I built a free AI tool that picks your SaaS tech stack based on budget
Hey HN, I kept seeing the same question asked over and over in startup communities: "What tech stack should I use for my SaaS?" The answers were always scattered, opinionated, and never accounted for budget or team size. So I built appstackbuilder.com — you tell it your monthly budget, app type, team size, and skill level, and it recommends a full stack (auth, database, hosting, payments, analytics, etc.) with actual pricing for each tool. A few things that make it different from generic advice: - It accounts for team size when calculating costs (e.g. Clerk charges per user, Linear charges…
I built a free AI tool that picks your SaaS tech stack based on budget launched on February 22, 2026 with 6 votes, #1,572 of 16,627 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
What it does
AppStackBuilder helps founders, indie hackers, and developers discover the best tools to build, launch, and scale products — within their budget or completely free. Instead of spending hours researching alternatives, AppStackBuilder offers a curated directory of modern tools across databases, AI, backend, frontend, DevOps, marketing, and more. You can also generate a recommended stack based on your product needs and constraints.
Every paid developer tool, scored: what the subscription costs, what building it yourself would cost in hours and upkeep, and the cheaper alternative that does the same job.
AI can rebuild a lot of the SaaS you pay for. It cannot write the tests, take the 3am page, or make the maintenance disappear. One row per tool: the subscription, the true cost of replacing it, and whether something cheaper already does the job. Move the rate slider to what an hour of your time is actually worth — at $50 an hour almost nothing here is worth building, and that is thefrom appstackbuilder.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, I kept seeing the same question asked over and over in startup communities: "What tech stack should I use for my SaaS?" The answers were always scattered, opinionated, and never accounted for budget or team size. So I built appstackbuilder.com — you tell it your monthly budget, app type, team size, and skill…
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