You don’t need VC money to launch software. In 2025, the free tiers of developer tools are powerful enough to run a profitable business.
The “Free” Stack
- Frontend & Hosting: Vercel (Next.js). Their free tier is generous enough for thousands of daily users.
- Database: Supabase. It gives you a full Postgres database, Auth, and APIs for free (up to 500MB).
- Payments: Stripe. No monthly fees, they just take a % of transactions.
- Email: Resend. Free for 3,000 emails/month.
The Challenge: Limits
The hard part isn’t building; it’s staying within the limits. I had to optimize my images aggressively to save bandwidth and ensure my database queries were indexed to avoid CPU spikes.
Marketing for $0
Since I had no ad budget, I relied on “Building in Public”. I shared my progress on Twitter/X and Reddit. My first 100 users came from a single post sharing a technical challenge I solved.
Conclusion
Constraints breed creativity. Building with zero budget forced me to write better code and focus on features that actually mattered to users.