The Problem
I love Vercel and Netlify for side projects. The developer experience is unmatched.
But I hate the "Success Tax."
The moment a side project gets traction, the function invocation limits kick in. You go from the "Free Tier" to "Enterprise Pricing" overnight, often for traffic that isn't even monetized yet.
I didn't want to migrate to Kubernetes, but I didn't want to pay $20/mo per project just to handle a few spikes.
The Solution: A "Poor Man's" Load Balancer
I realized that while one free tier has limits, three free tiers have triple the limits.
I built a lightweight API Gateway called Crate using Go and Redis.
The Architecture
- The Gateway: A Go binary running on a cheap bare-metal server (Colocrossing).
- The State: Redis is used for distributed rate limiting and analytics tracking.
-
The Routing: It uses
httputil.ReverseProxywith in-memory round-robin logic to split requests across multiple backends.
Instead of pointing my domain to Vercel, I point it to Crate. Crate then splits the traffic:
- 33% -> Vercel Project A
- 33% -> Vercel Project B
- 33% -> Netlify Backup
The Result
I effectively multiplied my free tier limits. I can now handle 3x the traffic without paying a cent in overage fees.
I also use it to run Hybrid Architectures. I split traffic 50/50 between a Serverless Function (for scale) and a fixed-cost VPS (for baseline load). This keeps my bill predictable.
Want to try it?
I'm looking for 10 developers to help me stress-test the Go implementation.
I'm charging $5/mo (locked in for life) just to cover the server costs.
If you are tired of watching your usage meters like a hawk, check it out here:
https://crate.cc
Top comments (4)
Wow, that’s clever!! Tip: using Go + Redis to slice free tier limits like this is genius… and your explanation makes it super approachable. Definitely a neat hack for anyone tired of the serverless “success tax” 😁
Thank you!
I'm trying to build a platform that can rival the big guys without the costs associated with it that price most of us out of even starting with them. Mainly building for myself but figured it may be useful to others, so I'd put it out there.
That's a pretty interesting solution!! Congratz
Thank you!