{"slug": "7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free", "title": "7 Developer Tools I Actually Pay For (And 3 That Are Free)", "summary": "A developer's curated list of paid and free tools for a cost-effective development setup, totaling approximately $16 per month. Paid tools include DeepSeek v4 Pro for AI coding ($10/month), Railway for hosting ($5 credit), and Namecheap for domains ($1/month). Free tools include Gumroad for selling starter kits, Obsidian for knowledge management, and Neovim as a code editor.", "body_md": "I'm cheap. I use Arch Linux, Neovim, and open-source everything. But some tools are worth paying for. Here's my list.\nMy AI coding agent runs on DeepSeek v4 Pro. Cheaper than GitHub Copilot ($10 vs $19/month). Better for Vietnamese context. I use it through Hermes Agent to build boilerplates, write tests, and debug.\nDeepSeek Platform — $0.14/M input tokens\nFull-stack hosting that just works. Docker Compose one-click deploy. Built-in MongoDB + Redis. No YAML hell. No Kubernetes.\nRailway — free $5 credit\nI sell my NestJS/Next.js starter kits here. Free to list. They take 10% only on sales. Built-in email marketing to past customers. PayPal + card payments handled automatically.\nGumroad — free to start\nDomains. .dev, .app, .com — pick whatever. I use .gumroad.com for now but will switch when there's more revenue.\nNamecheap — domains from $1/year\nAI agent that runs in my terminal. Builds projects, manages Obsidian, schedules cron jobs. It wrote 80% of my starter kits while I was AFK. Works with DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic, local models.\nMy second brain. PARA method. Everything I know about NestJS/Next.js/Go lives here. Free. Offline. No vendor lock-in.\n0.12 \"Stale Earth\" with native LSP. No VS Code. No JetBrains. Instant startup. Full control.\nDeepSeek API: ~$10\nRailway: ~$5\nDomain: ~$1/month (annual)\nGumroad: free until sale\n─────────────────────\nTotal: ~$16/month\n$16/month to run a full dev setup with AI coding, hosting, and a storefront. Not bad.\nBuilding a NestJS project? Save 7 hours of setup with my pre-configured starter kit.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/fadow/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free-4f7k", "published_at": "2026-05-20 02:11:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-20 02:34:06.292154+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "open-source", "cloud-computing"], "entities": ["DeepSeek", "Railway", "Gumroad", "Namecheap", "Hermes Agent", "Obsidian", "Neovim", "NestJS"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/7-developer-tools-i-actually-pay-for-and-3-that-are-free.jsonld"}}