How much does it cost to how to build a saas for $100/month?

The complete affordable stack for bootstrapped SaaS founders. Hosting, database, auth, email, analytics — everything you need for under $100/mo.

How to build a SaaS for $100/month

The short answer

You can run a production SaaS for **$87/month** using Neon (Postgres), Vercel (hosting), Supabase (auth), Resend (email), Plausible (analytics), and Polar.sh (payments). Each tool has a generous free tier that covers your first 500–1,000 users.

The stack

Hosting: Vercel — $0/mo (Hobby)

Vercel's free tier includes 100 GB bandwidth, 600 build minutes, and serverless function execution [source: vercel.com/pricing](https://vercel.com/pricing). For a bootstrapped SaaS with fewer than 10k monthly active users, this is genuinely free. You only pay when you need team features or dedicated infrastructure.

Database: Neon — $0/mo (Free tier)

Neon's free tier gives you 0.5 GB storage, 100 compute hours/month, and branching [source: neon.tech/pricing](https://neon.tech/pricing). The branch feature is a killer — spin up a copy of your production DB for every PR. At $25/mo (Scale), you get 10 GB storage and 500 compute hours, enough for most early-stage SaaS products.

Auth: NextAuth v5 — $0/mo

NextAuth v5 is open source and free [source: next-auth.js.org](https://next-auth.js.org). Host your own database sessions, or use Supabase Auth (also free up to 50k monthly active users). No per-user pricing. No surprise bills.

Email: Resend — $0/mo (Free tier)

3,000 emails/month free [source: resend.com/pricing](https://resend.com/pricing). Transactional emails (welcome, password reset, invoice) typically consume 100–500 emails/month for early-stage SaaS. The $20/mo tier covers 50k emails.

Analytics: Plausible — $0/mo (Self-hosted)

Plausible is open source with a self-hosted option [source: plausible.io/pricing](https://plausible.io/pricing). Their cloud tier starts at $9/mo for 10k pageviews. Privacy-first, no cookie banners needed.

Payments: Polar.sh — 5% + $0.50/txn

Polar is the best option for developers outside Stripe-supported countries [source: polar.sh/pricing](https://polar.sh/pricing). They act as Merchant of Record, handle tax compliance, and pay out to your bank account. The 5% fee is competitive with LemonSqueezy and Gumroad.

The total

When you outgrow free tiers, expect ~$87/mo for production scale (10k+ MAU).

When to upgrade

**500+ users**: Upgrade Resend ($20/mo) for higher send limits
**10k+ MAU**: Upgrade Neon ($25/mo) for more compute hours
**50k+ MAU**: Upgrade Vercel Pro ($20/mo) for team features and higher limits

About the author

Syed Muhammad Akbar Gillani is a full-stack developer and the founder of CheapStack and Mag Studios. He builds affordable developer tools and writes about bootstrapping products on realistic budgets. All pricing data in this guide was verified from public pricing pages and personal usage in July 2026.