Forem: Rohit Raj

Drizzle vs Prisma vs TypeORM — Real ORM Pick for India MVP 2026

Rohit Raj — Sun, 17 May 2026 06:28:43 +0000

A Postgres-backed Next.js MVP shipping in 6 weeks: Drizzle cold-starts in ~40ms on Vercel Mumbai, Prisma at ~280ms (after the engine binary downloads), TypeORM at ~520ms with decorators bloating bundle size. Here is the real ORM math for an India MVP — cold start, type safety, migration story, edge runtime support, and which one to actually pick.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Drizzle vs Prisma vs TypeORM — Real ORM Pick for India MVP 2026

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Founding Engineer Equity 2026 — How Much to Negotiate (India)

Rohit Raj — Sat, 16 May 2026 07:52:04 +0000

Carta says 1.5% for hire #1, dropping to 0.33% by hire #5. Pave median is 1%. AI talent pressure pushed the floor up since March 2026. Honest 2026 numbers — plus the $0-equity alternative most pre-seed founders should default to.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Founding Engineer Equity 2026 — How Much to Negotiate (India)

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

OpenAI vs Claude vs Gemini API — Real Cost for India MVP 2026

Rohit Raj — Sat, 16 May 2026 05:48:31 +0000

A WhatsApp support bot doing 10K conversations a month costs roughly ₹1,250 on Gemini 2.5 Flash, ₹3,800 on GPT-5-mini, and ₹7,200 on Claude Sonnet 4 — before GST, FX margin, and the 2% TDS your CA will flag on foreign invoices. Here is the line-item cost math, the latency truth from a Mumbai-based MVP, and which API actually wins for which India use case.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: OpenAI vs Claude vs Gemini API — Real Cost for India MVP 2026

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Pinecone vs Qdrant vs pgvector — Which Vector DB for India RAG MVP (2026)

Rohit Raj — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:51:10 +0000

At 500K embeddings for an Indian RAG MVP, Pinecone Standard costs ~₹6,200/month, self-hosted Qdrant runs ~₹1,400/month on Hetzner, and pgvector inside the Postgres you already pay for adds ₹0. Here is the real cost math, recall benchmark on a Hindi+English corpus, and the migration story when you outgrow each.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Pinecone vs Qdrant vs pgvector — Which Vector DB for India RAG MVP (2026)

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Vercel vs Railway vs Hetzner — India MVP Hosting Cost & Latency (2026)

Rohit Raj — Thu, 14 May 2026 07:47:19 +0000

At 100K monthly requests for an Indian MVP, Vercel Pro lands at roughly ₹2,800/month, Railway hovers around ₹1,800/month, and a Hetzner CX22 + Cloudflare combo is ₹420/month. Here is the real cost math, the Mumbai latency truth, and the migration story when one of them stops fitting your scale.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Vercel vs Railway vs Hetzner — India MVP Hosting Cost & Latency (2026)

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Clerk vs Supabase Auth vs Better-Auth — Which to Pick for India MVP (2026)

Rohit Raj — Wed, 13 May 2026 04:56:14 +0000

At 10K monthly active users for an Indian MVP, Clerk Pro lands around ₹17,000/month, Supabase Auth is included in the same ₹2,100 Pro plan, and Better-Auth on your own Postgres costs ₹0 plus a weekend of engineering. Here is the real cost math, lock-in tradeoff, and the migration story when you outgrow the hosted option.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Clerk vs Supabase Auth vs Better-Auth — Which to Pick for India MVP (2026)

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Supabase vs Firebase for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on 10K MAU

Rohit Raj — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:31:31 +0000

Firebase tightened Spark-tier limits in Q1 2026 and Supabase opened the Mumbai ap-south-1 region in late 2025. At 10K MAU for an Indian MVP, Supabase Pro at $25/month now beats Firebase Blaze by 2-4x — here is the real cost math, RLS migration story, and when Firebase still wins.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Supabase vs Firebase for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on 10K MAU

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Self-Host n8n vs Zapier for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on 50K Operations/Month

Rohit Raj — Mon, 11 May 2026 10:25:52 +0000

Self-hosted n8n costs ₹600/month on a $7 Hetzner VPS for 50K operations; Zapier Professional charges $73/month (~₹6,100) for the same volume. Here is the real Docker setup, ops cost, and break-even math from my multi-platform social automation rig.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Self-Host n8n vs Zapier for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on 50K Operations/Month

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Razorpay vs Stripe for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on a 100-User Month

Rohit Raj — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:26:50 +0000

Razorpay charges 2% on cards and 0% on UPI for Indian MVPs; Stripe charges 4.3% plus GST plus cross-border 3% on the same volume. Here is the actual rupee math from MyFinancial production.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Razorpay vs Stripe for Indian MVPs in 2026 — Real Cost on a 100-User Month

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

AWS Bedrock vs OpenAI — Which One to Pick for Your Startup (With Real Costs)

Rohit Raj — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:10:35 +0000

I built a financial advisor AI with AWS Bedrock (Nova Lite) after starting with OpenAI. Here\'s a real cost and latency comparison from production, not a marketing page.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: AWS Bedrock vs OpenAI — Which One to Pick for Your Startup (With Real Costs)

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

Claude Code vs Hiring a Developer in 2026: $20 CLI or $80K Engineer?

Rohit Raj — Sat, 09 May 2026 06:30:06 +0000

Claude Code is the strongest agentic coding CLI of 2026. But $20–200/month buys assistance, not a finished product. This is the line between Claude Code as a developer multiplier and Claude Code as a developer replacement, with the cost math that actually matters when you ship to real users.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: Claude Code vs Hiring a Developer in 2026: $20 CLI or $80K Engineer?

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes

v0 by Vercel vs Hiring a Developer in 2026 — When Generative UI Hits the Day-30 Wall

Rohit Raj — Fri, 08 May 2026 09:56:01 +0000

v0 ships a clickable Next.js + shadcn prototype in 20 minutes for $20 a month. Then on day 30 you need auth, a real database, RLS, Stripe webhooks that survive retries, and a deploy that does not break preview. Here is exactly when v0 is the right call, when a real engineer is, and the cost crossover most founders only see after the prototype is already in customer hands.

Read the full version with code samples, diagrams, and architecture details: v0 by Vercel vs Hiring a Developer in 2026 — When Generative UI Hits the Day-30 Wall

More engineering notes: rohitraj.tech/en/notes