Build side projects on completely free tiers. Turso, Render, Firebase Auth, BetterStack, GitHub Actions — published limits, cost at scale, stability ratings.
Published 2026-04-04 · Not yet reviewed
Build your side project without worrying about costs. Every service here stays free for hobby use.
Side projects need services that stay free forever — not free trials that expire. This stack uses genuinely free tiers with no credit card required. Optimized for solo developers who want to ship fast and keep costs at exactly $0 for as long as possible.
| Category | Service | Stability | Free | ~1K MAU | ~10K MAU | ~100K MAU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Database | TursoEdge SQLite — 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month… | active | $0 | $0 | $29 | $29 |
| Hosting | RenderHobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down… | at risk | $0 | $7 | $25 | $85 |
| Auth | Firebase AuthSpark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB stored, 50K… | at risk | $0 | $0 | $0 | $5 |
| Monitoring | BetterStack10 uptime monitors, 3 GB logs (3-day retention), 100K exceptions/mo, 5K session replays… | active | $0 | $0 | $25 | $85 |
| Brevo300 emails/day, unlimited contacts (fair use policy), marketing automation, segmentation… not confirmed · change not established · 2026-10-09 | unrated — change not established | $0 | $0 | $25 | $65 | |
| 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 | $7/mo | $108/mo | $290/mo |
Most generous free database tier. 5 GB storage, edge SQLite, no inactivity pausing.
Edge SQLite — 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month free. On 2026-10-02 Turso announced that Supabase is…
Free web services with auto-deploy from GitHub. Spins down after inactivity but restarts on request.
Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours…
Email, social and anonymous sign-in at no cost; SMS needs the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan. The modular SDK lets you use just the auth.
Spark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K writes/day, 20K deletes/day), Hosting (10 GB…
Free uptime monitoring with 10 monitors and status pages. Know when your side project goes down.
10 uptime monitors, 3 GB logs (3-day retention), 100K exceptions/mo, 5K session replays, 30 GB metrics, 1 status page, 1 responder
300 emails/day free — more than enough for side project transactional email.
300 emails/day, unlimited contacts (fair use policy), marketing automation, segmentation, landing pages. Formerly Sendinblue not confirmed · change not established · 2026-10-09
Already where your code lives. Free tier covers any side project CI needs.
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:
Save $85/mo at 100K users — if your project is static/Jamstack, Cloudflare Pages is free at any scale