Cloud Pricing That Actually Makes Sense

Update, September 2026. Light Cloud now sells plans that include usage: Hobby (free, $5 of usage a month), Lite ($5), Starter ($19), Pro ($49) and Business ($149). Everything you run counts against the included usage at the same rates on every plan; extra usage goes on the next invoice, and the free plan pauses when its usage is used up. The per-hour thinking below still holds, but the rates and the trial in this post are from January 2026 — the current plans and rates are on the pricing page.

Real Numbers From Our Own Bill

Here's my actual Light Cloud bill from last month:

Active Resources
├── 1 team member                                $9.00
├── fe_react / Production (static)               $0.02
├── fe_svelte / Production (static)              $0.02
├── fe_html / main (static)                      $0.02
├── fe_angular / Production (static)             $0.02
├── fe_nextjs / Production (static)              $0.02
└── fe_vue / Production (static)                 $0.02

Deleted Resources (test environments)
├── 30+ PR preview containers (1h each)    ~$0.03 each
├── 10 scalable containers (70h each)      ~$1.82 each
├── 8 test databases (1-2h each)           ~$0.04 each
├── be_node / Production (104h)                  $2.71
└── Postgres DB instance (96h)                   $4.08

Grand Total: $41.27

That's 6 static sites, 50+ containers, 8 databases, and 2 team members. For fifty bucks.

Those PR preview environments? $0.03 each. Three cents. I spun up and tore down dozens of test environments, ran stress tests with 10 parallel containers, tested multiple database configurations. Most environments ran for under an hour.

On a traditional platform with always-on pricing? I'd be looking at hundreds of dollars. Or more likely, I'd skip the testing entirely because who can afford 50 staging environments?

The static sites cost two cents each. Total. For the month.

This is why we built Light Cloud the way we did.

You Control Your Wallet

This is the part that matters: you decide what you spend.

Want to spin up 10 test environments? You know exactly what it costs before you click deploy. Want to scale down over the weekend? Your bill scales down too. Want to pause a project for a month? Containers cost zero. Literally zero.

No "estimated charges" that triple by end of month. No mysterious line items. No prayer-based budgeting.

You see the number. You control the number. That's it.

The Problem with Cloud Pricing

You've seen it before. You spin up a few services, run them for a month, and then the bill arrives. $400. For a side project. What happened?

Traditional cloud providers bury you in complexity:

• Compute costs per vCPU-hour
• Memory costs per GB-hour
• Network egress per GB per region
• Load balancer costs per hour plus per connection
• Storage costs per GB plus per operation
• And 47 other line items you didn't know existed

Even "simple" platforms aren't simple. That $20/month hobby tier? It runs 24/7 whether you need it or not. Your weekend project costs the same as a production app serving thousands of users.

How Light Cloud Pricing Works

We built pricing around one principle: you should only pay for what you actually use.

Containers: Pay When Running

Light Cloud containers scale to zero by default. No traffic? No charge.

That's it. No compute-hours times memory-hours times network-hours. Spin up a test environment, use it for an hour, pay three cents.

Databases: Straightforward Tiers

The Dev tier is cheap for a structural reason: it runs on shared infrastructure instead of a dedicated instance. Right trade for development and side projects; when you need dedicated resources and production-grade isolation, that's what the tiers below it are for.

Storage included. Backups included. No per-query fees. Spin up a test database, use it for an hour, pay pennies.

Static Sites: Basically Free

A typical static site costs $0.02/month. Two cents. I have 6 static sites running right now (React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Next.js, plain HTML) and they cost twelve cents combined. Bandwidth only matters when you're getting serious traffic.

Real-World Examples

Example 1: Testing Like a Pro

You're building a feature and want to test properly. You create 10 PR preview environments over the month, each running for about an hour while you test.

Traditional Platform:
├── Can't afford 10 staging envs    $$$
└── So you test in production       (and pray)

Light Cloud:
├── 10 preview containers (1h each)  $0.03 x 10 = $0.30
├── 10 test databases (1h each)      $0.04 x 10 = $0.40
└── Total                            $0.70

Seventy cents for proper testing infrastructure.

Example 2: Full-Stack Side Project

React frontend, Node.js API, PostgreSQL database. You work on it evenings and weekends, maybe 20 hours of actual API usage per month.

