I Built an App With AI in 10 Minutes. Then Tried to Deploy It 5 Different Ways.

Last updated: March 2026 I built a full-stack expense tracker with Claude Code in about 10 minutes. Express.js backend, SQLite database, vanilla HTML/CSS/JS frontend. Around 400 lines of code. It worked perfectly on localhost. Then I spent the next two days trying to get it online. I deployed the same app on 5 different platforms and timed everything - from signup to a working public URL. Every error, every workaround, every moment where the platform fought against what my AI-generated app needed. TLDR: Vercel couldn't run it at all (no persistent filesystem for SQLite). Railway worked but usage-based billing made costs unpredictable. Render worked but the free tier sleeps and paid starts at $14/mo with a database. A raw DigitalOcean droplet took 47 minutes of nginx/SSL/systemd setup. InstaPods (full disclosure: mine) deployed in one command for $3/mo. The deploy gap is still the hardest part of vibe coding. What I Built I told Claude Code: "Build me a simple expense tracker. Express.j