We have been looking at what tools the modern nomadic builders are using (@levelsio et al). The Nomadic (AI Coding) Stack is a minimalist composition of a few layers necessary to build and operate a site using SOTA (2025) AI coding tools.
The 5 things you need to build and run a SaaS business! :)
-
Human Interface
→ our favorite is
Omarchy
on Framework 13
- iPhone w/ Termius or JuiceSSH on Samsung S25 Edge would work
- Windows 11 on Beelink is great too (with WSL2)
- Thinkpad X1 Nano w/ Debian is probably still the hacker dream
- Daylight Computer DC1 w/ Termux for coding at the park
- Connectivity → Starlink Mini $5/mo at 500 kbps is our favorite however even Consumer Cellular $25/mo would work
- VPS/Host → our favorite is Free Range Cloud's Farm
- Web Server → our favorite is Caddy as it has Native Automatic HTTPS and automatically provisions and renews TLS certificates via Let’s Encrypt or ZeroSSL with no external tooling.
- Coding Agent → our favorite is Codex CLI with GPT-5
1. Human Interface
2. Connectivity
10 GB data options for digital nomads (as of August 2025)
Digital nomads often mix traditional carrier plans with alternative Wi‑Fi hotspots and eSIMs. We have been looking for ~10GB plans in the continental US. But because not every provider sells a 10GB plan, the list below includes the closest tier (e.g., 15 GB or unlimited). Ase one should expect - prices can vary with promotions and autopay discounts; taxes and fees are usually extra.
Price and feature comparison
| Carrier/device | Link | Price & summary |
|---|---|---|
| T-Mobile Prepaid 10GB | T-Mobile | $30/mo. 10 GB high-speed, then 128 kbps. Typical speeds 89–418 Mbps down. Strong 5G coverage in cities, weaker in rural |
| AT&T Prepaid 15GB | AT&T | $35/mo. (≈$23 per 10 GB). Includes hotspot. AT&T coverage strong nationwide, especially in suburban/rural areas |
| Verizon Prepaid 15GB | Verizon | $35/mo. 15 GB high-speed, then slowed. Verizon has widest rural reach, 4G/5G covers ~99% of U.S. population |
| Consumer Cellular 10GB | Consumer Cellular | $35/mo. 10 GB, unlimited talk/text. Uses AT&T & T-Mobile networks. Senior-friendly, flexible, decent reviews |
| Visible (Verizon MVNO) | Visible | $25/mo. Unlimited talk/text/data. Hotspot capped 5 Mbps. Uses Verizon’s network; speeds can be deprioritized. No true 10 GB tier |
| Cricket Wireless Sensible 10GB | Cricket Wireless | $30/mo. with Auto Pay. 10 GB reliable high-speed data, then slowed. Uses AT&T network |
| Starlink Roam 10GB | OVR Mag | $10/mo. 10 GB data for inactive/reactivated users; $2/GB overage. Global portability. Great for off-grid, but limited availability |
| Karma Go (legacy) | RVMobileInternet | $99 one-time for 10 GB. Data never expired. Service now mostly defunct, but notable early MiFi |
| Solis (Skyroam) Pay-Per-GB | Solis | $50 for 10 GB, no expiry. Portable hotspot. Works across 135+ countries. Mixed reviews: convenient but pricey |
| Sapphire 3 hotspot | VivaNomadia | ~$35.90 for 10 GB/30-day bundle. U.S. and global coverage. Compact device; targeted at travelers |
| Airalo eSIM (USA) | Airalo review | $26–$30 for 10 GB/30 days. Direct-to-phone eSIM. Coverage depends on host carrier (usually T-Mobile/AT&T). Great flexibility |
Key notes
- Best rural coverage: Verizon > AT&T > T-Mobile.
- Cheapest entry: Visible $25 unlimited.
- True 10 GB option (carriers): T-Mobile ($30), Consumer Cellular ($35), Cricket ($30).
- Alternative devices: Solis & Sapphire 3 are flexible but more expensive per GB.
- Satellite backup: Starlink Roam ($10/10 GB) good for remote/off-grid use, but not a primary mobile solution.
