Built a Reddit Clone that receives 8 Million API calls a month but costs $10/month in infrastructure costs with no maintenance
Online Communities: A Case Study in Serverless Architecture
In recent years, there has been growing discontent within the Reddit community due to increased advertisements and the removal of certain features, particularly API access. This dissatisfaction led to a desire for an alternative platform, but the challenges of development, funding, and ongoing maintenance costs presented significant barriers.
Recognizing this opportunity, our team embarked on an ambitious project to create a Reddit-like platform that addressed these concerns while showcasing our architectural expertise. We chose to leverage serverless architecture on Cloudflare, capitalizing on their generous free tier and competitive pricing structure compared to other major cloud providers.
Over a nine-month period, we successfully developed a robust Reddit clone with several unique features:
- Live comment feed for hands-free entertainment
- Multiple user IDs per login
- Multiple club tags per post
ClubsAll has ever increasing number of pages. In July 2024, we stand at 56000 pages.
More content = more traffic. The platform now handles approximately 8 million API calls per month, demonstrating its scalability and reliability.
Our serverless approach ensures minimal downtime and remarkably low infrastructure costs—less than $10 per month. Here is a screenshot to show our monthly costs
Key project metrics:
- Development timeframe: 9 months
- Total development cost: Approximately $20,000
Monthly infrastructure cost: Less than $10
This project not only highlights our architectural capabilities but also demonstrates our ability to create innovative, cost-effective solutions for complex challenges. The live site can be accessed at https://clubsall.com.
We remain committed to enhancing the platform with new features and innovations, continually improving the user experience and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in online community platforms.
This case study exemplifies our expertise in designing scalable, efficient, and cost-effective solutions for modern web applications.
