Before launching a SaaS, many founders over- or underestimate infrastructure costs. Here is a realistic pricing grid for 3 stages: 0 users (pre-launch), 1,000 MAU, and 10,000 MAU.
Stage 1: Pre-launch (0-100 users)
| Service | Cost |
|---|---|
| Vercel Free | $0 |
| Supabase Free | $0 |
| Brevo Free (300 emails/day) | $0 |
| Stripe (% on sales) | variable |
| Domain | ~$12/year |
| Monthly total | ~$1 |
You can launch and host a SaaS for free up to several hundred users.
Stage 2: 1,000 MAU (early traction)
| Service | Cost/month |
|---|---|
| Vercel Pro | $20 |
| Supabase Pro | $25 |
| Brevo Lite (20k emails) | $9 |
| Upstash Redis | $0-10 |
| Sentry Team | $26 |
| Crisp Lite | $0-25 |
| Domain + Cloudflare DNS | ~$1 |
| Monthly total | ~$100 |
Stage 3: 10,000 MAU (scaling)
| Service | Cost/month |
|---|---|
| Vercel Pro + extra bandwidth | $100-200 |
| Supabase Team | ~$600 |
| Brevo Premium | $49 |
| Upstash Redis Pay-as-you-go | $20-50 |
| Sentry Business | $80 |
| Crisp Pro / Intercom | $50-200 |
| OpenAI / Anthropic API | variable |
| Monthly total | ~$900-1,200 |
Possible optimizations
- Self-hosting: Coolify + Hetzner cuts Supabase cost by 3x at scale
- Brevo instead of SendGrid: ~50% cheaper at volume
- Plausible instead of Mixpanel: saves $100+/month
- Cloudflare R2 instead of S3: 80% cheaper for storage
The real cost is not infra
At 10k MAU, infra costs ~$1,000/month. But the hidden cost — your development time — can exceed $20k if you code everything from scratch. A boilerplate saves 200-400 dev hours.
Save 200 dev hours: Boilerplate-Stack gives you the complete architecture of a production-ready SaaS. One-time purchase, code is yours, ~$10k of dev cost saved.
Conclusion
A Next.js SaaS costs $0-100/month in early stage, ~$1,000/month at 10k MAU. The real gain comes from saved dev time. Boilerplate-Stack is the most profitable lever at launch.