The Problem

My DevOps pipeline was costing $50/month:

• GitHub Actions: $10
• Vercel Pro: $20
• Monitoring: $20

The Solution

I replaced everything with free alternatives:

CI/CD: GitHub Actions (Free)

• 2,000 minutes/month for free accounts
• Unlimited for public repositories
• docs.github.com/actions

Hosting: Vercel Free

• Unlimited static sites
• 100GB bandwidth
• vercel.com

Monitoring: Uptime Robot

• 50 monitors
• 5-minute intervals
• uptimerobot.com

Database: Supabase Free

• 500MB storage
• 50K MAU authentication
• supabase.com

AI Coding: MonkeyCode Free

• Multiple AI models
• Self-hosted option
• monkeycode-ai.net

The Results

The Pipeline

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml
name: Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - run: npm install
      - run: npm run build
      - uses: amondnet/vercel-action@v20
        with:
          vercel-token: ${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}
          vercel-org-id: ${{ secrets.ORG_ID }}
          vercel-project-id: ${{ secrets.PROJECT_ID }}

Key Takeaways

1. Free tiers are generous — Most services offer enough for small projects
2. Combine services — Use multiple free tiers together
3. Monitor usage — Stay within free limits
4. Upgrade when needed — Only pay when you outgrow free tier

What's Your DevOps Setup?

Share your free DevOps pipeline in the comments! 👇

devops #free #productivity #webdev