What Db's during development

So I create lots of little side projects and I like to deploy the to a dev environment if I can so I can share and show others progress and get feedback.

My latest project has a react front end, a c# api, a couple queues, a node service to process's the queues and a database. I prefer relational Db's. Right now everything runs local and I setup the queues in AWS.

What if I want to deploy this to a dev env off my local machine? Maybe I want to collaborate with another dev... The queues are already off machine and they are free at the volume I use them at. Seems I need something to host the react, api and node service. I could dockerize them and find a cheap docker host maybe railway or digital ocean or something, but what about the database? Those are like $50/mo on AWS and Azure. What are hobbyists doing in this case? I want no expenses or minimal expenses while I develop if possible. Is this doable or should I just stick with local till it's done?