Who this is for

The stacks solo builders pick — and where they quietly break.

We test the tools micro-SaaS founders, indie hackers, and freelancers actually build with. Each ecosystem starts with the same three questions: what actually works, what it costs, and how you'd know in 30 days if it paid off.

Automation

n8n, Make, Zapier — and when to self-host instead of paying per task.

First decisionn8n vs Make vs Zapier: which one you actually need

Payments & billing

Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy — direct vs merchant-of-record, tax, and the fees that quietly eat margin.

First decisionStripe vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy for a solo SaaS

Backend & data

Supabase, Firebase, self-hosted Postgres — auth, realtime, and where the bill jumps.

First decisionSupabase vs Firebase: which backend for a solo builder

AI & LLMs

OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, self-hosted — which model per task, and what it costs per 1,000 requests.

First decisionWhich LLM API for your micro-SaaS (and when self-hosting pays)

Shipping & hosting

Vercel, Cloudflare, Railway — where your app lives, what 'free' really covers, and when it costs you.

First decisionVercel vs Cloudflare for a side project

Work & data glue

Notion, Airtable, spreadsheets — lightweight ops databases and the point where they stop scaling.

First decisionAirtable vs Notion as a lightweight database

Stuck between two tools? The framework is the same —tell us what you're deciding and we'll test it.