A solo engineer shipping a real product in 2026. Here is the stack I would use, picked for the right balance of "ships fast" and "does not break later".

Core - Next.js 16 App Router with TypeScript. Server actions for mutations, server components for fetches. - Tailwind CSS v4 with shadcn/ui for primitives. - Supabase for Postgres, auth, storage, realtime. [More on why](/blog/why-i-prefer-supabase).

Hosting - Vercel for production. £20/month. Worth it. - DigitalOcean for staging and any self-hosted bits. [£200 free credit through this link](https://m.do.co/c/3389d86ebe0c).

Email - Resend for transactional. 3,000/month free. The cleanest API I have used.

Bookings / scheduling - Cal.com self-hosted on the DO box, or hosted free tier. Either is fine.

AI - Claude 3.5 Sonnet for production AI features. - SarmaLink-AI as a routing layer (multi-provider failover) when single-provider risk is unacceptable. - Manus for agent tasks I trigger ad-hoc. [Free credits via this link](https://manus.im/invitation/AIRTDVWVEWKCK4R). - v0 for UI prototyping. [Free tier here](https://v0.app/ref/HTXSFQ).

Domains - IONOS. £1 first-year domains, £18 renewal. [Promo via this link](https://aklam.io/m2xYRsYR).

Source control + CI - GitHub for repos. GitHub Actions for CI. Codespaces for any "I do not have my laptop" emergency.

Monitoring - BetterStack Logs for log aggregation. Free tier good. - Sentry for error tracking. Free tier good. - Plausible for web analytics. £9/month, no ads, GDPR compliant.

Why these picks Each has a free or near-free tier. Each scales with you to roughly £10K MRR before the bills become real. Each has been around long enough that it will not vanish.

What I avoid - AWS for new projects. Pricing complexity does not scale down. - Firebase. Firestore makes me sad on relational data. - Heroku. Pricing reset killed it. - Custom Kubernetes. You are one person.

This stack will ship a £100K ARR product without ever feeling like a constraint. After that, you can start replacing pieces selectively.

Load more deep-dives: [/insights](/insights), [/playbooks](/playbooks), [/comparisons](/comparisons).

The 2026 stack for solo engineers shipping production software

Core - Next.js 16 App Router with TypeScript. Server actions for mutations, server components for fetches. - Tailwind CSS v4 with shadcn/ui for primitives. - Supabase for Postgres, auth, storage, realtime. [More on why](/blog/why-i-prefer-supabase).

Hosting - Vercel for production. £20/month. Worth it. - DigitalOcean for staging and any self-hosted bits. [£200 free credit through this link](https://m.do.co/c/3389d86ebe0c).

Email - Resend for transactional. 3,000/month free. The cleanest API I have used.

Bookings / scheduling - Cal.com self-hosted on the DO box, or hosted free tier. Either is fine.

Domains - IONOS. £1 first-year domains, £18 renewal. [Promo via this link](https://aklam.io/m2xYRsYR).

Source control + CI - GitHub for repos. GitHub Actions for CI. Codespaces for any "I do not have my laptop" emergency.

Monitoring - BetterStack Logs for log aggregation. Free tier good. - Sentry for error tracking. Free tier good. - Plausible for web analytics. £9/month, no ads, GDPR compliant.

Why these picks Each has a free or near-free tier. Each scales with you to roughly £10K MRR before the bills become real. Each has been around long enough that it will not vanish.

What I avoid - AWS for new projects. Pricing complexity does not scale down. - Firebase. Firestore makes me sad on relational data. - Heroku. Pricing reset killed it. - Custom Kubernetes. You are one person.

Have a project in mind?

Core - **Next.js 16** App Router with TypeScript. Server actions for mutations, server components for fetches. - **Tailwind CSS v4** with shadcn/ui for primitives. - **Supabase** for Postgres, auth, storage, realtime. [More on why](/blog/why-i-prefer-supabase).

Hosting - **Vercel** for production. £20/month. Worth it. - **DigitalOcean** for staging and any self-hosted bits. [£200 free credit through this link](https://m.do.co/c/3389d86ebe0c).

Email - **Resend** for transactional. 3,000/month free. The cleanest API I have used.

Bookings / scheduling - **Cal.com** self-hosted on the DO box, or hosted free tier. Either is fine.

Domains - **IONOS**. £1 first-year domains, £18 renewal. [Promo via this link](https://aklam.io/m2xYRsYR).

Source control + CI - **GitHub** for repos. GitHub Actions for CI. Codespaces for any "I do not have my laptop" emergency.

Monitoring - **BetterStack Logs** for log aggregation. Free tier good. - **Sentry** for error tracking. Free tier good. - **Plausible** for web analytics. £9/month, no ads, GDPR compliant.

Why these picks Each has a free or near-free tier. Each scales with you to roughly £10K MRR before the bills become real. Each has been around long enough that it will not vanish.

What I avoid - AWS for new projects. Pricing complexity does not scale down. - Firebase. Firestore makes me sad on relational data. - Heroku. Pricing reset killed it. - Custom Kubernetes. You are one person.

Have a project in mind?

Core - Next.js 16 App Router with TypeScript. Server actions for mutations, server components for fetches. - Tailwind CSS v4 with shadcn/ui for primitives. - Supabase for Postgres, auth, storage, realtime. [More on why](/blog/why-i-prefer-supabase).

Hosting - Vercel for production. £20/month. Worth it. - DigitalOcean for staging and any self-hosted bits. [£200 free credit through this link](https://m.do.co/c/3389d86ebe0c).

Email - Resend for transactional. 3,000/month free. The cleanest API I have used.

Bookings / scheduling - Cal.com self-hosted on the DO box, or hosted free tier. Either is fine.

Domains - IONOS. £1 first-year domains, £18 renewal. [Promo via this link](https://aklam.io/m2xYRsYR).

Source control + CI - GitHub for repos. GitHub Actions for CI. Codespaces for any "I do not have my laptop" emergency.

Monitoring - BetterStack Logs for log aggregation. Free tier good. - Sentry for error tracking. Free tier good. - Plausible for web analytics. £9/month, no ads, GDPR compliant.