Free tool
Tech stack picker
Not sure which frontend, backend, database, or hosting to use? Answer a few questions about your product and get a concrete recommendation — no jargon, no opinion wars.
- Instant recommendation — no call required
- Tailored to your product type, budget, and scale
- Detailed reasoning and scaling risks available free
- Built by engineers who have shipped these stacks in production
Next.js
Most common frontend
for SaaS, marketplaces, and AI tools
Supabase
Fastest MVP database
PostgreSQL + auth out of the box
Vercel
Default hosting
zero-config, free tier available
Stripe
Payments default
works for 99% of payment needs
What are you building?
Pick the type that best matches your product.
Recommendations are based on what Codalyst Tech uses in production. Every project is different — a real technical review will always be more accurate.
Frequently asked questions
How does the tech stack recommendation work?
The tool collects information about your product type, target users, team experience, expected scale, and budget. It runs this through a scoring system built from real project decisions made at Codalyst Tech, then an AI layer adds specific reasoning about why each technology fits your context. The result is a recommendation for frontend framework, backend language, database, and hosting — with notes on what to watch for as you scale.
Should I always follow the recommended tech stack?
Not necessarily. The recommendation is a strong starting point based on your inputs, but team experience should always take precedence. If your team has deep expertise in a framework that is not recommended, the productivity advantage usually outweighs the theoretical optimality of the recommended choice. The detailed report explains the reasoning so you can make an informed decision.
What is the difference between a SaaS stack and a marketplace stack?
A standard SaaS product is single-tenant or multi-tenant but with one primary user type. It typically needs a straightforward backend API and a relational database. A marketplace requires bidirectional user flows, payment escrow or split payments, review systems, and often search and filtering across seller inventory. These needs push the database toward something like PostgreSQL with more complex query patterns and the backend toward heavier business logic layers.
When should I choose a managed backend like Supabase over a custom API?
A managed backend like Supabase makes sense when your data model is relatively straightforward, you want to move fast, and you do not have complex business logic that needs to live on the server. The trade-off is less control over performance tuning and vendor lock-in on the database layer. For most MVPs, the speed advantage of starting with Supabase and migrating later is the right call.
How to choose the right tech stack for your startup
The right tech stack depends on your product type, expected user scale, team expertise, and budget. There is no universally correct answer — but there are common patterns that work well for most early-stage products.
For most web SaaS products, the combination of Next.js, Node.js, PostgreSQL (via Supabase), and Vercel delivers fast development speed, strong hiring availability, and enough scalability to grow past 100,000 users without a rewrite.
For mobile apps, React Native with Expo is the most practical choice for startups — it supports both iOS and Android from a single codebase and integrates well with a Node.js or Next.js API backend.
For AI powered products,Python (FastAPI) for the AI workloads combined with a Node.js API layer and PostgreSQL is the most common production setup. OpenAI's API handles most LLM needs without the complexity of fine-tuning.
The biggest stack mistakes founders make: choosing microservices too early, building custom auth instead of using Supabase Auth or Clerk, over-engineering the database schema before finding product-market fit, and picking unfamiliar technologies to chase hype.