The honest answer in 2026: about $200–$800 to launch, $50–$150/month to operate for the first year. The bigger cost is your time, not your money. Here's the breakdown nobody actually shows you.
One-time launch costs
- Domain: $12–$30/year
- Logo / brand: $0 (DIY) to $300 (designer on Fiverr)
- Legal: $0 (operate as sole prop) to $500 (LLC + operating agreement)
- Stripe / Paddle setup: free
Recurring monthly costs (year 1)
- Hosting (Vercel / Cloudflare / Lovable Cloud): $0–$30
- Database / auth (Supabase free tier covers most): $0–$25
- Email sending (Resend / Postmark): $0–$15
- Transactional / marketing email tool: $0–$30
- Analytics (Plausible / Posthog free): $0–$20
- AI API costs: $5–$100 depending on usage
Realistic month 1: under $30. Month 12 with 100 users: under $200.
What you do NOT need to spend on
- An LLC on day one. Wait until first revenue.
- A custom designed website. Templates are fine.
- Paid ads. They almost never work pre-PMF.
- "Founder coaching" courses. Read The Vibe-Coding Trap.
- An accountant. Until you cross $20K/year revenue, just save receipts.
The real cost: opportunity cost
At a $100K/year salary, every month you spend building is ~$8K of foregone income. That dwarfs every cash expense by 10x. This is the actual reason validation matters before building — see Should I Quit My Job?.
What to do with savings instead
If you have $5K to spend, do not spend it on the product. Spend it on: a paid researcher to find your first 50 leads, a freelance designer for the landing page, and 6 months of survival runway. The product itself can be built nearly for free.