Everything behind your app, as plain HTTP.
altengine is a managed cloud platform. Store and query your data, search it, sign your users in, push realtime updates, run your code, and host the front end that calls all of it — one API, one organization, one bill. Nothing to provision, nothing idling, and the first $3 of usage every month is free.
No credit card to start · First $3 free every month · Nothing to provision
One platform, provisioned a piece at a time
Every service speaks the same REST/JSON API, authenticates the same way, and meters onto the same bill. Provision what you need, ignore what you don't, and pay for the requests you actually make. New services get added as demand shows up.
Data & files
Keep JSON documents in a store with a real query engine, run full-text search across them, and put files somewhere the bytes never touch your servers.
Users & realtime
Give your app its own end users with accounts, sign-in and identity tokens, and push messages to whoever is connected over a single WebSocket.
Code that runs
Milliseconds of sandboxed JavaScript, hours of a Docker image, or a script on a Windows machine of your own that nothing on the internet can reach.
Delivery & tooling
Host the built front end on a subdomain of its own with bandwidth nobody meters, and let an AI agent drive the whole platform through MCP.
A whole application, without a server of your own
The services are designed to compose, so the common shape of an app needs no backend from you at all — and where one is genuinely required, it's a function rather than a fleet.
The browser talks to your data directly
Static serves your built site, Auth signs the user in and hands the browser a short-lived identity token, and that token goes straight to Datastore and Channel. Row-level access rules on the auth instance decide what each user may read and write, and stamp authorship from the token so it can't be forged.
- A deploy is one command, and rolling back is a pointer move
- Password, emailed one-time code, authenticator 2FA, and passkeys
- Rules are configuration, not code you have to keep in sync
- No API key ever ships to the client
And the work a browser must not do
Charge a card, call a partner API with a secret, grind through a nightly export, or drive an application on a machine that isn't reachable from the internet. Each of those has a service sized for it, and each reaches your other instances through capabilities you grant explicitly — nothing else.
- Functions — sandboxed JavaScript on its own URL, with secrets, cron schedules, and an outbound allowlist
- Containers — a Docker image run as a background job for as long as the work takes
- Automation — your scripts on your own Windows machines, on a schedule or on demand
- MCP — the same capabilities as tools, so an agent can build on it with a scoped key
Functions, Containers and Automation are in closed beta — ask us to switch them on for your organization.
Built to be boring in all the right ways
Just HTTP and JSON
REST over HTTPS, a bearer token, JSON in and out. No SDK to adopt and no client library standing between you and the service.
Nothing idles on your bill
There's no cluster and no always-on machine. A namespace you aren't touching costs only its storage, and a container job that isn't running costs nothing at all.
First $3 free
One pay-as-you-go plan, and the first $3 of usage every month is free across every service. Most side projects never pay a cent.
One org, one bill
Every service lives under the same organization, with scoped API keys for your servers and end-user identity tokens for the browser. Adding a service is provisioning an instance, not signing up again.
Secure by default
Short-lived tokens, per-instance signing, and least-privilege grants are baked into the model, not bolted on.
Transparent usage
A live console shows exactly what you've used and what it costs — no mystery line items at month's end.
It started with App Engine. It didn't stop there.
The first services were revivals: Search and Channel keep App Engine's semantics — the same query language, field types, facets, and sorting — over a REST/JSON API, so your queries and schemas carry over and what you rewrite is the call layer. Datastore keeps the familiar model and loosens the contract: any JSON object, joins, grouped aggregates, strongly consistent reads. Everything since has no App Engine ancestor at all, and that's the plan — new managed services get added as demand shows up. If there's one you'd run, tell us; it helps us prioritize. We also wrote about why we started.
Start building on altengine
Provision an instance of whichever service you need and call it in minutes. Start free and grow into pricing that stays honest.
Open the console