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33 posts tagged.
Auth0's free tier is 25,000 MAU, but the moment a real app needs one paid feature the meter starts near $0.07 per user. A numbers-first 2026 teardown across four app profiles, with the SSO wall and cheaper alternatives priced out.
Supabase Pro is $25 in 2026, but a growing SaaS paid $333 in a real month. A numbers-first 30-day bill across four cohorts, with compute, MAU, and egress itemized.
Three modeled 30-day Vercel bills, the $0.15-per-GB meter that actually moves the number, and when Hobby, a VPS, or a bundled host wins.
Three real 30-day Claude Code bills, the 5.5x token-efficiency math, and when the $200 Max plan beats the API.
OpenRouter takes 5.5% on credit purchases with a $0.80 minimum, then passes provider rates through. Here is the real 30-day bill across Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mistral at four workload mixes, with the anti-patterns where the routing tax stops being worth it.
Your billable rate is a sticker price. Your effective hourly rate is the truth. A 2026 cohort breakdown of billable vs effective across five real freelance brackets, plus the math.
Sticker is $20 for both. At a 5-engineer team shipping 100 pull requests a month in June 2026, the all-in 30-day bill diverges. Here is the honest math.
The sticker on Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, and Totalum is between $20 and $79. The 30-day bill on a real reference workload is $69 to $270. Here is what each pricing page leaves off, with the math.
