Infra & Cost Estimator

What This Estimator Is For

Cloud pricing pages are useless for planning. They tell you what a gigabyte costs, not what your app will cost — and the honest answer depends on traffic shape, data transfer, and how much operational work you're willing to take on. This estimator works from the three inputs that actually drive the bill: what you're building, how many people use it, and what you're optimizing for. In return you get an architecture recommendation, a realistic all-in monthly range, and a list of the specific things most likely to blow the budget.

How to Read the Result

The number to trust is the range, not a single figure — that's why the result shows one. The cost drivers list tells you where the money goes, which matters more than the total: if data transfer dominates, a CDN changes your bill; if compute dominates, it won't. Risk flags call out the assumptions most likely to bite you, and the scenario comparison puts two or three architectures side by side so you're choosing between real options instead of anchoring on the first one. Want to stress-test it? Hit the Conservative, Realistic, and Aggressive presets and watch how much the range moves.

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is the estimate?

It's a planning range, not a quote. The defaults are deliberately realistic rather than optimistic, and the total is all-in — it includes monitoring, CI/CD, baseline storage, and domain/secrets costs that most calculators quietly leave out. Expect it to tell you whether you're in $30 territory or $3,000 territory, not to predict your invoice to the dollar.

What if my numbers don't match the defaults?

Open Edit assumptions. Requests per user, cache hit ratio, storage growth, deploys per month, and logging level are all adjustable, and the result panel recalculates as you change them. If you know your cache hit ratio is 90%, say so — it moves the estimate meaningfully.

Why does "peak usage concentration" matter so much?

Because you provision for the worst moment, not the average. An app with the same monthly users but 10x spikes during campaigns needs different architecture — and different money — than one with flat traffic all day.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Your traffic numbers and product plans stay on your machine.