[ Free tool ]
Rent your stack, or own it?
Tick the tools you pay for and fix the prices. The calculator compares 36 months of subscriptions with building your own system once and running it on Cloudflare, Neon, Resend, Clerk and Mux, the stack apxlbs builds on.
1 · What you rent today (edit the prices)
- CRM & pipelineHubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce
- Email marketingActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Mailchimp
- Funnels & landing pagesClickFunnels, Leadpages, Unbounce
- AutomationsZapier, Make
- Projects & deliveryMonday, ClickUp, Asana
- Support & chatIntercom, Zendesk
- Courses & communityKajabi, Circle, Skool
- Video hostingVimeo, Wistia
- Forms & surveysTypeform, Jotform
- SchedulingCalendly Teams
- Proposals & e-signPandaDoc, DocuSign
- Dashboards & reportingDatabox, AgencyAnalytics
- Website builderWebflow, Wix, Squarespace
- Logins & membershipsMemberStack, Outseta
2 · Your size
You rent
$2,328/mo
Owned, running
≈$375/mo
Replaces 9 tools
| Rented | $/mo | Owned replacement |
|---|---|---|
| CRM & pipeline | $800 | Pipeline module on Neon Postgres |
| Email marketing | $350 | Sequences + broadcasts on Resend |
| Funnels & landing pages | $297 | Pages on Cloudflare Workers |
| Automations | $299 | Workers cron + queues |
| Projects & delivery | $240 | Delivery board in your OS |
| Forms & surveys | $83 | Forms on Workers + D1 |
| Scheduling | $60 | Booking module (or keep Cal.com) |
| Dashboards & reporting | $150 | Owner dashboard on your data |
| Website builder | $49 | Site on Cloudflare |
The owned stack, monthly (Small)
- Cloudflare · Workers, R2 storage, D1, Hyperdrive$5
- Neon · Postgres database$20
- Clerk · Logins and user management$0
- Resend · Transactional + marketing email$20
- AI APIs · Claude / OpenAI for automations$20
- Monitoring & backups · Errors, uptime, offsite backups$10
- Upkeep · A few developer hours a month (or you with Claude Code)$300
Estimates for planning, not a quote. Running costs are typical list prices at the time of writing; your traffic and data change them. Build estimate: core operating system from $18k plus about $1.5k per extra module.
[ How it works ]
Add up what you rent
Typical prices are pre-filled for a small team. Edit them to your real invoices and add anything missing.
Pick your size
Running costs of an owned stack scale with people, contacts and traffic. Upkeep (developer hours) is included, because nothing runs itself.
See where the lines cross
The chart shows cumulative cost. Where the purple line drops under the red one, owning has paid for itself.
Questions people ask
Is it cheaper to build your own software than pay for SaaS?
Above a few thousand dollars a month in subscriptions, usually yes within two to three years: you pay once to build, then cloud costs that are often under $500 a month for a small team. Below that, renting is often the better deal; the calculator shows you which side you're on.
What does an owned stack cost to run each month?
For a small team on Cloudflare Workers, Neon Postgres, Resend email, Clerk logins and Mux video, the infrastructure is typically tens of dollars a month. The bigger line is upkeep: a few developer hours a month, or the owner using Claude Code or Codex.
What shouldn't you build yourself?
Payments, accounting and anything regulated: keep Stripe or Mercado Pago and your accountant's tools. Own the parts that are your process: pipeline, delivery, client portal, automations and the owner dashboard.
How accurate are the numbers?
They're planning estimates, not a quote. Vendor prices change and usage drives cloud costs. The Blueprint Sprint turns this into a fixed-price plan for your business.