I'm a developer (not AI, just in case you were going to ask)..
When I built my latest project, a diabetes chatbot, I made a deliberate choice to keep costs as close to zero as possible. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to prove it was possible to ship something real without burning cash on tooling before you have a single user.
Here's every tool I used, why I picked it, and what I considered and rejected.
Coding: Claude
Cost: Free to Copy Pasta
I'll be honest upfront. I eventually paid for Claude Code but in the beginning I copy pasted everything over and back from free Claude Chat. You will have to deal with free limits but its pretty good for small projects, on a budget.
General AI Assistant: ChatGPT + Grok
Cost: Free
I used both throughout the build for different things. ChatGPT is getting worse but still great to generate documentation, chat about distribution tactics, and draft messages to potential customer that you never send. Grok is faster for quick factual questions and surprisingly fast for making images.
The real insight here: I don't pick one. Different models have different strengths on different days. Keeping two open costs nothing.
What I didn't use:
Gemini is capable for searching things but meh otherwise, in my experience (don't sue me Google).
Documentation: Any of the above
Cost: Free
Before I wrote a line of code I prompted ChatGPT to generate my full project documentation. PRD, architecture overview, data model, readme. Then I passed that to Claude.
Most developers skip documentation until the end and then never write it. Generating it at the start with AI takes minutes and means you actually have it. It also forces you to think through what you're building before you build it, which catches half your architecture mistakes before they become code.
No extra tool needed. You already have ChatGPT open.
Full Suite AI Automation: OpenClaw
Cost: Free, open source
OpenClaw is an open source AI assistant that can handle full suite automations — the kind of multi-step workflows that normally require stitching together five different tools. It's worth looking into if you want a self-hosted AI layer that can orchestrate tasks across your stack.
One honest caveat: don't install it on your local machine. Run it isolated. I won't say more than that.
Alternatives:
- n8n — open source automation, excellent, self-hostable
- Zapier free tier — fine for simple workflows, hits limits fast
Hosting: Vercel
Cost: Free tier
Zero configuration. Push to GitHub, it deploys. The free tier covers everything you need until you have real traffic, at which point you have a revenue problem worth having. It also includes a custom domains for free (in your face AWS).
Alternatives I considered:
- Render — excellent free tier, slightly more configuration
- Railway — great developer experience, free tier is more limited now
- Fly.io — powerful, more ops overhead than I wanted
Vercel won because I wanted to think about it zero times after setup. It delivered on that.
Database: Neon DB
Cost: Free tier
Serverless Postgres. Scales to zero when not in use, which means the free tier actually lasts. The developer experience is clean, the connection pooling works, and it integrates with Vercel without any friction.
Alternatives:
- Supabase — free tier is generous, adds auth and storage if you need them
- PlanetScale — good but MySQL, not Postgres
- Railway Postgres — fine, free tier smaller
I picked Neon because I wanted Postgres specifically and the serverless model suited a product in early stages with unpredictable traffic.
CDN and Security Layer: Cloudflare
Cost: Free
Cloudflare sits in front of everything. DDoS protection, CDN, DNS management, basic WAF on the free tier. It does a lot and its easy to setup and free to use, chef kiss.
There is no meaningful alternative at this price point. Just use Cloudflare.
CI/CD: GitHub Actions
Cost: Free for public repos, generous free minutes for private
Automated testing and deployment on every push. I set up the workflows through prompting — described what I wanted, got the YAML, pasted it in. Never had to learn GitHub Actions syntax in any meaningful way.
Alternatives:
- GitLab CI — excellent if you're already on GitLab
- Cloudflare — has free tier workers too
- Bitbucket Pipelines — fine, less ecosystem support
GitHub Actions won by default. Your code is probably already on GitHub.
Design and Images: Canva AI
Cost: Free tier
Social assets, blog images, pitch deck slides, product screenshots with callouts. Canva AI handles all of it without needing a designer or a design tool with a learning curve.
Alternatives:
- Grok — excellent for generating marketing material if you give ti the correct, narrow prompts
- Figma — free tier exists, overkill for early stage
For pure asset generation Canva AI is faster than anything else I found.
Security: Intruder.io + Snyk + GitHub Dependabot
Cost: Free tiers
Three layers, three different jobs.
Intruder.io — I used this to run a penetration test once the product was live. It attempts to find vulnerabilities the way an attacker would. For a solo developer who can't run a full security audit, it's the fastest way to know you haven't shipped something obviously broken. There's a free trial that covers an initial scan.
Snyk — scans your dependencies for known vulnerabilities on every push. Integrates with GitHub. Set it up once, forget about it, get alerts when something needs updating.
GitHub Dependabot — one checkbox in your repository settings. Automatically opens pull requests when your dependencies have security updates. Free, zero configuration, no excuse not to have it on.
OWASP ZAP
OWASP ZAP is the open source alternative to Intruder for manual pen testing. It's powerful and free but has a steeper learning curve. Worth it if you want to go deeper.
Compliance: QualiHQ
Cost: Free
I knew my app was regulated from a previous job. I also knew what I needed for the basics (Thank You Claude) and that it was probably overkill until I have users. However, whats the point in doing something if you aren't going to learn something new (or completely over engineer, get no users and give up). QualiHQ is free and uses AI to setup in seconds, teaches you a bit about compliance too.
Alternatives:
- FreeQMS — It's free (obviously) but not as easy to onboard
The Full Stack at a Glance
| Tool | Category | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Coding | Paid — one justified expense |
| ChatGPT | Assistant + Docs | Free |
| Grok | Assistant | Free |
| GitHub Actions | CI/CD | Free |
| Canva AI | Design | Free tier |
| OpenClaw | Automation | Free, open source |
| Cloudflare | CDN + Security | Free |
| Vercel | Hosting | Free tier |
| Neon DB | Database | Free tier |
| Dependabot | Security updates | Free |
| Snyk | Dependency scanning | Free tier |
| Intruder.io | Pen testing | Free trial |
| QualiHQ | Compliance | Free |
What This Actually Costs
One paid tool. Everything else free.
The argument for keeping costs at zero until you have users is simple: every euro you spend before revenue is a bet that you'll get revenue. The tools above let you defer that bet until you know something is worth betting on.
Ship first. Optimise the stack when the problem is real.
QualiHQ is a free QMS for SaaS startups. If your product touches regulated territory and you don't have a quality management process in place, start at qualihq.com.
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