๐Ÿ› ๏ธ
IndieStackAudit 2026
2026 Micro-SaaS Architecture & Unit Economics

The Empirical Tech Stack for Solo SaaS Founders.

Real-world database cost math, payment gateway fee teardowns, and zero-cost serverless blueprints to maximize your software profit margins.

๐Ÿ’ณ

Interactive SaaS Payment Gateway Fee Calculator

Simulate net take-home revenue across Stripe, LemonSqueezy, Polar, and Paddle at your target MRR.

$500 $8,000 / month $50,000
$9 $49 / customer $250
Stripe Direct (2.9% + 30ยข)
$281.02
Requires manual VAT/Sales Tax handling
Polar MoR (4% + 40ยข)
$385.31
Full Merchant of Record (Global Tax)
LemonSqueezy (5% + 50ยข)
$481.63
Full Merchant of Record (Global Tax)

Audited Stack Guides & Unit Economics

Hard data on compute invoices, cold start latencies, and MoR tax liabilities.

5 Audited Guides

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Merchant of Record (MoR) and why do solo founders need it?

A Merchant of Record (like Polar or LemonSqueezy) acts as the legal seller of your software, automatically calculating, collecting, and remitting global sales tax (VAT, GST) across 100+ countries so you don't have to hire international tax lawyers.

Can you really host a micro-SaaS for $0/month?

Yes. Cloudflare Pages provides unlimited static bandwidth, Turso provides 9GB of free distributed SQLite storage, and Resend provides 3,000 monthly emails. You only incur costs when scaling past thousands of active paying users.