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About RealCost

Make infrastructure costs easier to compare—and easier to trust.

Most "cost to run a SaaS" posts disappear before anyone can compare, question, or learn from them. Realcost turns those anecdotes into a structured public index, while making the evidence behind every claim visible.

One useful benchmark

We rank monthly infrastructure as a percentage of monthly recurring revenue. A product doing $30k MRR on $180 of infrastructure is a different operation from one doing $9k MRR on $900. Both can be interesting; neither number tells the whole story.

Trust comes from context

01Founder-reported

Launch listings come directly from founders and are labelled clearly.

02Itemized

Providers, cost lines, stack, revenue band, and update date remain visible.

03Comparable

One consistent ratio lets readers orient themselves without hiding nuance.

The self-host directory

Each product can connect its reported services to the replacement directory: direct verdicts, open-source options, and deploy starting points. The point is not to self-host everything. It is to know which line items are load-bearing and which are convenience tax.

A transparent index

Evidence labels are the contract with readers. Read the full methodology before making a decision from any listing, and contact us when published data has changed.