I initially tried a lot of tools - Bolt, v0, Replit, Lovable, etc. out of which Replit game me the best results (yes, I can be biased due to my selection of applications). But I often paid anywhere from $25-$200/mo. Other costs like API, models, etc. made monthly bills upward of $300/mo. Was it cost effective when compared to hiring a developer? Yes. Was it value for money? NO.

So, over the months, I optimised by complete stack to be either free (or minimal cost) for internal use or stay at a much lean cost for consumer-facing products.

Here's how the whole stack looks today -

- IDE - Google's AntiGravity (100% free + higher access if you use student ID) --> https://antigravity.google/

AI Documentation - SuperDocs (100% free & open source) --> https://superdocs.cloud/

Database - Supabase (Nano plan free, enough for basic needs) --> http://supabase.com/

Authentication - Stack Auth (Free upto 10K users) --> http://stack-auth.com/

LLM (AI Model) - OpenRouter or Gemini via AI Studio for testing and a custom tuned model by Unsloth AI for production. (You can fine-tune models using Unsloth literal in a Google Colab Notebook) --> http://openrouter.ai/ OR http://unsloth.ai/ OR http://aistudio.google.com/

Version Maintenance/Distribution - Github/Gitlab (both totally free and open source) --> http://github.com/ OR http://gitlab.com/

Faster Deployment - Vercel (Free Tier Enough for Hobbyists) --> https://vercel.com

Analytics - PostHog, Microsoft Clarity & Google Analytics (All 3 are free and independent for different tracking, I recommend using all of them) --> Https://posthog.com OR http://clarity.microsoft.com/ OR http://analytics.google.com/

That's the list devs! I know I might have missed something. If yes, just ask me up or list them up in the comments. If you have any questions related to something specific, ask me up as well.