Stack guides
Free building blocks for your app, compared
The free tier, the catch, and what you pay when you outgrow it, for 270 databases, hosts, APIs, AI tools and open-source starters. Checked by hand on 2026-10-27, with sources.
- Free databases for web apps10 compared · Appwrite Cloud, Convex, Firebase (Firestore, Spark plan)
- Free login and auth services11 compared · Auth.js (NextAuth.js), Auth0, Better Auth
- Free hosting for web apps16 compared · AWS Amplify Hosting, Cloudflare Pages, Cloudflare Workers
- Free file storage and image hosting9 compared · Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Bunny.net (CDN + Storage)
- Free email APIs for apps9 compared · Amazon SES, Brevo, listmonk
- Payment providers compared8 compared · Dodo Payments, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle
- Free analytics tools7 compared · Cloudflare Web Analytics, Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity
- Free error tracking and uptime monitoring6 compared · Axiom, Better Stack, Grafana Cloud
- Background jobs, queues and caching9 compared · Cloudflare Workers KV, Redis Cloud (free database), Upstash Redis
- Search for your app5 compared · Algolia, Meilisearch, Orama (OramaJS)
- Realtime and chat services6 compared · Ably, Cloudflare Durable Objects + PartyServer, Firebase Realtime Database
- AI model APIs and vector databases13 compared · Claude API, Cloudflare Workers AI, Google Gemini API
- Maps for your app8 compared · Google Maps Platform, Leaflet, Mapbox
- AI app builders and coding agents18 compared · Base44, Bolt.new, Figma Make
- AI skills, rules and MCP servers for building apps34 compared · Chrome DevTools MCP, Cloudflare MCP servers, Context7
- Open-source starters and self-hostable apps55 compared · AnythingLLM, Apache Answer, Appsmith
- Free UI kits, icons and design tools46 compared · Excalidraw, Figma, Penpot