Cost
Why the all-OSS, self-hosted stack means effectively no SaaS spend — compared line by line against the managed alternative. Illustrative monthly list prices for founder planning.
Self-hosted (OSS) / mo
$60
incl. $60 base infra
Managed alternative / mo
$439
6 SaaS services
Monthly savings
$379
No per-service SaaS bill
Annualized savings
$4,548
at current list prices
OSS vs Managed — line by line
Each capability is fulfilled by an open-source component running on infra we already pay for, instead of a metered SaaS product.
| Capability | OSS component | Managed alternative | OSS / mo | Managed / mo | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postgres database | PostgreSQL (self-hosted) | Managed Postgres (e.g. RDS / Supabase Pro) | $0 | $95 | Runs on the shared app VM; no separate managed instance billed. |
| Object storage | MinIO (S3-compatible) | S3 + egress | $0 | $40 | Same volume on local disk; no per-GB or egress line item. |
| Auth & identity | Self-hosted auth (JWT + Postgres) | Auth0 / Clerk (paid tier) | $0 | $150 | Per-MAU pricing avoided; identity lives in our own schema. |
| Background jobs / queue | Worker + Postgres queue | Managed queue / cron service | $0 | $25 | Reuses the existing worker process; no dedicated queue service. |
| Observability / logs | OSS logger + self-hosted dashboards | Datadog / hosted APM | $0 | $99 | Structured logs to disk; ingestion-based SaaS billing avoided. |
| Email / notifications | SMTP relay (self-hosted dispatch) | Transactional email API | $0 | $30 | Dispatcher sends via a relay; no per-message SaaS tier required. |
| Base infra (already budgeted) | $60 | — | One shared VM runs the whole self-hosted stack. | ||
| Total / month | $60 | $439 | Save $379/mo | ||
Assumptions
Representative monthly USD list prices for planning only. OSS stack runs on one already-budgeted VM (base infra); managed figures are public list-tier estimates and will vary with usage.