3. VPS/Host
Below is a curated table of popular VPS/hosting providers offering plans in the $5–$15/month range, with links and key details:
| Provider | Link | Plan Highlights & Regions |
|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | digitalocean.com | Offers Shared CPU Droplets starting at $4/month, and Premium Droplets at $7/month (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB NVMe SSD, 1 TB transfer) (Reddit, TechRadar). Data centers are global. |
| Linode | linode.com | Basic Shared CPU plan at $5/month (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, ~25 GB storage, generous transfer) (TechRadar). Worldwide coverage. |
| Hetzner (Cloud) | hetzner.com | CX22: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe — around €3.79–€4.59/month (~$4–$5) (Hetzner, SilverBullet Community). CX32: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM for €6.30–€7.59 (~$6–$8) (Hetzner). Locations: Germany, Finland, USA, Singapore (Hetzner). |
| FreeRangeCloud | freerangecloud.com | Halifax Egg: 1 vCPU, 1 GB ECC RAM, 30 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer — $10.99/month. Halifax Farm: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 90 GB SSD — $19.99/month (slightly above range) (freerangecloud.com). Locations include various North American and European cities (Wikipedia). |
| Hostinger (VPS) | hostinger.com | KVM-1 Plan: 1 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer — $13.99/month, within range (VPSBenchmarks). Global data centers. |
| AWS / Azure / GCP | — Various | Entry-level offerings (e.g., AWS Lightsail, Azure Virtual Machines, GCP Compute Engine) may occasionally fall in the $5–$15-range (e.g., free-tier formatting or budget VMs), but pricing varies significantly and usually requires customization. These platforms are more complex and often exceed the price range when including baseline resources. |
| Cloudflare (R2 Workers) | cloudflare.com | Cloudflare doesn’t offer traditional VPS; instead, their focus is more on edge workers, CDN, etc. So it doesn’t apply here. |
| A2 Hosting | a2hosting.com | A2 is more focused on shared, managed hosting and doesn’t present standard VPS options right at the $5–$15 bracket—usually higher. May offer occasional promotions, but not a consistent fit. |
Additional Notes & Community Feedback
- DigitalOcean is often praised for affordability and ease of use, with Droplets starting as low as $4/month (Wikipedia, Reddit).
- Linode consistently offers great value at $5/month for shared plans; users note it includes about ~25 GB storage and flexible upgrades (Reddit).
- Hetzner is frequently highlighted for exceptional performance-per-euro. Reddit users mention:
“Hetzner has been amazing! I’ve had a $5 VPS through them… haven’t had any downtime.” (Reddit)
“I realized I was paying more… than I could get at Hetzner.” (Reddit).
4. Web Server
Here are some widely used web‑servers and reverse proxies. We document whether they provide native ACME/Let’s Encrypt integration. Evidence below comes from the official documentation and community guides.
| Web server / proxy | Website | ACME / Let’s Encrypt integration |
|---|---|---|
| Traefik | doc.traefik.io | Native ACME/Let’s Encrypt integration. Traefik can be configured with an ACME provider (e.g., Let’s Encrypt) for automatic certificate issuance and renewal. Supports HTTP-01, TLS-ALPN-01, and DNS-01 challenges. |
| Apache HTTP Server (mod_md) | httpd.apache.org | Native ACME via mod_md. Supervises and renews TLS certificates via the ACME protocol. Default CA is Let’s Encrypt. Certificates are retrieved and renewed automatically. |
| HAProxy (3.2+) | docs.haproxy.org | Native ACME scheduler and CLI. The acme.scheduler directive triggers automatic renewals. The CLI supports acme renew and acme status for certificate management. |
| Lighttpd | redmine.lighttpd.net | No built-in ACME client. Must use external tools like dehydrated or certbot. Lighttpd serves challenges but does not request or renew certificates itself. |
| OpenResty | opm.openresty.org (lua-resty-acme) | Plugin-based ACME. Uses lua-resty-acme to automatically issue and renew Let’s Encrypt certificates. Not built-in, must be configured manually. |
| Envoy / Envoy Gateway | gateway.envoyproxy.io | No built-in ACME client. Relies on external controllers such as cert-manager to obtain and renew certificates, which are then passed to Envoy via SDS or static files. |
| Nginx (open-source/Plus) | blog.nginx.org | Preview native ACME module (2025). ngx_http_acme_module allows certificate issuance/renewal via HTTP-01 challenge directly from the Nginx config. Previously required external tools like Certbot. |
| Caddy | caddyserver.com | Native Automatic HTTPS. Automatically provisions and renews TLS certificates via Let’s Encrypt or ZeroSSL with no external tooling. |
Would you like me to also add less common servers (e.g. OpenLiteSpeed, H2O, Hitch) so you have a complete landscape of ACME support, or should I keep the focus on the mainstream ones?
