Define the workload, planning horizon, and required service level before comparing prices. Build separate rows for compute, storage, network, licenses, support, staff time, maintenance, incidents, capacity headroom, migration, and exit work under each scenario.
Normalize the workload before pricing either path
Record average and peak concurrency, task duration, CPU and memory shape, storage growth, network transfer, region, isolation, startup time, availability, support hours, backup, recovery, and compliance constraints. A managed bill may bundle idle capacity, orchestration, support, and control-plane work that a raw virtual-machine estimate omits. A self-hosted design may also serve a different service level than the current product.
Choose a planning horizon and state whether demand is steady, bursty, seasonal, or uncertain. Price committed, on-demand, and scale-to-zero behavior where each applies. Keep taxes, discounts, credits, and negotiated terms on separate dated lines. A public list price supports a scenario, but the buyer should obtain a binding quote before acting.
Keep direct spend and operating burden visible
Direct spend includes provider charges, hardware or cloud resources, storage, transfer, licenses, monitoring, backups, and support. Operating burden includes provisioning, patching, upgrades, capacity planning, isolation, secrets, observability, incident response, support tickets, and on-call coverage. Convert labor to cost using a buyer-approved loaded rate while retaining hours as their own measure.
Add migration and exit costs outside the steady-state monthly total. Include compatibility work, data transfer, dual running, cutover, rollback, training, contract timing, and the cost of reversing the choice. The final table should show which assumptions dominate the result so the buyer can validate them or design a bounded pilot around the uncertain ones.
Where the service stops
Reality Contact, LLC prepares a technical cost and operating-burden model, but does not provide financial, tax, legal, procurement, security, or compliance advice, select a vendor, certify savings, or own the buyer's architecture decision. The buyer verifies internal rates and requirements, obtains current binding provider quotes, reviews security and compliance with qualified owners, and decides whether to renew, negotiate, pilot, migrate, or hold. This is technical cost modeling and document preparation; it does not replace financial, tax, legal, procurement, security, compliance, or professional advice. Public and supplied prices are dated inputs, not binding quotes, and the buyer must verify current terms and requirements before acting.
Sources: AWS Pricing Calculator; FinOps Framework capabilities.