Have you ever noticed that cloud pricing is like booking a budget flight—the ticket looks cheap at first, but by the time you’ve paid for luggage, a seat, and breathing room, it’s a first-class bill? Pricing shouldn’t come with hidden fees or surprise add-ons, yet we’ve accepted that as a norm in our cloud bills.
Let’s talk about this—not just the numbers but the philosophy behind all this and how we do things differently at Shuttle. We’re not just simplifying cloud development—we’re making it joyful. That starts with pricing which you can actually understand.
The Cloud Pricing Problem
Have you ever tried deciphering a cloud service bill? What exactly are you paying for? Compute? Storage? Egress? “Mystery charges”? And just when you think you’ve cracked the code, surprise! Another line item shows up for a service you didn’t even know existed.
Let’s take a familiar scenario:
You’re spinning up a project. You pick a cloud provider, and after 40 minutes of decision fatigue, you’ve chosen a virtual server. But what size? What region? Reserved instances? And wait, what’s an Availability Zone? Before you’ve written a single line of code, you’re knee-deep in decision paralysis.
Now, imagine you’re a startup. Infrastructure decisions multiply, DevOps becomes a bottleneck, and your bills? They look more like a Jackson Pollock painting than an itemized list.
Pictured: an actual cloud startup bill
The complexity in cloud pricing exists because it reflects the vast array of services, configurations, and use cases cloud providers cater to. They aim to be everything to everyone—offering granular control over resources like compute, storage, and networking—while charging for every option and optimization along the way. This à la carte approach maximizes flexibility but also makes pricing opaque, as the true costs of running an application depend on a web of interdependent factors most developers don’t have the time—or expertise—to untangle.
We get it. Cloud pricing is too complex, too opaque, and frankly, it’s sucking the joy out of development. That’s where we come in.
Our Pricing Philosophy: Value Over Complexity
At Shuttle, we believe pricing shouldn’t feel like calculus. It should be:
- Simple: You know what you’re paying for.
- Transparent: No hidden fees, no cryptic bills.
- Focused on Developer Experience: You’re not just paying for infrastructure; you’re investing in a smoother, faster, more joyful path to production.
Here’s the deal: Cloud infrastructure should be a commodity. The magic happens in the moments between provisioning a server and pushing a bug-free feature to production. That’s what Shuttle is all about—turning “I need to deploy” into “It’s live!”
The Future: Smarter, Predictable Pricing
We’re dreaming big. Imagine a world where every deployment comes with a cost estimate. Thinking of scaling your app? You’ll know the cost before you confirm. Deploying a new feature? Get cost predictions down to the commit level.
In the future, cloud pricing won’t just be simple—it’ll be smart. We’re exploring tools that integrate into your workflow, like combining commit based pricing and predictive pricing models to help you make informed decisions and avoid surprises.
What We’re Building Today
In the last few months at Shuttle, we completely overhauled the platform. It's now scalable, secure, robust, and ready for production use cases.
The production readiness comes with new tiers, which are going live in 2025, which in turn results in a pricing model that is simpler and redesigned from the ground up. We’ve worked a ton on digesting the complexity, so you only get simplicity, and we’re very excited to share our work with you soon.
That said, this is just another step, and as Shuttle keeps evolving, so will our pricing - to better serve you.
The Community Tier
Still free. Still awesome. Perfect place to start and experiment with Shuttle, exploring Rust, or building that side project you’ve been dreaming about. Some minor tweaks coming and even clearer picture of what’s included.
The New Pro Tier
This is for those looking for a “production” level experience. A pricing model that separates raw infrastructure costs from the developer experience we provide. Yes, we still add a small margin to the basic infra cost—it helps us build the tools, maintain the platform, and provide the support that turns “ugh, DevOps” into “ah, this is nice.”
Here’s what to expect:
- Simple and transparent infrastructure costs.
- Features that enhance production workflows—monitoring, observability, and priority support.
- A pricing structure that grows with you, whether you’re a solo developer or a scaling team.
The Team and Enterprise Tiers
For teams that need tailored support, we’re working on options that scale with your ambitions. Dedicated onboarding, BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud), features that enhance collaboration on more complex projects and flexible pricing for organizations that want to leverage Shuttle’s simplicity without overhauling their existing setup.
What’s Next?
We’re listening. Every feature, every tier, every decision is shaped by your feedback. So, tell us—what do you need? What’s working? What’s not?
Let’s build a cloud platform (and pricing model) that developers actually love. Click [here] to share your thoughts or sign up for early access to our Pro Tier.
