Question: Is there a platform that allows me to deploy and scale web apps globally with ease, and also provides a free tier for development and testing?

If you're looking for a service to host and scale web apps around the world, Supabase is a good option. It has a free tier with unlimited API calls, 50,000 monthly active users and 500 MB of database storage. It also supports Next.js and Svelte frameworks, and has a rich suite of tools including edge functions, real-time data synchronization and vector embeddings for machine learning models.

Another good option is Xata, a serverless data platform based on PostgreSQL. Xata has a good free tier with 10 database branches, 15 GB of data storage and 250 AI queries per month. It supports a variety of frameworks and tools like Astro, Next.js and Svelte, and has features like zero-downtime schema migrations and full-text search with Elasticsearch.

If you need something fast and scalable, Neon could be a good choice. It's got a free tier and autoscaling so you can adjust the amount of compute resources depending on demand. Neon's features include branching for separate DB copies, schema migrations and support for several languages and frameworks, so it's good for high-performance apps.

Finally, Back4app is a cloud platform for building, deploying and scaling apps. It's got a free tier, real-time database, cloud functions, APIs and SDKs. Back4app touts security compliance with big regulations and a pricing model that's more predictable, which could be appealing to developers who want to increase productivity and get to market faster.