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VPS vs PaaS Cost Calculator

Describe your stack — apps, databases, bandwidth, team size — and see what it actually costs each month on Vercel, Railway, Render, Fly.io, Hetzner, and DigitalOcean. The numbers do the convincing.

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What this calculates

  • Per-seat, per-app, per-DB, and bandwidth pricing
  • Realistic Vercel & Railway overage estimates
  • Hetzner & DigitalOcean equivalent VPS sizing
  • Annual savings vs the most expensive PaaS

Monthly cost — your stack

Prices verified 2026-04-15
PlatformTypeMonthlyAnnual
Vercel Pro
PaaS$100$1,200
Railway
PaaS$83$999
Render
PaaS$62$747
Fly.io
PaaS$34$409
Hetzner VPS cheapest
Self-hosted VPS$5$55
DigitalOcean Droplet
Self-hosted VPS$24$288
Supabase Pro (managed Postgres add-on)DB-only$25$303
Annual savings

$1,145/ year

Self-hosting on Hetzner ($5/mo) instead of Vercel Pro ($100/mo) for the stack you described.

Set this up with Server Compass

Server Compass is $29 one-time ($29). Pays for itself in the first month at this stack size.

Where the money goes

Per-platform breakdown so you can sanity-check the math.

Vercel Pro

$100/mo
  • 2 × Pro seats— $20/seat/month$40
  • Bandwidth— 1024GB included, $0.15/GB afterincluded
  • Build minutes— 6,000 includedincluded
  • Function invocations / edge— estimated at $0.60 per 1M$60
  • Database (use Neon/Supabase)— priced separately belowincluded
  • SSL & custom domainsincluded

· Per-seat pricing scales with team

· Edge bandwidth overage is the silent killer

Railway

$83/mo
  • 2 × team seats— $20/seat/month$40
  • 2 apps (CPU)— ~$5/app at modest CPU usage$10
  • 2 apps (RAM)— ~$10/app at 1GB RAM$20
  • 1 databases— ~$12/db (CPU + RAM + storage)$12
  • Bandwidth— 100GB included, $0.10/GB afterincluded
  • Storage— 5GB included, $0.25/GB after$1

· Usage-based — your bill follows your traffic

· Easy to spin up, harder to predict

Render

$62/mo
  • Team plan— $19/month base$19
  • 2 web services— $7/service starter tier$14
  • 1 databases— $7/db basic Postgres$7
  • Bandwidth— 100GB included, $0.10/GB afterincluded
  • Disk storage— 1GB included, $0.25/GB after$2
  • Build pipeline (extra minutes)$20

· Per-service billing adds up fast

· Free tier sleeps after 15 min

Fly.io

$34/mo
  • 2 machines (CPU)— shared-cpu-1x$8
  • 2 machines (RAM)— ~1GB each$10
  • 1 Postgres— dev cluster$15
  • Bandwidth (North America)— 160GB included, $0.02/GB afterincluded
  • Volumes— 3GB included, $0.15/GB/month$1

· Cheapest PaaS in this list

· Edge-only — no team dashboard

Hetzner VPS

$5/mo
  • CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB)— fits all apps & databases$5
  • Bandwidth (20TB included)— your 100GB is well withinincluded
  • 2 apps (Docker / systemd)included
  • 1 databases (self-managed)included
  • SSL (Caddy / Traefik / Let's Encrypt)included
  • Custom domainsincluded
  • Team seats— no per-seat fees everincluded

· One server can host all apps + databases for most stacks

· 20TB bandwidth included — unrivaled price/GB

DigitalOcean Droplet

$24/mo
  • Basic Droplet (2 vCPU, 4GB)— fits all apps & databases$24
  • Bandwidth— 4096GB included, $0.01/GB afterincluded
  • 2 appsincluded
  • 1 databases— self-managedincluded
  • Block storage— 25GB free, $0.10/GB afterincluded
  • SSL & custom domainsincluded

· Reliable US-based VPS

· ~2x Hetzner price for similar specs

Why PaaS gets expensive

PaaS platforms like Vercel, Railway, and Render are fast to start with — push to git and you ship. The bill creeps up because every dimension of your stack becomes a line item: per seat, per service, per database, per GB of bandwidth, per build minute, per function invocation.

A two-developer team running three apps and a database on Vercel Pro plus a managed Postgres often lands around $120–$200/month before any traffic spikes. Add a viral week and edge bandwidth or function invocations can double the bill overnight.

The same workload runs on a single Hetzner CX22 (€3.99/month, ~$4.59) with 20TB of bandwidth included — the price gap is usually 20–40x at small to mid scale.

When self-hosting actually wins

Self-hosting on a VPS wins on cost whenever your workload fits on one or two servers, which covers most apps under 100k monthly users. You also escape vendor lock-in and per-seat pricing — adding a teammate doesn't change the bill.

The trade-off is operational work: provisioning, SSL certs, backups, deploys, and monitoring. Tools like Server Compass, Coolify, CapRover, and Dokploy collapse that work into a Vercel-style UX, so you keep the cost advantage without losing the developer experience.

If your stack needs a global edge, instant zero-config preview deploys for a large team, or you genuinely cannot afford an hour of ops work per month, PaaS is still worth the premium. For everyone else, the math in the table above is brutal.

How the pricing is calculated

Public pricing as of April 2026. We try to model real bills, not advertised entry prices. Notable assumptions:

Vercel Pro

$20/seat/month, 1 TB bandwidth included then $0.15/GB. Build minutes and function invocations modeled on official rates. Database not included — most teams add Neon or Supabase ($25/mo+).

Railway

$20/seat. Apps modeled at ~$5 CPU + $10 RAM each (1GB RAM, modest CPU). DB at ~$12. Bandwidth $0.10/GB after first 100 GB.

Render & Fly.io

Render: Team plan $19 + $7/web service + $7/Postgres. Fly.io: shared-cpu-1x machine tiers + $15/dev Postgres. Bandwidth modeled per platform's published rates.

Hetzner & DigitalOcean

Hetzner CX22/CX32/CX42 (€3.99–€14.86/mo) sized by total RAM need. DigitalOcean Basic Droplets at the closest equivalent. SSL is free via Let's Encrypt; team seats don't exist.

Found a stale price? Email [email protected] and we'll update the numbers.

FAQ

Is this calculator biased toward self-hosting?

It uses the published pricing of each platform. PaaS bills look high because PaaS bills are high once you add seats, databases, and bandwidth. We don't lowball PaaS or inflate VPS — try plugging in a tiny stack and you'll see Fly.io comes very close to Hetzner.

Why is Hetzner so much cheaper?

Hetzner runs its own datacenters in Germany and Finland and prices on hardware cost rather than developer convenience. 20 TB of bandwidth included per server is unmatched at this price point.

What about AWS / GCP / Azure?

They behave like Render/Fly.io for similar workloads but with steeper learning curves. Add roughly 10–30% to the Render number for an equivalent ECS or Cloud Run setup. Egress on cloud providers is the silent killer ($0.09/GB on AWS).

Does the calculator account for managed Postgres?

It assumes self-managed Postgres on the VPS rows, and includes a Supabase Pro line item if you want a managed DB add-on. Real-world numbers depend on backup retention and connection pooling needs.

Can I share or embed this?

Link to the page — values aren't yet stored in the URL. Embed support is on the roadmap. In the meantime, screenshots of the savings callout do the job for Twitter or Reddit.

Ready to make the switch?

Server Compass is a desktop app that turns a fresh VPS into a Vercel-style deployment target — Docker, SSL, backups, deploys, all wired up. $29 one-time.

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