Traditional Platform (always-on):
├── Hobby compute             $7.00/month
├── Hobby database            $5.00/month
└── Total                    $12.00/month  (runs 24/7)

Light Cloud:
├── React frontend (static)   $0.02/month
├── Micro container (20 hrs)  $0.03 x 20 = $0.60
├── Shared dev database        a few dollars/month
└── Total                      ~$5/month

But here's the thing: your database has no artificial limits.
No "hobby tier" restrictions. Real PostgreSQL you can scale up.

Example 3: Stress Testing

You need to run 10 parallel containers for load testing. On traditional platforms, this would be expensive. On Light Cloud:

Light Cloud stress test:
├── 10 containers running 1 hour    $0.03 x 10 = $0.30
└── Total                           $0.30

Light Cloud stress test (longer):
├── 10 containers running 70 hours  $1.82 x 10 = $18.20
└── Total                           $18.20

Run serious load tests without serious bills.

Example 4: Production SaaS

Your SaaS serves customers during business hours. About 12 hours of real traffic per day, 5 days a week. ~260 hours/month.

Traditional Platform (always-on):
├── Pro compute              $25.00/month  (730 hrs billed)
├── Pro database             $50.00/month
└── Total                    $75.00/month

Light Cloud (scale-to-zero):
├── Small container (260 hrs) $0.027 x 260 = $7.02
├── Starter database         $38.00/month
└── Total                    $45.02/month

You save: ~$30/month

You're not paying for 3am when nobody's using your app.

Example 5: The Vacation Test

You're going on vacation for a month. No coding, no traffic.

Traditional Platform (vacation month):
├── Compute keeps running      $7.00
├── Database keeps running     $5.00
└── Total                     $12.00  (for nothing)

Light Cloud (vacation month):
├── Containers (0 hrs)         $0.00
├── Static sites               $0.02
├── Shared dev database        a few dollars
└── Total                      a few dollars

Your containers cost literally $0 when not running.

Price Projection: Know Before You Deploy

Here's what other platforms don't give you: projected costs before you get the bill.

Light Cloud shows you:

• Current spend: What you owe right now based on actual usage
• Projected monthly: What the full month will cost if current patterns continue

For scale-to-zero containers, we calculate projections based on your actual usage pattern:

Usage ratio = hours used / hours elapsed in billing period
Projected monthly = hourly rate x (usage ratio x 730)

If your container ran 10 hours out of the first 100 hours of the month (10% usage), we project:

• 730 hours x 10% = 73 hours
• 73 hours x $0.06 = $4.38 projected monthly cost

Not $43.80. Not "up to $43.80". Your actual projected cost based on real usage.

No Hidden Fees

What you see is what you pay:

• No egress fees for normal traffic
• No per-request charges
• No "platform fees"
• No charge for deployments
• No charge for build minutes (reasonable usage)
• No charge for logs or metrics
• No charge for custom domains
• No charge for SSL certificates

Team members are $9/user/month. That's the only additional cost.

Built for Indie Devs and Side Projects

Let's be honest: most developer tools are priced for companies, not individuals. You're building a side project on weekends, maybe a few hours here and there, and you're expected to pay the same as a startup with funding?

Scale-to-zero changes everything.

Your side project probably runs less than you think:

• Building on weekends? Maybe 20 hours/month of actual traffic
• Demo for a client once a week? 4-8 hours/month
• Internal tool your team uses during work hours? 200 hours/month, not 730

What that actually costs on Light Cloud:

Compare that to $7-25/month for always-on hosting that runs while you sleep.

The math for a typical indie hacker:

• React frontend (static): $0.02/month
• Node.js API (scale-to-zero, 30 hrs): $0.90/month
• Shared dev PostgreSQL: a few dollars/month
• Total: around $5/month for a full-stack app with a real database

And that API cost drops to literally zero in months when you're not actively working on it. Take a vacation. Your bill takes one too.

The free plan

There is no trial with an end date. The Hobby plan is free for as long as you like and includes $5 of usage a month - enough for a server app and three static sites at hobby scale, with full access to logs, metrics, custom domains and Git integration. When the $5 is used up, the workspace pauses until the next month or an upgrade. Pick a paid plan when you need a database, a bigger machine or an always-on instance; every paid plan includes usage worth its price, and nothing on a paid plan ever pauses.

The Comparison

Why We Built It This Way

I've been on both sides of cloud bills. As a developer, I've been shocked by surprise charges. As someone who's worked in cloud infrastructure, I've seen how pricing complexity benefits providers, not users.

Light Cloud pricing is simple because simple is better:

• One price per resource size
• Pay only when running (containers)
• See your costs in real-time
• Project your monthly bill accurately

No PhD in cloud economics required.