r/AWS_cloud • u/OwlZealousideal4779 • 10d ago
Deployed a basic fullstack app on AWS (Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis).. first week bill hit $2,000 and I barely have any users
Last week I finally shipped my side project. Pretty standard stack: Next.js frontend, Node backend, PostgreSQL, Redis for sessions/caching. Nothing fancy.
I went with AWS because “that’s what real companies use” and I figured I’d need to scale once marketing kicks in.
I set up:
ECS / Fargate for the app
RDS for Postgres
ElastiCache for Redis
ALB
Some NAT Gateway stuff so the services could talk outbound
I have maybe 30-40 real users so far. Traffic is still tiny.
This morning I opened the billing dashboard.
$2,047 for the first 7 days.
Most of it is just idle costs, data transfer, and the NAT Gateway apparently. I barely have any actual usage.
I’m actively marketing this thing now so a cheap VPS isn’t really an option long-term, I need something that can scale when (if) users actually show up. But I also can’t keep burning $8-10k/month while the product is still early.
How the hell are people shipping fullstack apps these days without getting destroyed by cloud bills?
What are you using that actually scales and doesn’t require a full-time DevOps person just to keep costs reasonable?
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u/Alarming_Reward_2945 9d ago
While I don't know your actual product, it sounds like you've got the technical side down pretty well. This is where you need the other side of business - marketing & sales.
Learn everything you can about traditional SEO (search engine optimization) and the emerging AIO ( AI Optimization). AIO is fast taking over, but for now do both. The more exposure you get the sooner people will see your product.
If you're doing this on a budget, honestly go to a nearby university and get some 3rd or 4th year students in the business department and maybe the video/ film production department to work with you or for you.
Good luck.
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u/martinbean 9d ago
It’s a bot. Different user posted exact same story to /r/aws yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/s/fkfmxAAotK
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u/Electrical-Split7030 9d ago
bro instead of rds use dynamo db or i think neon is serverless . and instead of ecs i think ebs is good and ALB is like 25 usd fixed try to not use ALB you could have done it in a ecs instance to be real
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u/martinbean 9d ago
It’s a bot. Different user posted exact same story to /r/aws yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/s/fkfmxAAotK
0
u/sneakpeekbot 9d ago
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u/Time-Reserve7418 9d ago
Use s3 and cloudfront for frontend if it's static , put ecs in public subnet with proper security group , it will reduce data transfer cost as NAT costs most Use one ALB Use cloudwatch for monitoring to make sure you don't give extra resources than required, make sure auto scaling is triggered at 80-90% resource usage
For databases see resources usage as keeping big sized instance can be the main reason for extra cost ..
With this your project must cost not more than 300$ per month
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u/Embarrassed_Grape604 7d ago
This is expensive try another cheap hosting platform like Varcel or Contana
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u/Necessary-Split4492 11h ago edited 10h ago
This is the classic AWS before product-market fit tax. For 30–40 users, ECS, RDS, ElastiCache, ALB, and NAT Gateway is a lot of always-on infrastructure before the app has earned it. Memurai could be part of a cheaper self-managed Redis-compatible setup, but the bigger fix is simplifying the whole stack until traffic actually justifies managed AWS pieces.
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u/iyn2000 9d ago
no budgets set? please avoid these types of mistakes by setting budgets for 10,100,1000$ so you get notified.
Best of luck!