5. AI Coding Agent
Here’s the same table, now sorted alphabetically by the Tool column:
| Tool (developer) | Website link | Key features/notes |
|---|---|---|
| Aider (open-source) | aider.chat | Python-based pair-programming agent that maps your codebase, integrates with git, supports many languages and can connect to various providers (Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, etc.). |
| AIChat CLI – Sigoden | aichat.suyin.io | Chat-style CLI supporting many providers; includes a shell assistant for translating natural language into commands, macros, roles, sessions, function calling and local server endpoints for chat and embeddings. |
| Amazon Q Developer CLI – AWS | aws.amazon.com | AI-powered developer assistant that provides code completions, translation and refactoring; integrates with AWS services and requires Builder-ID login; remote servers need SSH integration. |
| Claude Code CLI – Anthropic | claude.ai | Terminal-based assistant that summarises projects, debugs code, writes tests and features, and integrates with git while always asking before applying changes. |
| Claude Squad – smtg-ai | claude-squad | Terminal user interface (TUI) to manage multiple agents like Claude Code, Aider, Codex, Gemini and OpenCode in isolated git workspaces using tmux; supports background tasks and diff review. |
| Cline CLI – Yaegaki | cline.bot | Conversational CLI that edits files, runs commands and uses file-aware context; supports multiple AI providers; configuration stored in ~/.cline_cli. |
| Codai – Meysam Hadeli | github.com/meysamhadeli/codai | Session-based code assistant that provides context-aware completions, refactoring, bug-fix suggestions, code reviews, documentation and multi-file changes; supports providers like OpenAI, Azure, Anthropic, Ollama, DeepSeek, Gemini, Qwen and Mistral. |
| Codex CLI – OpenAI | help.openai.com | Lightweight coding agent that runs locally; accepts multimodal prompts (text, diagrams, screenshots) and provides Suggest/Auto-Edit/Full-Auto modes to control autonomy. |
| Continue CLI – Continue Dev | continue.dev | Modular coding agent that understands and edits codebases, runs terminal commands and resumes sessions; includes tools for fixing tests, refactoring and writing features. |
| Cursor CLI – Cursor | cursor.com | Interactive agent that can understand and modify codebases, run commands, and resume sessions; supports both interactive and non-interactive prompts and configurable models. |
| Forge Code CLI – Forge Code | forgecode.dev | Lightweight terminal assistant that analyses architecture, writes tests, refactors code, performs git operations and debugging; features “forge” (full execution) and “muse” (analysis) agents and uses slash-commands for quick help. |
| Gemini CLI – Google | gemini | Large-context agent (1 M tokens) for code generation/understanding; offers debugging, non-interactive scripting, search grounding and conversation checkpoints; free tier with generous request limits. |
| GPTme – gptme.org | gptme.org | Chat-CLI with many built-in tools that let an AI agent run shell commands, execute Python, edit and save files, browse the web, process images and manage context via RAG and vision tools. |
| OpenHands CLI – All Hands AI | all-hands.dev | Fully open-source agent that modifies code, runs commands, browses the web, calls APIs and generates tests; features slash-commands (e.g., /init), confirmation mode for safety and model-agnostic design. |
| Opencode CLI – Opencode AI | opencode.ai | Terminal-first coding agent with a TUI; handles multiple providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, AWS Bedrock etc.), persistent sessions, integrated editor, git/LSP integration and file-change tracking. |
| Plandex – PlandexAI | plandex.ai | Open-source, terminal-based agent for large projects; offers diff-review sandbox, configurable autonomy, multi-model support and 2 M-token context for big tasks. |
| Qwen Code CLI – Alibaba Cloud | qwen-code | Built on Qwen3-Coder; understands and edits large codebases, fixes issues, generates code/tests and documentation; works with any OpenAI-compatible backend. |
| Rovo Dev CLI – Atlassian | support.atlassian.com | Beta CLI extension of Atlassian’s Rovo Dev agent; completes/debugs code, writes tests, surfaces insights, improves code and integrates with Jira/Confluence; requires ACLI install and API token. |
| Tabby (self-hosted) | tabbyml.com | Self-hosted AI coding assistant and autocomplete server; supports custom models, GPU acceleration and integration with IDEs. It runs as a server accessible via HTTP. |