How I built a fully automated anime streaming platform with 2,733 episodes on $0 infrastructure

Golu — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:41:01 +0000

The Challenge

I wanted to prove that a complete streaming platform could be built with zero monetary investment. No AWS credits. No paid hosting. Just free tiers, automation, and a lot of JavaScript.

The result: 161+ anime titles, 2,733 episodes, 15 languages, and a full admin panel – all running on $0/month infrastructure.

The Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Next.js 14, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
Backend API	Cloudflare Workers (serverless)
Database	Cloudflare D1 (SQLite) + Supabase (PostgreSQL)
Cache	Cloudflare KV (< 50ms response time)
Auth	Supabase Auth
Notifications	Firebase FCM
Video Player	HLS.js with custom CORS-proxy bypass
Hosting	Vercel (frontend) + Cloudflare Workers (API)

Infrastructure cost: $0/month. Yes, really.

The Hard Parts

1. HLS Streaming with CORS Bypass

Video streams (M3U8 playlists) from third-party sources often block cross-origin requests. I built a custom proxy route that:

Fetches the M3U8 playlist
Rewrites all segment URLs to go through the proxy
Streams back the modified playlist to the client
Handles CORS headers properly

The proxy handles both .m3u8 playlists and binary segments (.ts, .m4s) while preserving Range headers for partial content.

Code snippet – proxy playlist rewriting:


javascript
const rewritten = text
  .split(/\r?\n/)
  .map(line => {
    const trimmed = line.trim();
    if (!trimmed || trimmed.startsWith('#') || trimmed.includes('/api/proxy')) {
      return line;
    }
    try {
      const resolved = new URL(trimmed, baseUrl).toString();
      return `/api/proxy?url=${encodeURIComponent(resolved)}`;
    } catch {
      return line;
    }
  })
  .join('\n');

DEV Community: Golu

How I built a fully automated anime streaming platform with 2,733 episodes on $0 infrastructure

The Challenge

The Stack

The Hard Parts

1. HLS Streaming with CORS Bypass