Cost Reference

This article provides cost data to help you evaluate self-hosted Pigsty, cloud RDS costs, and typical DBA salaries.

Overview

EC2Core·MonthRDSCore·Month
DHH Self-Hosted Core-Month Price (192C 384G)25.32Junior Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary¥15K/person·month
IDC Self-Hosted (Dedicated Physical: 64C384G)19.53Mid-Level Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary¥30K/person·month
IDC Self-Hosted (Container, 500% Oversold)7Senior Open Source DB DBA Reference Salary¥60K/person·month
UCloud Elastic VM (8C16G, Oversold)25ORACLE Database License10000
Aliyun ECS 2x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold)107Aliyun RDS PG 2x Memory (Dedicated)260
Aliyun ECS 4x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold)138Aliyun RDS PG 4x Memory (Dedicated)320
Aliyun ECS 8x Memory (Dedicated, No Oversold)180Aliyun RDS PG 8x Memory (Dedicated)410
AWS C5D.METAL 96C 200G (Monthly No Prepaid)100AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.T2 (2x)440
AWS C5D.METAL 96C 200G (3-Year Prepaid)80AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.M5 (4x)611
AWS C7A.METAL 192C 384G (3-Year Prepaid)104.8AWS RDS PostgreSQL db.R6G (8x)786

RDS Cost Reference

Payment ModelPriceAnnualized (¥10K)
IDC Self-Hosted (Single Physical Machine)¥75K / 5 years1.5
IDC Self-Hosted (2-3 Machines for HA)¥150K / 5 years3.0 ~ 4.5
Aliyun RDS On-Demand¥87.36/hour76.5
Aliyun RDS Monthly (Baseline)¥42K / month50
Aliyun RDS Annual (85% off)¥425,095 / year42.5
Aliyun RDS 3-Year Prepaid (50% off)¥750,168 / 3 years25
AWS On-Demand$25,817 / month217
AWS 1-Year No Prepaid$22,827 / month191.7
AWS 3-Year Full Prepaid$120K + $17.5K/month175
AWS China/Ningxia On-Demand¥197,489 / month237
AWS China/Ningxia 1-Year No Prepaid¥143,176 / month171
AWS China/Ningxia 3-Year Full Prepaid¥647K + ¥116K/month160.6

Here’s a comparison of self-hosted vs cloud database costs:

MethodAnnualized (¥10K)
IDC Hosted Server 64C / 384G / 3.2TB NVME SSD 660K IOPS (2-3 Machines)3.0 ~ 4.5
Aliyun RDS PG HA Edition pg.x4m.8xlarge.2c, 64C / 256GB / 3.2TB ESSD PL325 ~ 50
AWS RDS PG HA Edition db.m5.16xlarge, 64C / 256GB / 3.2TB io1 x 80k IOPS160 ~ 217

ECS Cost Reference

Pure Compute Price Comparison (Excluding NVMe SSD / ESSD PL3)

Using Aliyun as an example, the monthly pure compute price is 5-7x the self-hosted baseline, while 5-year prepaid is 2x self-hosted

Payment ModelUnit Price (¥/Core·Month)Relative to StandardSelf-Hosted Premium Multiple
On-Demand (1.5x)¥ 202160 %9.2 ~ 11.2
Monthly (Standard)¥ 126100 %5.7 ~ 7.0
1-Year Prepaid (65% off)¥ 83.766 %3.8 ~ 4.7
2-Year Prepaid (55% off)¥ 70.656 %3.2 ~ 3.9
3-Year Prepaid (44% off)¥ 55.144 %2.5 ~ 3.1
4-Year Prepaid (35% off)¥ 4535 %2.0 ~ 2.5
5-Year Prepaid (30% off)¥ 38.530 %1.8 ~ 2.1
DHH @ 2023¥ 22.0
Tantan IDC Self-Hosted¥ 18.0

Equivalent Price Comparison Including NVMe SSD / ESSD PL3

Including common NVMe SSD specs, the monthly pure compute price is 11-14x the self-hosted baseline, while 5-year prepaid is about 9x.

Payment ModelUnit Price (¥/Core·Month)+ 40GB ESSD PL3Self-Hosted Premium Multiple
On-Demand (1.5x)¥ 202¥ 36214.3 ~ 18.6
Monthly (Standard)¥ 126¥ 28611.3 ~ 14.7
1-Year Prepaid (65% off)¥ 83.7¥ 2449.6 ~ 12.5
2-Year Prepaid (55% off)¥ 70.6¥ 2309.1 ~ 11.8
3-Year Prepaid (44% off)¥ 55.1¥ 2158.5 ~ 11.0
4-Year Prepaid (35% off)¥ 45¥ 2058.1 ~ 10.5
5-Year Prepaid (30% off)¥ 38.5¥ 1997.9 ~ 10.2
DHH @ 2023¥ 25.3
Tantan IDC Self-Hosted¥ 19.5

DHH Case: 192 cores with 12.8TB Gen4 SSD (1c:66); Tantan Case: 64 cores with 3.2T Gen3 MLC SSD (1c:50).

Cloud prices calculated at 40GB ESSD PL3 per core (1 core:4x RAM:40x disk).

EBS Cost Reference

Evaluation FactorLocal PCI-E NVME SSDAliyun ESSD PL3AWS io2 Block Express
Capacity32TB32 TB64 TB
IOPS4K Random Read: 600K ~ 1.1M, 4K Random Write: 200K ~ 350K4K Random Read: Max 1M16K Random IOPS: 256K
Latency4K Random Read: 75µs, 4K Random Write: 15µs4K Random Read: 200µsRandom IO: ~500µs (contextually inferred as 16K)
ReliabilityUBER < 1e-18, equivalent to 18 nines, MTBF: 2M hours, 5DWPD for 3 yearsData Reliability 9 nines Storage and Data ReliabilityDurability: 99.999%, 5 nines (0.001% annual failure rate) io2 Specification
Cost¥16/TB·month (5-year amortized / 3.2T MLC), 5-year warranty, ¥3000 retail¥3200/TB·month (original ¥6400, monthly ¥4000), 50% off with 3-year full prepaid¥1900/TB·month using max spec 65536GB 256K IOPS best discount
SLA5-year warranty, replacement on failureAliyun RDS SLA Availability 99.99%: 15% monthly fee, 99%: 30% monthly fee, 95%: 100% monthly feeAmazon RDS SLA Availability 99.95%: 15% monthly fee, 99%: 25% monthly fee, 95%: 100% monthly fee

S3 Cost Reference

Date$/GB·Month¥/TB·5YearsHDD ¥/TBSSD ¥/TB
2006.030.150630002800
2010.110.140588001680
2012.120.0953990042015400
2014.040.030126003719051
2016.120.02396602453766
2023.120.0239660105280
Other ReferencesHigh-Perf StorageTop-Tier Discountedvs Purchased NVMe SSDPrice Ref
S3 Express0.16067200DHH 12T1400
EBS io20.125 + IOPS114000Shannon 3.2T900

Cloud Exit Collection

There was a time when “moving to the cloud” was almost politically correct in tech circles, and an entire generation of app developers had their vision obscured by the cloud. Let’s use real data analysis and firsthand experience to explain the value and pitfalls of the public cloud rental model — for your reference in this era of cost reduction and efficiency improvement — please see “Cloud Computing Mudslide: Collection”

Cloud Infrastructure Basics

Cloud Business Model

Cloud Exit Odyssey

Cloud Failure Post-Mortems

RDS Failures

Cloud Vendor Profiles


Last modified 2026-01-07: batch update (e402449)