I've spent the past few months working on AI image generation tooling, and a lot of friends have asked me what stack I'd use if I were starting fresh in 2026. Here's the honest answer, with the gotchas I hit along the way. This isn't theoretical — it's based on what I've seen working in production at Nano AI (a free Nano Banana Pro workbench) and what I'd build into the next product. The Stack Layer Choice Why Frontend Next.js 15 (App Router) + Tailwind Boring, fast, server components for SEO Auth NextAuth OAuth (Google/GitHub) covers 95% of users DB PostgreSQL (Supabase or Neon) Free tier covers MVP, scales when needed Image Model Nano Banana Pro / SDXL fallback Cost per image determines unit economics Storage Cloudflare R2 S3-compatible, 10x cheaper for image-heavy apps Payment Stripe Don't reinvent this Hosting Vercel (frontend) + Cloudflare Workers (image proxy) Edge for cold starts Analytics PostHog (self-hosted) Privacy-friendly, full event control Total monthly fixed cost at MVP scale: ~$30-50 .…