Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
107 lines (74 loc) · 4.29 KB

cost-calculator.md

File metadata and controls

107 lines (74 loc) · 4.29 KB

Cost Calculator

What your stack actually costs as you grow. Real numbers from real pricing pages, not marketing estimates.

How to Read This

  • Infrastructure costs are what you pay regardless of revenue (hosting, database, email, analytics)
  • Transaction costs scale with revenue (payment processing)
  • Per-user costs scale with users, not revenue (auth services with MAU pricing)

The dangerous category is per-user costs. They can grow faster than your revenue.

ARPU assumption: All payment processing estimates below assume $10/mo average revenue per user, which is typical for B2C SaaS. If you're building B2B at $50-200/mo ARPU, multiply the Stripe/Lemon Squeezy rows by 5-20x. The infrastructure rows stay the same.

Stack A: The $0 MVP (Supabase + Vercel + Stripe)

Component 100 users 1K users 10K users 100K users
Supabase (Free) $0 $0 $0 $0
Supabase Auth (Free) $0 $0 $0 $0
Vercel (Hobby) $0 $0 $0 Over limit
Resend (Free) $0 $0 $0 $0
PostHog (Free) $0 $0 $0 $0
Infrastructure $0 $0 $0 Free tier exceeded
Stripe (2.9% + $0.30) $29 $290 $2,900 $29,000

Free tier limits you'll hit first: Vercel bandwidth (~33K pageviews), then Supabase storage (500MB), then Resend emails (3K/mo).

Stack B: The $50 Production (Supabase Pro + Railway + Lemon Squeezy)

Component 100 users 1K users 10K users 100K users
Supabase Pro $25 $25 $25 $75
Supabase Auth (included) $0 $0 $0 $0
Railway $5 $10 $15 $50
Resend Pro $20 $20 $20 $20
PostHog (Free) $0 $0 $0 $50
Infrastructure $50 $55 $60 $195
Lemon Squeezy (5% + $0.50) $55 $550 $5,500 $55,000

Infrastructure stays flat and cheap. Payment processing scales linearly with revenue. No surprises.

Stack C: The $100 Scale (Self-hosted + Auth.js + Stripe)

Component 100 users 1K users 10K users 100K users
Supabase Pro $25 $25 $25 $75
Auth.js (self-hosted) $0 $0 $0 $0
Hetzner + Coolify $6 $6 $10 $30
Postmark $15 $15 $15 $85
PostHog $0 $0 $0 $50
Sentry (Free) $0 $0 $0 $0
Infrastructure $46 $46 $50 $240
Stripe + Tax (3.4%) $37 $370 $3,700 $37,000

Lowest infrastructure cost at scale. Self-hosted auth means zero per-user cost cliffs.

The Danger Zone: What Happens If You Pick Clerk

To be clear: Clerk is excellent. But you need to see this math before you commit.

Component 100 users 1K users 10K users 100K users
Clerk Auth $0 $0 $0 $600-1,000
Rest of Stack B $50 $55 $60 $195
Infrastructure $50 $55 $60 $795-1,195

Clerk expanded their free tier to 50K users in Feb 2026, which is a big improvement. But at 100K users, Clerk still costs more than all other infrastructure combined.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't use Clerk. It means you should plan your graduation path before you hit 50K users. See the Graduation Guides.

Revenue Required to Sustain Each Stack

A healthy SaaS business keeps infrastructure under 10-15% of revenue.

Stack Monthly Infra at 10K Users Revenue Needed (at 10% target)
$0 MVP $0 (free tier) $0 (but you'll outgrow it)
$50 Production $60 $600/mo MRR
$100 Scale $50 $500/mo MRR
$50 Production + Clerk $60 at 10K, but $795-1,195 at 100K $8,000-12,000/mo MRR at 100K users

The Scale Stack is paradoxically cheaper than the Production Stack at high volume because self-hosted auth eliminates the per-user cost cliff.

Key Takeaways

  1. Infrastructure is cheap. You can run a real SaaS for $50-60/month.
  2. Payment processing is your biggest cost, and that's fine because it scales with revenue.
  3. Per-user auth pricing is the hidden trap. Plan for it or avoid it.
  4. Self-hosting saves 50-70% at scale but requires upfront investment in setup.
  5. Free tiers are for validation, not production. Graduate when you have paying customers.

All pricing verified March 2026. Report outdated info.