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How to launch an MVP at minimum cost: hosting and database

Deploy and store data at minimum cost and without surprises

Data reviewed on Oct 17, 2026 · LLM Stats indexes and official prices

The data, today

The context

An MVP needs two things: a place to run and a place to store data. Almost every platform has a free plan to get started, but each limits it differently, and some limits (such as the ban on commercial use) matter just when the product starts charging.

The sensible strategy is to start free, know in advance which limit will force you to pay and how much that first plan will cost. This page gathers the catalog data, the price guides and the comparators to decide it with figures.

What to decide

  1. 1

    Where do I deploy the frontend?

    Vercel and Netlify deploy from Git. Vercel Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use only, so an MVP with revenue needs Pro ($20 a month); Netlify Free includes 300 credits and Pro costs $20 a month with 3,000.

  2. 2

    And the backend or API?

    Railway Hobby starts at $5 a month with $5 of usage included and charges memory and CPU by use; Fly.io has no free plan and a 256 MB shared-cpu-1x machine costs $2.19 a month.

  3. 3

    Which database do I use?

    Supabase Free, Neon Free or Cloudflare D1 Free cover a prototype, with limits on pausing, scale to zero or daily caps. For production with users, Supabase Pro from $25 a month or a pay-per-use plan such as Neon Launch.

  4. 4

    How much does it all cost together?

    An MVP can start at $0 on free plans and move to about $45 a month when charging users, for example Vercel Pro ($20) plus Supabase Pro ($25), not counting overage. Calculate your case with the price guides.

  5. 5

    When do I separate environments?

    As soon as there are real users: staging and production with different data and credentials. The environments guide explains how to do it on AWS with separate accounts.

Common mistakes

  • Launching a commercial product on a free plan that forbids it.
  • Mixing staging and production data in the same database.
  • Not setting spend alerts on platforms that bill by usage.

Tools and comparators

FinOps guideCloud options comparatorDatabases comparator

Guides to go deeper

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No provider pays for its position. Indexes come from LLM Stats; prices from each provider's standard API. How we measure

Reduce AI costsMeasure tokens per request and pay for big models only when neededAI customer supportWork out cost per conversation without dropping below your quality barDocument search and RAGFind the right passage before asking the model for an answerCoding with AIMeasure cost per coding task and review what the agent writesCut cloud costsFind the hidden spend in egress, operations and idle resourcesHandle traffic spikesAbsorb traffic bursts without dropping requests or the databaseShip to productionDeploy from Git with separate environments and clean configurationChoose a databaseCompare Supabase, Neon, Turso, PlanetScale and D1 by how they billEvaluate new AI providersCompare Kimi, GLM, Qwen and Muse Spark with the leaders
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