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7 places to run your own API and Postgres for a Flutter, React Native or Swift app, on plans that never pause
Mobile app backend hosting for apps with their own API and PostgreSQL: Light Cloud runs both for $5 a month with nothing proprietary in the app, Railway comes to about $5.30 once its usage is counted, Firebase with Cloud SQL $9.37. If you would rather not write a backend, Firebase, Supabase and Amplify free tiers cost $0 at beta scale.
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Render vs Railway vs Light Cloud on three bills: for a small SaaS with Postgres, Light Cloud is $5 a month and Railway about $5.30, against $13.30 on Render. For a service that must stay on around the clock, Railway's metered service is cheapest at about $5.60, Render's $7 instance is next, and Light Cloud is the most expensive of the three.
Julia
Preview environment pricing for a full-stack app with a container API and Postgres: on Light Cloud four open previews add nothing to a $5 Lite bill, on Vercel and Netlify they are also near zero, while Railway adds about $8 to $19, Heroku $48 and Render $78.20 including the Pro workspace.
Julia
A SaaS tech stack for 2026 that costs $5 a month before the first customer: Light Cloud for hosting and Postgres, Clerk for sign-in, Resend for email, Stripe for payments, PostHog for analytics and Sentry for errors, each on its free plan, with the point where each one starts to charge.
Julia
Share code between the apps of a monorepo on Light Cloud with npm workspaces: what builds from a folder, why the container fails, the Dockerfile that fixes it.
Julia
Deploy a monorepo on Light Cloud: one app per repository folder, each with its own Root directory, and pushes that rebuild only the app whose folder changed.
Julia
The cheapest way to run a Docker container that idles most of the day is $0: Light Cloud's Free plan runs your Dockerfile unchanged with no card, and Google Cloud Run's free tier covers it if you set up a billing account. Fly.io is $3.69 for a 512 MB machine, Railway and DigitalOcean $5, and AWS Fargate about $12.49.
Julia
Deploy a GitHub repository to Light Cloud: install the GitHub App, pick the repository, click Deploy. Every push deploys, and pull requests get a preview link.
Julia
Deploy a GitLab project to Light Cloud: connect GitLab, pick the project and branch, then every push deploys, and merge requests get a preview link and status.
Julia
Free hosting without a credit card, ranked by what happens at the limit: Cloudflare's worst case is a Worker that stops until midnight UTC, Light Cloud's is server apps that pause until next month while static sites stay up, and neither can ever bill you. Render deletes free databases after 30 days plus a grace period, and AWS closes the free account after six months.
Julia