing subscriptions | The standard for SaaS |
| Lemon Squeezy | Merchant of record (now part of Stripe) | Free until you charge | 5% + $0.50 per transaction | Handles global tax/VAT |
| Paddle | Merchant of record | Free until you charge | 5% + $0.50 per transaction | Alternative to Lemon Squeezy |
| Stripe Managed Payments | Stripe's own merchant of record | Free until you charge | 3.5% on top of standard Stripe fees | Works with Checkout and Payment Links; Lemon Squeezy plans to move its users onto it |
My pick: Stripe. Lower fees, more control, better developer experience. Use Lemon Squeezy or Paddle only if you need a Merchant of Record to handle global tax compliance (important if you sell to consumers internationally).
AI Coding Assistants
| Tool | Purpose | Cost | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro / Claude Code | AI coding and reasoning | $20/month ($17/month billed annually); free plan available | Best for complex code generation |
| Google AI Pro (Gemini) | AI coding and research | $19.99/month in the US (plans) | Best for research + content |
| Cursor | AI-native code editor | Free plan; paid plans from $8/month | Best IDE experience |
| GitHub Copilot | In-editor code completion | Free plan (2,000 completions/month); Pro $10/month; free Student plan for verified students | Best for line-by-line completion |
| Windsurf | AI-native code editor | See pricing page (now part of Cognition, the maker of Devin) | Good Cursor alternative |
My pick: Claude Pro ($20/month) for heavy lifting + Google AI Pro ($19.99/month) for research and content. If you prefer an IDE experience, add Cursor.
Student pricing and free tiers. Verified students get free GitHub Copilot access through the Copilot Student plan. Many AI tools offer student discounts. Always check before paying full price.
Email and Communication
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | Business email | 14-day trial | Business Starter $7/user/month (annual) or $8.40 (flexible) | The standard |
| Cloudflare Email Routing | Email forwarding | Free | Free | Budget alternative to Workspace |
| Resend | Transactional email | 3,000 emails/month (100/day) | $20/month Pro (50,000 emails) | Best for product emails |
| Postmark | Transactional email | 100 emails/month | $15/month Basic (10,000 emails) | Strong deliverability focus |
| Mailchimp | Marketing email | 250 contacts, 500 sends/month | See pricing page | Good for newsletters (opt-in lists only) |
| Kit (formerly ConvertKit) | Creator email | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Creator plan from $33/month billed annually ($390/year) | Best for content creators |
My pick: Google Workspace for business email + Resend for transactional product emails.
Analytics and Monitoring
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | Site analytics | Free | Free | Privacy-friendly, already included |
| Google Search Console | SEO analytics | Free | Free | Required for SEO |
| Google Analytics 4 | Visitor analytics | Free | Free | Standard, but requires cookie consent |
| Plausible | Privacy-first analytics | 30-day trial | Starter $9/month | Best privacy-first option |
| PostHog | Product analytics | 1M analytics events/month | Usage-based | Best for product analytics |
| UptimeRobot | Uptime monitoring | 50 monitors, 5-minute checks | Solo from $9/month (annual) | Simple and effective |
My pick: Cloudflare Web Analytics (free, already set up) + Google Search Console (free, essential).
Design and Visual Tools
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Figma | UI design | Starter plan (limited) | Professional full seat $16/month | Best for design |
| Canva | Graphics and social images | Generous free tier | See pricing page | Best for non-designers |
| Excalidraw | Diagrams and wireframes | Free | Free | Best for quick diagrams |
| OG Image generators | Social sharing images | Various free options | Varies | Use Vercel OG or custom |
| Unsplash | Stock photos | Free | Free | Best free stock photos |
| Heroicons / Lucide | Icon libraries | Free | Free | Best icon sets |
My pick: Canva for social images and graphics (even the free tier is excellent). Excalidraw for wireframes.
Project and Task Management
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear | Issue tracking | Free plan | See pricing page | Best for solo devs |
| Notion | All-in-one workspace | Free plan | See pricing page | Best for docs + tasks |
| GitHub Issues | Bug tracking | Free | Free | Best if you live in GitHub |
| Todoist | Task management | Free plan | See pricing page | Simple and fast |
My pick: GitHub Issues for bugs and features. Notion or a simple text file for everything else. Do not over-engineer your project management as a solo founder.
Legal and Compliance
| Tool | Purpose | Free Tier | Cost After Free | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Termly | Privacy policy generator | Free basic policy | See pricing page | Good for MVP |
| Iubenda | Cookie consent + policies | Free basic | See pricing page | Good EU compliance |
| Stripe Atlas | Company incorporation | None | $500 one-time (Delaware C corp or LLC, includes first year of registered agent; $100/year after) | Best for US LLC/C-Corp |
My pick: Use AI to generate initial Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (see Appendix D). Get them reviewed by a lawyer when you hit $5K MRR.
The Minimal Stack (For the Truly Budget-Conscious)
If you want to spend the absolute minimum:
| Function | Tool | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Cloudflare Registrar | $10/year |
| DNS + CDN + Hosting | Cloudflare Pages | $0 |
| Cloudflare Email Routing (forwarding) | $0 | |
| Database + Auth | Supabase (free tier) | $0 |
| Payments | Stripe (free until transactions) | $0 |
| AI Coding | Free tiers of Claude/Gemini | $0 |
| Analytics | Cloudflare Web Analytics + GSC | $0 |
| Version Control | GitHub | $0 |
| Total | $10/year |
Yes, you can start a SaaS business on about $10/year in infrastructure. The AI subscriptions (about $20-40/month) are optional; free tiers work, just with lower limits. Expect to upgrade the database and auth tiers once paying customers rely on them.
Stack Recommendations by Product Type
B2B SaaS Dashboard: Cloudflare Pages + Supabase + Stripe + Resend
Developer Tool / API Product: Cloudflare Workers + D1 + Stripe + GitHub
Content / Media Platform: Astro on Cloudflare Pages + Supabase + Stripe
AI-Powered Product: Next.js on Vercel Pro (the free Hobby plan is non-commercial) + Supabase + Stripe + OpenAI/Anthropic API
Marketplace / Multi-sided Platform: Next.js on Railway + Supabase + Stripe Connect
Pick the stack that matches your product type and move on. The stack does not matter as much as shipping.