You quit your job three months ago. You've got a solid idea and a co-founder. Your budget is $0 to $50/month. Your runway is nine months.
The problem: you need tools to build something. A website builder. A backend. Analytics. Maybe AI for your product. But every startup tool costs money, and every dollar gets you closer to the runway wall.
This is the indie developer's reality: free AI tools for indie developers aren't a luxury. They're survival.
Why Free Matters for Indie Developers
Let's be honest about scale. Pre-launch, you need tools that work for you building something solo. Post-launch, maybe you need to scale. But right now? You're betting on product-market fit, not on expensive infrastructure.
If you use Copilot at $10/month, GitHub Pro at $4/month, and a SaaS analytics tool at $29/month, you're at $43/month before you've written a single line of customer-facing code. Times nine months? That's $387 gone on tools, not product.
Free tools aren't inferior. They're strategic. Use free until you have revenue, then upgrade when it makes sense.
Code Generation and Editing
GitHub Copilot Free – Yes, free tier exists. Limited to code completion in your editor, but it works. You get ~150 completions per day. That's enough for indie dev pace.
Claude (web version, free) – Unlimited messages as long as you don't exceed rate limits. Better than Copilot for thinking through architecture. Most indie developers keep this open in another tab.
Continue (free, open-source) – Runs in VS Code without internet, uses open-source models like Mistral. Slower than Claude but zero privacy concerns. Useful if you're paranoid.
Cursor Free Trial – Gives you 500 completions for free. Not infinite, but enough to test whether you like the editor before paying.
Replit Free Tier – Full IDE in the browser with AI pair programming built-in. Honestly underrated for indie devs who want to code from anywhere.
API Access Without Credit Card
Claude Free Tier (Web) – 5 API requests per day if you go through the browser. Not enough to build a product, but fine for prototyping.
GPT-3.5 Free Trial (OpenAI) – $5 free credit that lasts three months. Enough to build a small AI feature. You'll hit the limit, but it's free experimentation.
Mistral Free Tier – Better rates than OpenAI for smaller models. $0.14 per 1M input tokens. For indie projects, you can run a modest AI feature on this for free if traffic stays low.
Hugging Face – Host and run open-source AI models for free. Inference API has free tier. Performance is mediocre, but it's real AI without a credit card.
Frontend and Hosting
GitHub Pages (free) – Build a static site, host it free. Your domain is yourusername.github.io unless you add your own domain.
Vercel Free Tier – Deploy Next.js apps, unlimited static hosting. Great UX. This is what indie developers actually use instead of GitHub Pages.
Netlify Free Tier – Similar to Vercel, good for React/Vue. Free tier is generous. CI/CD built in.
Replit (free tier) – Full-stack hosting. Slower than Vercel, but good enough and includes a database. Indie developers use this for speed over performance.
Backend and Database
Supabase (free tier) – PostgreSQL database, realtime API, auth, and storage. Free tier gives 500MB database, 2GB bandwidth. This is genuinely enough for a pre-launch indie product.
Firebase (free tier) – Google's backend. NoSQL database, auth, hosting, functions. Free tier is good but less transparent on limits than Supabase.
MongoDB Atlas (free tier) – NoSQL database, 512MB storage. Cloud-based. Fine for prototyping.
PlanetScale (free tier) – MySQL database. 5GB storage, good for SQL developers. Generous free tier.
Railway or Render – Cheap deployment for backend services. Not free, but cheapest paid option for indie devs ($0 if you use your GitHub student pack for credits).
Analytics
Plausible (free tier? Not really) – Privacy-first analytics, $9/month. Not free, but cheapest ethical option.
Fathom (free tier) – Simple analytics, $14/month. Good for indie devs who hate Google Analytics complexity.
Simple Analytics (free tier for one site) – Privacy-focused, $20/month beyond free. Great UX.
Open source: Umami, Matomo (free, self-hosted) – Deploy these free analytics tools on your server. Complexity trade-off for price.
If you have no users yet, don't buy analytics. Use Google Analytics free tier or nothing. Upgrade when you have traffic to measure.
Content and Writing
Claude Free Web – If you're writing copy for your site, this is how you do it without paying.
Grammarly Free Tier – Checks spelling and basic grammar. Premium ($12/month) has AI writing suggestions, but free tier is fine for basic stuff.
Hemingway Editor (free, web app) – Makes your writing clearer. It's not AI, but it's free and legitimately useful.
Automation and APIs
Zapier Free Tier – 100 tasks/month. You can automate basic workflows without code. Good for indie devs who want to connect services.
Make (formerly Integromat) – Similar to Zapier, 1,000 operations/month free. More generous than Zapier if you have complex workflows.
n8n (self-hosted, free and open-source) – Build automation workflows on your own server. No usage limits, but you manage the infrastructure.
The Indie Developer's Actual Stack (Zero Dollars)
- Coding: Claude free web + GitHub Copilot free tier
- Code editing: VS Code (free) or Cursor trial
- Frontend: Vercel free tier
- Backend: Supabase free tier
- Database: Included with Supabase
- Analytics: Google Analytics free tier
- Email marketing: Substack free tier (if you want to reach users)
- Design: Figma free tier (not AI, but good enough)
Total cost: $0/month.
Your main limitation: GitHub Copilot has rate limits, Supabase has storage limits, and Vercel has bandwidth limits. But these limits are high enough for pre-launch products.
When to Start Paying
Pay for tools when one of these is true:
- The free tier actively limits you (e.g., Supabase storage hits 500MB)
- You have paying customers and can attribute revenue to the tool
- The tool saves you more time than the cost (rare for pre-launch)
- You're hitting rate limits or performance becomes an issue
Most indie developers wait until (2). That's the right instinct.
The Caveat
Free tiers are businesses' way of selling you later. Use free tools with your eyes open—you're the product or the future customer.
That's fine. You're not building on free forever. You're moving fast on a bootstrap, getting to product-market fit, then upgrading when revenue justifies it.
ToolSphere.ai has built a curated guide specifically for bootstrapped indie devs—showing which free tools work best together, their actual limits, and when you should upgrade. Check the indie developer section to see recommended free stacks by tech (Python, Node, React) and use case.
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