"Just self-host it" is common advice. But a server costs money every month it runs, and plenty of SaaS tools have free plans. So we priced 10 popular self-hosted apps against the SaaS they replace, at two usage levels each, using the vendors' own pricing pages (checked October 18–19, 2026).
The short version: at small usage, SaaS is cheaper for 8 of the 10. At larger usage, the server is cheaper for all 10 (for Ollama, only if a CPU server can keep up).
The numbers
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | Small usage: SaaS / server | Larger usage: SaaS / server |
|---|---|---|
| n8n vs Zapier | 100 tasks: $0 / $8 | 10,000 tasks: $129 / $8 |
| Ghost vs Substack | $100 revenue: $10 / $23 | $2,000 revenue: $200 / $23 |
| Nextcloud vs Dropbox | 1 person: $9.99 / $15 | 5 people: $75 / $15 |
| Uptime Kuma vs Better Stack | 10 monitors: $0 / $4 | 60 monitors: $50 / $4 |
| Plausible vs Plausible Cloud | 1 site: $9 / $15 | 10 sites: $19 / $15 |
| Vaultwarden vs 1Password | 1 person: $3.99 / $4 | 20 people: $179.80 / $4 |
| Listmonk vs Mailchimp | 500 contacts: $13 / $8.20 | 10k contacts: $110 / $12 |
| Gitea vs GitHub | Free plan: $0 / $8 | 10 devs on Team: $40 / $8 |
| Ollama vs OpenAI API | 10M+2M tokens: $2 / $30 | 200M+40M tokens: $40 / $30 |
| PostgreSQL vs DigitalOcean | 1 vCPU/1 GB: $15.15 / $4 | 2 vCPU/4 GB: $60.90 / $15 |
Monthly costs. The server column is a VeloxaHost server left on all month, plus Mailgun or Amazon SES where the app needs email.
What the numbers say
Free plans win the small cases. Zapier, Better Stack, Mailchimp, GitHub Free and Google Analytics cost nothing. A server never costs nothing.
Per-seat and per-volume pricing is where a server pulls ahead. 1Password Business, GitHub Team and Dropbox Standard charge per person; Zapier, Mailchimp and Better Stack charge per task, contact or monitor. A server's price stays flat until the app needs a bigger size. Vaultwarden for a team of 20 is the starkest example: about $180/month vs $4.
Revenue shares have a crossing point. Substack takes 10% and no monthly fee. Ghost plus Mailgun is a flat ~$23, so it only wins above about $230/month in paid subscriptions.
LLMs on CPU usually lose. Below roughly 150M input + 30M output tokens a month, the small OpenAI model is cheaper than a CPU server running Ollama, and the server only wins above that if it can actually produce the tokens.
Managed databases sell more than CPU and RAM. At the same size the server is always cheaper, but failover and point-in-time recovery are included in DigitalOcean's price and are your project on a server.
What this doesn't count
- Your time: installing, upgrading, backups and testing restores.
- Support: a paid SaaS plan includes the vendor's support for the app.
- A dedicated IPv4 address, which many of these apps need to serve HTTPS on your own domain (it's a paid add-on on VeloxaHost).
So the honest rule is: self-host when you have per-seat or per-volume pricing and someone who'll keep it patched. Otherwise the free plan is hard to beat.
Data and tools
- Full study with sources and a CSV of every row: Self-hosting vs SaaS: the real monthly cost
- Work out your own numbers: VPS cost calculator
- Ready-to-run Compose stacks for n8n, Uptime Kuma, Ghost and Vaultwarden: veloxahost/compose-stacks
Prices change, so check the vendor's page before you decide.
Disclosure: we run VeloxaHost, the server used in the comparison. The study includes every case where the SaaS is cheaper.
