Startup cost calculator.

For a solo-founder SaaS, plan on about $500 in one-time costs (registration, domain, brand) plus $120 to $250 per month in recurring infrastructure and tools. Add a marketing budget of $250 to $500 per month if you want paid traffic from day one. E-commerce and physical-product businesses run 3 to 10 times higher because of inventory. Local services sit in the middle because of equipment and insurance.

A solo services business (consulting, freelance design, copywriting, marketing, development). One-time costs under $500, monthly recurring under $200. No inventory, no infrastructure, no stock. The trade-off is that your revenue is capped by your hours unless you productize.

Most solo founders defer their own salary for 6 to 12 months and live off savings. If you must pay yourself, budget half of market rate to extend runway. If you cannot survive on zero salary for 6 months, your startup idea needs to either generate revenue in month 1 (services) or you need savings to cover the gap before committing.

Minimum 6 months of projected monthly burn plus all one-time costs. 9 months is comfortable. 12 months is safe. Less than 3 months of runway forces decisions that hurt the business (taking the first client regardless of fit, launching before you're ready, skipping validation).

It's a starting estimate based on real costs for the five most common bootstrap paths. Highly regulated industries (health, finance, legal), hardware startups with tooling costs, or businesses with heavy upfront capex will run higher. Use this as a floor, then add industry-specific costs on top.

Skip the logo contest, skip the office, skip paid ads until you have product-market signal, and skip any software you don't use weekly. Use free tiers everywhere (Vercel, Supabase, Resend, Plausible's free tier, Figma free). The $250-per-month founder who cannot afford $50 in ads is usually paying for 10 SaaS tools they forgot about.