Back to Blog
team@tinypod.app

The True Cost of Self-Hosting vs Cloud Services

Self-hosting can save money or cost more — it depends on what you're hosting and what you value. An honest cost comparison.

costcomparisonself-hostingcloud

The Visible Costs


Cloud Services (SaaS)

  • Monthly subscription fees
  • Per-user pricing
  • Storage overage charges
  • Feature tier upsells

    • Self-Hosting

  • VPS/server costs ($5-50/month)
  • Domain name ($10-15/year)
  • Backup storage ($5-10/month)

    • The Hidden Costs


    Self-Hosting Hidden Costs

  • Your time for setup and maintenance
  • Learning curve
  • Debugging when things break
  • Security responsibility
  • Update management

    • Cloud Hidden Costs

  • Vendor lock-in (hard to leave)
  • Price increases (Notion, Slack, Figma all raised prices)
  • Data migration when switching
  • Privacy trade-offs
  • Service shutdowns (Google Stadia, etc.)

    • Cost Examples


    Password Manager (1 user)

  • Bitwarden Premium: $10/year
  • Vaultwarden (self-hosted): $3/month VPS = $36/year
  • Winner: Cloud (unless the VPS runs other things too)

    • Git Hosting (5-user team)

  • GitHub Team: $4/user × 5 = $20/month = $240/year
  • Gitea (self-hosted): $5/month VPS = $60/year
  • Winner: Self-hosted

    • Analytics (5 websites)

  • Plausible Cloud: $19/month = $228/year
  • Plausible Self-hosted: $5/month VPS = $60/year
  • Winner: Self-hosted

    • Full Suite (10 services, 1 person)

  • Cloud: $50-100/month
  • Self-hosted (one VPS): $10-20/month
  • Winner: Self-hosted by far

    • The Break-Even Point


    Self-hosting wins when:

  • You run multiple services on one server
  • You have more than a few users
  • You value data ownership

    • Cloud wins when:

  • You run a single service
  • You have zero time for maintenance
  • Reliability is mission-critical

    • TinyPod reduces self-hosting's hidden costs (time, maintenance) while keeping the visible cost savings.