This page is the full list: every tool I use to run four blogs, a shelf of small web apps, and the automations that keep all of it moving. What each one does for me, and which ones cost money. When a tool leaves my stack, it leaves this page. If you want the actual bill, I published it with real numbers in what my stack costs me a month.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, I can earn a commission. Everything here is something I use for real, and nothing is on this page because of the link.
The whole stack at a glance
| Tool | What it does for me | Free or paid |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Builds everything: the apps, the workflows, the tools in my posts | Paid |
| VS Code | The editor Claude Code lives in | Free |
| GitHub | Backs up every project and syncs my two computers | Free |
| n8n | Runs my automations, self-hosted | Free to self-host |
| Hostinger VPS | The server n8n runs on | Paid |
| WordPress | All four blogs run on it | Free |
| Rae Theme (Kadence) | The theme on all four blogs | Paid |
| BigScoots | Hosts the blogs | Paid |
| Rank Math | SEO on all four blogs, free version | Free |
| Airtable | The database behind almost everything I run | Paid |
| Cloudflare | Where my apps and tools live | Paid |
| KIE (running Grok) | Every post image and social image | Paid |
| Blotato | Social scheduling and distribution | Paid |
| Geniuslink | Smart Amazon links that route by country | Paid |
| Levanta | Brand commission deals on Amazon products | Free |
| Supadata | Pulls transcripts from YouTube and TikTok videos | Free |
| Claude API + OpenAI API | The models my automations call | Paid |
| Gmail | How my automations send and read email | Free |
| Stripe | Payments on my paid apps | Percentage of sales |
| Mercury | The business bank account for my LLC | Free |
| Dropbox + YouTube API | The video upload pipeline | Free |
| GA4 + Search Console | Traffic and keywords | Free |
| Asana | The task list my automations read and write | Free |
| Resend | Sends my apps’ email | Free |
| Grow | Newsletter signups on the blogs | Free |
What I build with
Claude Code is how everything on this page gets made now: the web apps, the n8n workflows, the little tools embedded in my posts, and a lot of the unglamorous glue in between. I run it inside VS Code so I can watch the files change while it works. My whole working setup is one post: my Claude Code setup, and the way I bend it to how I work is another: I don’t install skills, I customize them.
GitHub holds a private copy of every project and keeps my desktop and laptop on the same page. It’s free, and it’s the reason a dead laptop would be an inconvenience instead of a disaster.
What runs my automations
n8n is where my automations live: over a hundred of them switched on, doing everything from publishing posts to filing my screenshots. The software is free to self-host, and mine runs on a Hostinger VPS. I left n8n’s cloud plan because I was rationing how often workflows ran, and I haven’t counted an execution since. The whole move is written up in how I self-host n8n on Hostinger.
The APIs inside the automations
The workflows don’t run on n8n alone. About a quarter of them call an AI model while they work, and those calls go to the Claude API and the OpenAI API. Gmail is how they send and read email, from brand outreach to the reports that land in my inbox. Stripe handles payments on my paid apps. And my video pipeline is three services holding hands: I drop a file in Dropbox, a workflow pushes it through the YouTube API, and Google Drive keeps the backups. When a workflow needs what someone said in a video, Supadata pulls the transcript. One turns TikToks into blog idea briefs, and another turns my YouTube reviews into post drafts.
What the blogs run on
All four blogs are WordPress with the Rae Theme from DIY Dream Site (it’s built on Kadence), which I pay for, hosted at BigScoots. Hosting is my biggest single bill after AI, and it’s the one line I don’t try to shrink, because the blogs are the storefront for everything else. BigScoots may seem pricier, but their customer service is amazing, and has never failed me in the past decade.
SEO is Rank Math, and I run the free version on all four sites. Whether the paid version earns its keep is a question I answered at length in do you need Rank Math Pro.
Where the data lives
Airtable is the database behind almost everything I run: my content calendars, my affiliate links, my sales reports, the queues my automations work through. If a workflow of mine reads or writes data, odds are it’s talking to Airtable. I pay for it and it earns the line.
Where the apps live
Every app and embedded tool I ship runs on Cloudflare: Workers for the code, D1 for the databases, and static hosting for the single-file tools. When an app needs to send email, that goes through Resend on the free tier. The pattern took me a while to settle on, and now new tools go from built to live in minutes.
What makes the images
Every post image and social image is generated through KIE, where I buy prepaid credits. The model behind them right now is Grok. I switched over from gpt-image-2, the model that built the bill in the costs post, where pictures turned out to cost more than all my hosting combined. The numbers are in the costs post. Two small helpers ride along: remove.bg strips backgrounds and htmlcsstoimage renders some of my social cards.
What handles social and links
Blotato pushes my social posts out across platforms, fed by the automations that write and queue them. Geniuslink wraps my Amazon links so readers land in their own country’s storefront instead of a broken page. Levanta is where I find Amazon brands that pay commission on their products, and more than 20 of my automations keep those deals, links and earnings in sync.
What keeps score
GA4 and Search Console tell me what people read and what Google shows. Asana is the task list, and half its tasks are created by my automations rather than by me. Grow handles newsletter signups on the blogs. All four are free. The money side lives at Mercury, the business bank account for my LLC. My bookkeeping app pulls its transactions every day, so I don’t type expenses in by hand.
What it all costs
I added the whole thing up, invoice by invoice, and published it: my software bill is $583 a month, and the blog is the bigger half. That post has every line item and how I split shared costs, so you can check my math.
One more thing worth saying: don’t copy this list. It grew around four blogs and a pile of side hustles over years, and most of it would be dead weight on day one. Steal the shape instead. Start with the free column, and add a paid line only when something you’re already doing starts to strain. If you want the starting point, it’s the setup post.