Instagram clone
Photo uploads, feeds, and heavy object storage — the bill is mostly storage and egress.
An Instagram-style app is SSR for the web UI plus serious object storage for photos and thumbnails. We use 500 MB per user and file storage enabled — at 100k DAU that pushes egress and GB-month costs to the foreground. Database and CDN show up in every stack that fits.
The sensible way
Heroku-first stack at $44024.29/mo
Heroku compute with best-fit add-ons
At 100K DAU · fit score 73/100
Cost curve — top 3 stacks
Total monthly hosting cost at each traffic level (same app profile, different providers).
| DAU | Heroku-first stack | Netlify-first stack | Vultr-first stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $113.92/mo | $122.92/mo | $54.78/mo |
| 1K | $509.38/mo | $518.38/mo | $142.66/mo |
| 10K | $4464.52/mo | $5890.32/mo | $1041.86/mo |
| 100K | $44024.29/mo | $63261.09/mo | $10165.16/mo |
Service breakdown — Heroku-first stack
- Dynos · HerokuBasic$14/mo
- Heroku Postgres · HerokuStandard-0$50/mo
- Blobs · NetlifyMetered$43945.29/mo
- Key-Value Store · HerokuPremium-0$15/mo
These are real prices from our provider knowledge base, computed with the same engine as our stack reports.
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