SaaS Budget Guide — Costs, Hosting, and What Matters

Practical guide to the real costs of starting a SaaS: hosting, database, payments, email, and where money actually goes. Start free, validate early, and pay only when you grow.

TL;DR

You can launch a working SaaS for a few dollars per month — and often $0 at the beginning using free tiers. Spend money only when you have usage or income.

How much does it cost to start a SaaS?

For an MVP, your cash costs can be close to zero:

Domain: typically $10–$20/year (optional for the very first tests).
Repo/CI: GitHub + basic CI are free for most needs.
App and DB: Vercel and Neon both offer generous free tiers.
Payments: Stripe has no monthly fee; you pay per successful charge.
Email: Resend has a free plan; great for onboarding and notifications.

Typical first month: $0–$10 if you keep things lean.

How much does hosting cost?

Vercel: Free Hobby plan covers a small SaaS nicely (serverless + edge). You’ll only pay when you need higher limits, advanced features, or significant traffic.
Alternatives: You can also run on your own VM or containers, but that generally costs more up front and increases ops complexity.

Bottom line: Start free, upgrade when you hit usage caps.

What about the database?

Neon: Free Postgres tier is enough for development and early users. Upgrade when you need more storage, compute, or features.
Local dev: You can also develop locally and only provision a managed DB for staging/prod when needed.

Stripe’s pricing is region‑dependent and per‑transaction. There’s usually no monthly fee — you pay when you get paid. In test mode, it’s free to integrate and end‑to‑end test. See Stripe pricing and feel free to contact Stripe support for your country’s exact rates.

If you’re unsure, contact Stripe support for your country’s exact rates.

What does email cost?

Resend: Free plan available. Great to get started for sign‑ups, verifications, and simple notifications.
As you scale: You might need a paid tier for higher volume, dedicated IPs, or deliverability controls.

Major areas where money actually goes

Domain + DNS: custom domain, SSL, DNS services.
Email + inboxes: transactional email (Resend) and possibly a support inbox.
Storage + media: user uploads, images, and backups.
Monitoring + logs: error tracking, performance metrics, observability.
Background jobs + queues: scheduled tasks, long‑running jobs.
Analytics + tooling: product analytics, A/B testing, feature flags.
Legal + compliance: terms/privacy, accounting, taxes, PCI/DSA/GDPR needs.
Design + content: icons, templates, copy, marketing.
Your time: the biggest cost early on.

You can defer many of these until you have traction.

A simple budget by phase

Pre‑PMF MVP: $0–$10/month (free tiers + domain).
Early launch: $20–$100/month (when you outgrow free limits).
Growing: $100–$500+/month (depends on volume and team needs).

Encouragement for beginners

Start now. Use free tiers (Vercel, Neon, Resend) and integrate Stripe in test mode. Ship a thin slice, talk to users, and only pay when you actually need more capacity. A few dollars are enough to run a basic SaaS — the best investment is validating the idea as early as possible.