This talk walks through an attempt to build a modern cloud data platform while spending absolutely nothing. As a personal challenge and passion project, I pulled together a stack using MotherDuck, dbt Core, GitHub Actions, and other forever-free or open-source tools (no free trials allowed) I’ll share the architecture, how I approached the build, and the lessons I learnt along the way, including what worked, what didn’t, and the trade-offs that came with keeping costs at zero.