Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Hosting Costs & Vercel Use

  • Many are shocked that traffic (~400–1000 daily visitors, very low RPS) costs ~$115/month on Vercel.
  • Consensus: this workload could run comfortably on a small VPS ($4–$10/month) or even a Raspberry Pi / old laptop, with huge capacity headroom.
  • Several argue Vercel and similar PaaS are massively overpriced for small apps, with comments that this is “how they make their money.”
  • A minority defend paying for convenience: not having to be a sysadmin, enjoying easy deployment, and aligning with resume/job tech stacks.

VPS, Bare Metal, and Self‑Hosting

  • Multiple people report real workloads (tens of thousands to millions of requests/day) on cheap VPS or modest bare metal at a fraction of these costs.
  • Hetzner, OVH, Vultr, DataPacket, and DigitalOcean are mentioned as cheaper or more powerful options.
  • Some describe home‑lab setups on old laptops or Pis with Cloudflare in front, claiming sub-$50/year including power and backups.
  • Others caution about DIY: security, backups, failover, burst traffic, DDoS, and multi‑region latency are nontrivial.

Databases & Architecture Choices

  • Many stress that at this traffic level almost any DB (MySQL/Postgres/SQLite) on a small VPS would suffice.
  • Examples include Rust + SQLite + caching handling ~200 RPS on a €13 server.
  • Alternatives raised: Cloudflare D1, Supabase, Neon, SQLite+Litestream, or a self‑hosted Postgres VPS.
  • Some critique modern trends: microservices, serverless, and over‑engineering driving unnecessary compute bills.

Open Source, Donations, and “Free”

  • One line of discussion argues open source maintainers are undercompensated; users rarely donate, and corporations capture most value.
  • Others counter that open source benefits the public and economy, and some devs willingly share work without seeking payment or obligations.
  • Debate over licenses: permissive (MIT/BSD) vs. copyleft (AGPL/SSPL) as protection against corporate “freeloading.”

Product & UX Feedback

  • App is praised for frictionless, account‑less flow via shared links.
  • Some suggest offline/local‑first improvements and optional payment integration; others prefer it stay simple, free, and focused on cash tracking.