tools · Mar 20, 2026
The Indie Maker Stack in 2026
The exact tools I'd use to build and ship a one-person SaaS today — from idea to first dollar.
The principles first
The best indie maker stack is the one you'll actually use consistently. Resist the urge to optimize prematurely. Ship something embarrassingly simple, get feedback, and iterate. Tool selection matters less than execution discipline.
The stack
Frontend: Next.js 16 with the App Router. React 19 Server Components eliminate the boilerplate that made React feel slow. Deploy to Railway — it's cheap and deploys from GitHub automatically.
Backend: PocketBase. One binary, zero configuration, SQLite on disk. Authentication, file uploads, real-time subscriptions — all built in. No DevOps required.
Billing: Stripe. Non-negotiable. The integration takes 4 hours; avoiding it costs months.
Email: Resend. Best deliverability for transactional email. $20/month covers 100K emails.
AI: Gemini 2.5 Flash for fast tasks (content completion, SEO scoring), Gemini 2.5 Pro for long-form generation. Cheapest capable models in 2026.
What I'd skip
A mobile app for v1. A microservices architecture. A marketing agency. A custom design system. Ship the monolith, validate the idea, hire the team later.
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