Build API products on free tiers. Neon, Cloudflare Workers, Auth0, New Relic, Mailgun, GitHub Actions — verified limits, cost at scale, stability ratings.
Purpose-built for API products. Low latency, strong auth, and excellent observability.
API-first products need low-latency hosting, robust authentication with API keys and OAuth, and deep observability into request patterns. This stack pairs Cloudflare Workers' edge compute with Auth0's enterprise-grade auth and New Relic's generous free APM — giving you production-ready API infrastructure at $0/month. Fly.io held this row until September 2026 and was replaced because it has had no free tier for new accounts since October 2024.
| Category | Service | Stability | Free | ~1K MAU | ~10K MAU | ~100K MAU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Database | NeonServerless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project… | active | $0 | $19 | $69 | $350 |
| Hosting | Cloudflare WorkersEdge compute with 100K requests/day, 10ms CPU time per invocation. KV: 1 GB storage, 100K… | active | $0 | $5 | $5 | $5 |
| Auth | Auth0Identity platform — 25K MAU (B2C), unlimited logins, social + database connections… | active | $0 | $0 | $35 | $240 |
| Monitoring | New RelicFull observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited… | active | $0 | $0 | $0 | $49 |
| Mailgun100 emails/day | — | $0 | $0 | $35 | $90 | |
| CI/CD | GitHub ActionsFree CI/CD for public repos (unlimited minutes). Private repos: 2,000 min/mo… | active | $0 | $0 | $4 | $21 |
| Total | $0/mo | $24/mo | $148/mo | $755/mo |
Serverless Postgres scales to zero between requests. Connection pooling handles concurrent API clients.
Serverless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, up to 100 projects, 10 branches…
Edge compute in 300+ locations with 10 ms CPU time per invocation. Low latency for API consumers worldwide, and the free allowance is permanent.
Edge compute with 100K requests/day, 10ms CPU time per invocation. KV: 1 GB storage, 100K reads/day, 1K writes/day. D1: 5 GB storage, 5M rows…
Enterprise-grade OAuth2/OIDC. API key management, rate limiting, and machine-to-machine tokens.
Identity platform — 25K MAU (B2C), unlimited logins, social + database connections, Universal Login, 1 Enterprise Connection, 5 Organizations, 1…
100 GB free ingest with APM — see every API request, latency distribution, and error rate.
Full observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic checks, 8+ days retention
Reliable transactional email with detailed delivery analytics. Good for API key notifications and alerts.
100 emails/day
Standard CI/CD with matrix builds for testing API across multiple client SDK versions.
Free CI/CD for public repos (unlimited minutes). Private repos: 2,000 min/mo GitHub-hosted runners, 500 MB artifact storage, 10 GB cache/repo…
Want to customize this stack? Here are smart swaps that can save money at scale:
Better for custom dashboards — 10K metrics and 50 GB logs free
Use plan_stack to get AI-powered stack recommendations tailored to your specific use case.
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