·3 min read
MVP Hosting and Infrastructure Costs Explained
You've budgeted for development. But what about ongoing costs? Here's what MVPs actually cost to run.
The Good News
Most MVPs can run for $0-50/month. Modern platforms have generous free tiers that handle thousands of users.
Typical Monthly Costs
| Service | Free Tier | Paid (When Needed) |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting (Vercel/Netlify) | Generous | $20/month |
| Database (Supabase/PlanetScale) | 500MB-1GB free | $25/month |
| Auth (Clerk/Auth0) | 10k users free | $25/month |
| Email (Resend/Postmark) | 100-1000/month free | $10/month |
| Analytics (Plausible/PostHog) | Free tier available | $9/month |
| Domain | N/A | $10-15/year |
What You Actually Need
- •Hosting: Vercel free tier handles most MVPs perfectly
- •Database: Supabase free tier gives you 500MB (enough for 10k+ users)
- •Domain: ~$12/year for a .com
- •Email: Resend gives 100 emails/day free
- •SSL: Free everywhere now (Let's Encrypt)
When Costs Increase
You'll start paying when you have traction. That's a good problem.
- •1,000+ monthly active users
- •High-bandwidth features (video, file uploads)
- •Background jobs and cron tasks
- •Multiple environments (staging, production)
Cost-Saving Tips
- •Use free tiers aggressively—they're designed for MVPs
- •Don't pay for monitoring until you have users
- •Skip CDN until you're global
- •Use serverless to pay only for what you use
Your MVP should cost less than a Netflix subscription to run. If someone's quoting you $200/month in hosting before launch, question it.