Developer builds video-transcription SaaS for $5/month using Cloudflare free tier

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A developer built Scriptery, a no-account video-to-text tool that generates timestamped transcripts and supports TXT, SRT, and VTT exports, frustrated by paywalls and time limits on existing tools. The entire web app runs on Cloudflare's free tier, using a single Worker to handle both the frontend and backend, while Workers AI powers transcription via OpenAI's Whisper model at no direct cost within daily limits. A $5-per-month VPS running yt-dlp handles video extraction, since Cloudflare Workers cannot run the tool and datacenter IPs face bot-checks from platforms like YouTube. Data storage relies on Cloudflare D1 for user and transcript records, and KV for rate limiting anonymous users by IP and cookie. The developer notes that marginal cost per new user is effectively zero at current scale, making the free tier sustainable and the paid tier highly profitable.

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