Crossover simulator
Bare metal vs cloud cost crossover
Bare metal buys fixed capacity whether it is busy or idle. Cloud can follow demand, but its variable meters and managed-service premiums change the bill. Compare usable capacity after redundancy, then add only the operations assumptions you can defend.
Standing answer
Bare metal is strongest when sustained utilization makes fixed capacity useful and the team can operate the required redundancy. Cloud is strongest when demand varies, fast capacity changes matter, or managed services remove work the team would otherwise own. The crossover below keeps team labor as your input, never an invented benchmark.
Sensitivity simulator
Where fixed capacity crosses elastic cost
Adjust cloud capacity cost and operations hours. The dedicated side stays unpriced until a current source gives both its monthly and setup prices.
These four sliders are switched off, not merely dimmed. Nothing here can recompute without JavaScript, so they are disabled in the HTML and cannot be moved by a pointer or by a keyboard. The comparison, the bars and the receipt below are the complete result for$300 of cloud capacity, 8 cloud operations hours, 18 dedicated operations hours, and $100 an hour, already in this page.
Receipt
Infrastructure formula: cloud = entered monthly capacity bill; dedicated = unpriced until a current source provides both prices.
Separate team-cost context: cloud $1,100.00; dedicated unpriced. This context never manufactures a headline ranking.
Assumptions: one dedicated server, one-month list price, no redundant server, no negotiated discount.
Unknowns: usable capacity, redundant topology, remote hands, and migration cost.
Why no comparison: the previous dedicated prices had no matching provider source, so they were removed.
Working comparison
Compare the options that fit this decision
| Input | Bare metal | Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Fixed, paid when idle | Elastic if architecture supports it |
| Redundancy | Second failure domain changes the floor | Multiple instances and zones change the floor |
| Operations | Hardware and host boundary | Service and account boundary |
Decision test
What changes the answer
- 01Compare required usable capacity after redundancy, not installed capacity.
- 02Amortize setup and migration over the real commitment horizon.
- 03Add remote hands, replacement, monitoring, and recovery labor.
- 04Test the result at both average and peak utilization.
Shareable result receipt
Fixed for this page: the same formula, assumptions and sources every visitor sees.
Bare metal is strongest when sustained utilization makes fixed capacity useful and the team can operate the required redundancy. Cloud is strongest when demand varies, fast capacity changes matter, or managed services remove work the team would otherwise own. The crossover below keeps team labor as your input, never an invented benchmark.
Formula
Crossover utilization = (dedicated monthly cost + dedicated labor − cloud fixed cost − cloud labor) ÷ cloud variable capacity cost
Assumptions
- One-month price shown
- Setup amortized separately
- No negotiated discount
Explicit unknowns
- Required redundant server count
- Remote-hands labor
- Cloud burst profile
Sources and freshness
- Hetzner 2026 price adjustment retrieved 2026-07-25