Downgrade to Free Tier for MongoDB

A couple days ago I received a bill from MongoDB. It wasn't a lot but it was unexpected. When I looked into what I was getting charged for, I found that the Cluster I had set up for this very site you're on - was an M10 Cluster. I don't remember doing this, but it's possible I was experimenting and forgot to change it back. Everything I build and run, this site included, is on the tools page, and I would like all of it to cost as close to nothing as it can.

So the process of getting it to free tier began. MongoDB doesn't make this easy - there's no button click to just downgrade to a Free tier - (though it's not terribly difficult.)

Here's what I did:

Step 1:

Created a new Free Tier Cluster

Step 2:

used Claude to mongodump all the data from the M10 Cluster

Step 3:

used Claude to mongorestore to the new Free Tier Cluster

Step 4:

updated the MONGO_URI in vercel

Deployed with the new environment variable and everything worked as before. I was able to then delete the M10 Cluster altogether to ensure I wouldn't be charged in the future.

Yes I know I didn't need Claude for this, but I'm not super great with mongo commands, and I have a Claude Max plan so why not?

Anyway, in case someone else runs into this issue, here's a fix.

Back to building.