I Built 8 Production SaaS Apps with $0 Infrastructure — Here's My Playbook

TL;DR
Over the past year, I built and deployed 8 production web applications — all running on free-tier infrastructure. No credit card charges, no cloud bills, no compromises on quality. Here's every tool I use and exactly how I do it.

Why Zero-Cost Matters
I'm a self-taught developer from Turkey. I don't have VC funding or a company credit card. But I wanted to build real products — not toy projects, not tutorials, not "coming soon" landing pages. Real, deployed, working applications that solve real problems.
The constraint of $0/month forced me to be creative. And honestly? The free tiers available in 2025-2026 are insanely generous. You can run a legitimate SaaS business without spending a cent on infrastructure.

The 8 Projects
Here's what I built, in chronological order:

1. OpsFlow — Incident Management Platform The most ambitious one. Microservice architecture with 3 separate repositories: API (Express.js + TypeORM), Frontend (React + MUI), and Notification Service (Kafka consumer + Resend). What it taught me: Multi-tenant architecture, RBAC, JWT auth, Kafka event-driven patterns, Redis caching, invite flows. This was my "learn everything" project.
2. KolayAidat — Apartment Dues Tracker Built for the Turkish market. Apartment managers track dues, residents upload receipts, everyone gets email notifications. What it taught me: Next.js App Router, Prisma, Server Components, NextAuth.js. This was my transition from Express to Next.js full-stack.
3. Çerezmatik — Cookie Consent Generator KVKK (Turkish GDPR) compliance tool. Generate a cookie banner, get the embed code, paste it into your site. What it taught me: JavaScript snippet generation, embed code patterns, template engines. The "tool-based" model — users come, use it, leave.
4. FormJet — Smart Form Builder Create forms, embed them anywhere, get notifications via email, Telegram, or Slack. N8N handles all the automation. What it taught me: Supabase ecosystem, N8N workflow automation, embeddable widgets.
5. Notera — Note-Taking App OneNote-style app with rich text editing, notebooks, tags, auto-save, and dark theme. What it taught me: Tiptap rich text editor, real-time auto-save patterns, Supabase realtime.
6. MockAPI — Instant Backend Generator Enter a schema, get a full REST API. Dynamic PostgreSQL table generation with multi-tenant isolation. What it taught me: Dynamic schema generation, raw SQL with Prisma, generic CRUD engines.
7. RivalRadar — AI Competitor Analysis Enter a company name, get a full SWOT analysis in 60 seconds. Multi-agent AI pipeline powered by N8N. What it taught me: N8N AI agents, LLM orchestration, Groq, webhook workflows, fallback patterns.
8. Portfolio MCP Server (npm package) My latest: a Model Context Protocol server that lets AI assistants query my portfolio. Published on npm as akin-portfolio-mcp. What it taught me: MCP protocol, npm publishing, TypeScript SDK development.

The Free-Tier Stack
Here's my go-to toolchain and how each piece fits:
Frontend & Deploy: Vercel
Free tier gives you unlimited deploys, preview environments, and edge network. Next.js deploys in seconds. I've never needed more than the free tier.
Database: Neon or Supabase
Neon gives you 0.5GB PostgreSQL with 190 hours of compute. Supabase gives you PostgreSQL + Auth + Storage + Realtime (but limited to 2 free projects). I use Neon for newer projects because of the project limit.
ORM: Prisma
Type-safe database access, migrations, and generated types. Zero cost, obviously. The developer experience is unmatched.
Auth: NextAuth.js v5
Google OAuth in 20 minutes. Session management, JWT or database sessions, CSRF protection — all built in. Free forever.
Automation: N8N (self-hosted on Render)
This is my secret weapon. N8N handles email notifications, AI agent orchestration, webhook processing, scheduled tasks. Self-hosted on Render's free tier + UptimeRobot to prevent cold starts.
AI: Groq (Llama 3.3) or Gemini
Both offer generous free tiers. Groq is faster, Gemini has higher limits. I use both with fallback logic.
Hosting (Static): Firebase Hosting
My portfolio site runs here. Free SSL, CDN, custom domain. Simple and reliable.
Uptime: UptimeRobot
50 free monitors. Pings my Render services every 5 minutes to prevent sleep. Essential for free-tier hosting.

The Rules I Follow
After 8 projects, these are my non-negotiable principles:

TypeScript strict mode, always. No any. Ever. It catches bugs before they reach production.
Zod validation on every endpoint. User input is never trusted. Zod gives you runtime validation with TypeScript inference.
Auth + authorization on every route. Not just "is the user logged in" but "can this user access this specific resource."
Loading and error states on every page. loading.tsx and error.tsx in every route segment. Users should never see a blank screen.
Max 200 lines per file. If a file is longer, it's doing too much. Split it.
Conventional commits. feat:, fix:, refactor: — makes git history readable and useful.
No TODO comments in production code. If it's not done, it's not shipped.

What Zero-Cost Taught Me
Building with constraints made me a better developer. I learned to:

Evaluate trade-offs — Supabase vs Neon, NextAuth vs Supabase Auth, Groq vs OpenAI. Every decision has implications.
Optimize for free tiers — Understanding rate limits, cold starts, and storage limits is a real skill.
Ship fast — Without infrastructure costs, there's no financial risk in launching. Just build and deploy.
Focus on value — When you can't buy your way out of problems, you build smarter solutions.

Want to Try?
All projects are live and open source:
ProjectLive URLGitHubOpsFlowopsflowweb.vercel.appakincskn/opsflow-apiKolayAidatkolayaidat.vercel.appakincskn/kolayaidatÇerezmatikcerezmatik.vercel.appakincskn/cerezmatikFormJetformjet-bice.vercel.appakincskn/formjetNoteranotdefteri-virid.vercel.appakincskn/notdefteriRivalRadarrivalradar-three.vercel.appakincskn/rivalradarMCP Servernpmjs.com/package/akin-portfolio-mcpakincskn/akin-portfolio-mcp

I'm Akın Coşkun, a full-stack developer from Turkey. I build production SaaS applications with zero-cost infrastructure. Currently exploring N8N automation, AI agents, MCP development, and GEO optimization. Find me on GitHub or check my portfolio.