SaaS cost breakdown 2026
Here's what it costs to run a production SaaS at three different scales. All prices from public pricing pages as of July 2026.
0-100 users: $0-6/month
| Service | Plan | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hobby (100 GB bandwidth) source: vercel.com/pricing | $0 |
| Neon Postgres | Free (0.5 GB, 100 compute hrs) | $0 |
| NextAuth | Open source | $0 |
| Resend | Free (3,000 emails/mo) | $0 |
| Polar.sh | Starter (5% + $0.50/txn) | $0-$5 |
| Domain | : | ~$1/mo |
| Total | ~$1-6/mo |
100-1,000 users: ~$45/month
| Service | Plan | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hobby (still sufficient) | $0 |
| Neon Postgres | Scale ($25/mo, 10 GB, 500 compute hrs) | $25 |
| Resend | Pro ($20/mo, 50k emails) | $20 |
| Polar.sh | Starter | ~$5-15 |
| Total | ~$45-60/mo |
1,000-10,000 users: ~$99/month
| Service | Plan | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Pro ($20/mo) | $20 |
| Neon Postgres | Scale ($25/mo) | $25 |
| Resend | Pro ($20/mo) | $20 |
| Plausible | Business ($19/mo, 100k views) | $19 |
| Polar.sh | Pro ($20/mo, lower fees) | $20 |
| Total | ~$104/mo |
Key insight
Your infrastructure costs should never outpace your revenue. If you're spending $100/month on hosting at 1,000 users, your pricing should generate at least $500-1,000/month in revenue. The rule of thumb: keep infrastructure under 10-20% of revenue.
With the right stack (CheapStack SaaS Starter + free tiers), you can stay at $0-6/month until you hit thousands of users.
About the author: Muhammad Akbar builds affordable developer tools at CheapStack and writes about bootstrapping products on realistic budgets.