Startups need developer tools that are free or cheap to start, scale with growth, and don't slow you down. We selected tools that balance cost, capability, and speed - the startup engineering stack that works.
| Tool | Free Tier | Paid Starts | Scales To | Essential? | Our Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Generous | $20/user | Large | Yes | 9.4/10 |
| GitHub | Generous | $4/user | Any size | Yes | 9.5/10 |
| Supabase | Good | $25/mo | Large | High | 9.2/10 |
| Linear | 250 issues | $8/user | Any size | High | 9.1/10 |
| Sentry | 5K events | $26/mo | Any size | Yes | 9.0/10 |
| Posthog | 1M events | Usage | Large | High | 8.9/10 |
| Slack | Limited history | $7.25/user | Any size | Yes | 9.0/10 |
Vercel provides the best frontend deployment experience. Preview deployments for every PR, edge functions, and great performance. Free tier covers early stage, scales smoothly.
GitHub is the complete developer platform. Code hosting, Actions for CI/CD, Projects for planning, and Copilot for AI. The foundation of modern engineering.
Supabase provides complete backend infrastructure - Postgres, auth, storage, and realtime - with a generous free tier. Open source means no lock-in.
Linear is the best-designed issue tracker. Fast, keyboard-driven, and beautiful. Free for small usage, reasonable pricing at scale. Makes engineering planning enjoyable.
Sentry catches errors before users report them. Detailed stack traces, release tracking, and performance monitoring. Essential once you have users.
Posthog is open source product analytics with feature flags and experiments. Self-host or cloud. Generous free tier and fair usage pricing.
Slack is where startup teams communicate. Channels, threads, huddles, and integrations with everything. Free tier works early on.
We evaluated tools for startup-specific needs.
GitHub (code) + Vercel (deploy) + Supabase (backend) + Sentry (errors) + Slack (comms). Total: $0 to start, scales to ~$50-100/user/month at growth stage.
Linear is faster, better designed, and more startup-friendly. Jira has more features but more complexity. Startups should use Linear; switch to Jira if enterprise requirements demand it.
When free limits become constraints or when paid features save significant time. Usually: Slack when history matters, Linear when issues exceed 250, Sentry when errors exceed 5K.
