Cost transparency

Build a store for $20/month.

The starter is free and open source. GitHub Codespaces gives you 60 free hours every month, so the only required spend is Claude Pro at a flat $20.

Typical month while you’re building

$20/mo

flat — Claude Pro, with Codespaces on its free tier

What you’ll pay to get started

Required to actually run a store.

Magento® Open Source

Adobe / community

The Magento software itself is free and open source. You only pay for what you run it on.

GitHub account

GitHub

A free GitHub account is enough to own your store repo.

GitHub Codespaces

GitHub

GitHub’s free tier covers the typical "an hour a day" learning workload on the machine the starter uses. Any usage beyond the free tier is billed by GitHub — see [github.com/features/codespaces](https://github.com/features/codespaces) for current rates. Codespaces only bills while the machine is running and auto-stops when you walk away.

Claude Pro

Anthropic

$20

Flat $20/month, the only required out-of-pocket cost. Covers most light use while you’re learning and building. Heavier API-driven workflows are optional and usage-based.

Only when you go live

Doesn’t apply while you’re developing in Codespaces. Add these when you’re ready to point a real domain at a real store.

Production hosting

Your choice (DigitalOcean, AWS, etc.)

$20 – $200+

Only when you’re ready to go live. A small Magento store typically needs ~4GB RAM minimum. Out of scope for the starter — you keep building in Codespaces until you’re ready.

Domain name

Any registrar

~$1 / month

$10–$15/year. Only needed when you go live.

Common questions

The things people ask before they sign up for anything.

Mostly. Magento, GitHub, and the starter are all free. Codespaces has a generous free tier (120 core-hours/month) that covers light learning use. The one thing that isn’t free is Claude — that’s where the “$20” floor comes from. If you only use Claude’s free tier, you’ll hit message limits when actually building a store.

Codespaces machines automatically stop when you stop using them, and billing is per-minute. Claude’s Pro plan is a flat $20/month. You’d only see big bills if you switched to API/usage-based pricing and made very heavy use of it — that’s under your control.

You can’t get locked in. Your store lives in your own GitHub repo. You can clone it, host it anywhere, or just leave it sitting in GitHub forever. We don’t hold anything you need.

Worth $20 to find out?

Spin up a store, kick the tires, decide.