📊 Cost Summary by Tier
| Tier |
Users |
Monthly Cost |
Per User |
Margin @ $9.99 |
| Hobby |
1 |
$0.05 |
$0.05 |
99%+ |
| Indie |
100 |
$12.83 |
$0.13 |
98.7% |
| Startup |
10,000 |
$760 |
$0.08 |
99.2% |
| Scale |
100,000 |
$5,500 |
$0.055 |
99.4% |
🏠 Hobby Tier (1 User)
Development and testing, entirely within free tiers.
| Service |
Usage |
Cost |
| Workers | Free tier (100K req/day) | $0 |
| R2 | 10GB (free) | $0 |
| D1 | 5GB (free) | $0 |
| Vectorize | Free tier | $0 |
| Workers AI | 10K neurons/day (free) | $0 |
| Pages | Free | $0 |
| Gemini | Light testing | ~$0.05 |
| TOTAL | | ~$0.05/mo |
🎸 Indie Tier (100 Users)
Small community, light usage.
| Service |
Usage |
Cost |
| Workers Paid | Base plan | $5.00 |
| R2 | 50GB storage | $0.75 |
| D1 | Within free tier | $0 |
| Vectorize | 500K vectors | $0 |
| Workers AI | 30K min Whisper | $1.50 |
| Fly.io | SHUSH services | $5.00 |
| Gemini | 10M tokens | $0.58 |
| TOTAL | | $12.83/mo |
| Per User | | $0.13 |
🚀 Startup Tier (10,000 Users)
Growing platform, moderate usage.
| Service |
Usage |
Cost |
| Workers Paid | + bandwidth | $25.00 |
| R2 | 500GB storage | $7.50 |
| D1 Pro | Heavy reads | $25.00 |
| Vectorize | 5M vectors | $50.00 |
| Workers AI | Heavy usage | $100.00 |
| Durable Objects | Collab sessions | $50.00 |
| Cloudflare Calls | 100GB WebRTC | $5.00 |
| Fly.io | Scaled services | $100.00 |
| Gemini | 1B tokens | $200.00 |
| GPU (Replicate) | Stems/gen | $100.00 |
| TOTAL | | $760/mo |
| Per User | | $0.08 |
🏢 Scale Tier (100,000 Users)
Platform scale, enterprise contracts.
| Service |
Cost |
| Cloudflare Enterprise | ~$2,000 |
| Gemini (cached) | ~$2,000 |
| GPU Inference | ~$1,000 |
| Infrastructure | ~$500 |
| TOTAL | ~$5,500/mo |
| Per User | $0.055 |
📈 Biggest Cost Drivers at Scale
| Component |
% of Cost (10K) |
Optimization Strategy |
| D1 Database reads |
34% |
Read replicas, caching |
| Vectorize queries |
26% |
Cache popular searches |
| Workers AI |
16% |
Smart routing, batching |
| Cloudflare Calls |
12% |
P2P when possible |
| R2 Storage |
12% |
Compression, dedup |
💡 Cost Optimization Impact
| Strategy |
Savings |
| AI Gateway caching |
40-70% on AI queries |
| Smart model routing (Llama vs Gemini) |
60% reduction |
| WebRTC P2P optimization |
70% reduction in relay |
| Context caching (Gemini) |
75% discount on prompts |
| Free TTS (Chatterbox) |
100% vs ElevenLabs |
⚔️ Cloudflare vs AWS vs GCP
| Platform |
10K Users |
Savings vs Cloudflare |
| AWS |
$3,250-10,300/mo |
- |
| GCP |
$1,250-5,100/mo |
- |
| Cloudflare |
$760/mo |
77-93% cheaper |
💡
Key Insight: Cloudflare's zero-egress R2 and edge-native AI eliminate the biggest cloud cost traps.
💵 Revenue vs Cost Analysis
Break-Even Analysis
| Scenario |
Infrastructure |
Break-Even Users |
| Hobby (free tier only) |
$0.05 |
1 paid user |
| Indie (Workers Paid) |
$12.83 |
2 paid users |
| Startup |
$760 |
76 paid users |
| Scale |
$5,500 |
550 paid users |
Pricing Recommendations
| Tier |
Price |
Cost/User |
Gross Margin |
| Free |
$0 |
$0.02 |
n/a (acquisition) |
| Pro |
$9.99 |
$0.08 |
99.2% |
| Enterprise |
$29.99 |
$0.15 |
99.5% |
📅 Scaling Triggers
| Trigger |
Action |
Cost Impact |
| 100K req/day exceeded |
Upgrade Workers to Paid |
+$5/mo |
| D1 5GB limit |
Enable paid storage |
+$0.75/GB |
| R2 10GB limit |
Pay for storage |
+$0.015/GB |
| 1K+ concurrent collabs |
Scale Durable Objects |
+$50-100/mo |
| Heavy AI generation |
Add GPU instances (Fly/Replicate) |
+$100-500/mo |