80 Developer Tools Pricing Compared (March 2026)

Every time you start a new project, you open 30 browser tabs. Each tool has a different billing model. Some are per-seat. Some are usage-based. Some use a credits system you won't understand until you get the bill. None of them are directly comparable without building your own spreadsheet.

This article is that spreadsheet — the free version. We pulled current pricing for 80 developer infrastructure tools across 10 categories, all verified March 2026.

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Frontend Hosting

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Key Limit
Vercel	100GB bandwidth, 1M edge req/mo	$20/user/mo	Hobby = personal use only (ToS)
Netlify	300 credits/mo (~30 production deploys)	$9/mo	Credits: 15 per deploy, 10 per GB BW
Cloudflare Pages	500 builds/mo, unlimited bandwidth	$20/mo	5 concurrent builds on Pro
AWS Amplify	1K build min, 5GB, 15GB transfer (12 mo)	$0.01/build min	Free tier expires after 12 months

Netlify's credits system is easy to miscalculate. At 15 credits per production deploy and 300 credits/month free, you get roughly 20 production deploys — not unlimited as it might appear. Cloudflare Pages is the exception: unlimited bandwidth on all plans.

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Backend Hosting

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Key Limit
Railway	0.5 vCPU + 0.5GB RAM	$5/mo (Hobby)	$1/mo minimum spend
Render	512MB RAM instance (spins down)	$7/mo (Starter)	Spins down after 15 min inactivity
Fly.io	None (discontinued)	PAYG ~$0.0028/hr	Free tier removed for new accounts
Coolify	100% free (self-hosted)	$5/mo (Cloud)	Cloud manages your existing VPS

Fly.io discontinued free tiers for new accounts in 2024. If you've seen tutorials referencing Fly.io's free tier, those instructions are outdated.

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Databases

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Notable
Supabase	500MB DB, 5GB BW, 50K MAUs	$25/mo (Pro)	Free projects pause after 1 week inactivity
Neon	0.5GB, 100 CU-hr/mo, 10 branches	~$15/mo (PAYG)	Scales to zero; branching for dev/staging
Turso	100 databases, 500M rows read, 5GB	$4.99/mo	Edge SQLite; most generous DB free tier
CockroachDB	50M request units, 10GiB	$0.20/M RUs	Scales to zero; 99.99% SLA on free tier
PlanetScale	None	$5/mo	Free tier removed March 2024
Fauna	None (shutting down)	N/A	Shutdown May 30, 2025 — migrate now

The standout free tier: Turso gives you 100 databases and 500M rows read/month on the free tier — designed for apps with multiple edge deployments. CockroachDB's free tier includes genuine SLA coverage, which is unusual.

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Auth

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Notable
Clerk	50,000 MRUs, 100 orgs	$25/mo (Pro)	Enterprise SSO connections $75/mo each
WorkOS	1 million MAUs (AuthKit)	$125/SSO connection	Free MAUs but expensive SSO
Auth0	7,500 MAUs	$35/mo	Lower free tier than Clerk
Kinde	10,500 MAUs	$25/mo (Pro)	Strong free MAU limit

WorkOS's model is built for B2B SaaS: give away consumer auth for free, charge premium for enterprise SSO. If you're building consumer-facing auth, WorkOS is hard to beat at 1M MAUs free. If you're building enterprise SSO from day one, factor in the $125/connection/month.

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Monitoring

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Notable
Sentry	5K errors, 5M spans, 50 replays/mo	$26/mo	Most popular error tracking
Datadog	5 hosts, 1-day retention	$15/host/mo	APM adds $31/host/mo on top
New Relic	100GB ingest/mo, 1 full user	$99/user/mo	PAYG model, genuinely different
Grafana Cloud	10K metric series, 50GB logs/traces	$6.50/1K series (Pro)	Open-source ecosystem
Better Stack	10 monitors, 3GB logs	$25/mo	Best value for small-medium setups

Datadog costs compound: $15/host/mo for infrastructure, then $31/host/mo if you want APM, then $0.10/GB for logs. New Relic's 100GB/month free ingest is genuinely competitive — most teams under 5 hosts never pay.

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Storage / CDN

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Notable
Cloudflare R2	10GB, 1M Class A ops, zero egress	$0.015/GB-mo	No egress fees — the key differentiator
AWS S3	5GB (12 months)	$0.023/GB-mo + egress	Standard; $0.09/GB egress first 10TB
Backblaze B2	10GB free forever	$6/TB-mo	Free egress via Cloudflare/Fastly
DO Spaces	None	$5/mo (250GiB + 1TiB transfer)	Simple flat pricing

Cloudflare R2's zero-egress pricing is the comparison-ending number for most workloads. At any meaningful scale, egress fees on S3 exceed the storage cost itself. R2 eliminates that entirely.

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Email

Tool	Free Tier	Starter Price	Notable
Resend	3,000 emails/mo, 100/day max	$20/mo (50K emails)	Best developer experience
AWS SES	3,000 emails/mo (12 months)	$0.10/1K emails	Cheapest at volume
Postmark	100 emails/mo (testing only)	$15/mo (10K emails)	Best deliverability; not for bulk

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What's in the Full Dataset

The free preview above covers 20 tools. The full dataset includes 80 tools across all 10 categories with 18 data points per row:

• Exact free tier limits (specific numbers, not "generous free tier")
• Starter plan name and price (monthly and annual)
• Mid-tier plan price
• Per-seat flag and usage-based flag
• Usage unit (per GB, per request, per MAU, per host, etc.)
• Enterprise flag
• Free trial availability
• Notable limits and gotchas
• Direct pricing URL (verified March 2026)

CSV format — opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or any data tool. Filter by category, free tier availability, pricing model, or price range.

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All pricing verified March 2026 from public pricing pages. Prices change — always verify before committing to a billing plan.