The AWS tax on AI is real
AWS was supposed to make infrastructure cheaper. Instead it became a $600B tax on GPUs, tokens, and bandwidth. SageMaker, Bedrock, NAT, and $0.09/GB for pulling weights — 10–100× what the hardware costs.
We ran Eulerpool, a financial data platform serving millions of requests. Our cloud bill was $7,370/month on Fly.io + Vercel. When we migrated to bare metal, it dropped to $460/month.
That's $82,920 saved per year. Same performance. Same uptime. Actually better latency.
The Numbers
Here's what you actually pay for equivalent compute across providers:
| Spec | RAW | AWS EC2 | Fly.io | Render | DigitalOcean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU · 4 GB | $0 FREE | $34 | $62 | $85 | $24 |
| 4 vCPU · 8 GB | $11 | $105 | $124 | $175 | $48 |
| 8 vCPU · 16 GB | $21 | $209 | $248 | $450 | $96 |
| 16 vCPU · 32 GB | $36 | $522 | $496 | — | $192 |
| 32 vCPU · 128 GB | $279 | $1,152 | — | — | — |
Prices as of April 2026. RAW uses dedicated bare metal infrastructure.
Why Is Cloud So Expensive?
Three reasons:
- Abstraction tax. Every layer of abstraction (containers, serverless, managed services) adds margin. You're paying for convenience you might not need.
- Egress fees. AWS charges $0.09/GB for outbound data. A server pushing 1TB/month? That's $90 just for bandwidth. RAW and bare metal: $0.
- Complexity premium. AWS has 200+ services. You need a consultant to understand the bill. That complexity is by design — it creates lock-in.
When Bare Metal Wins
- You need predictable, flat-rate pricing
- You want full root access and control
- Your workload is CPU or memory intensive (AI/ML, databases, builds)
- You're spending >$100/month on cloud
- You hate surprise bills
When Cloud Wins
To be fair, managed cloud services win when:
- You need serverless/auto-scaling (though most apps don't)
- You need 15+ regions globally
- You have enterprise compliance requirements (SOC2, HIPAA) that require specific certifications
- Your team has zero ops experience and no desire to learn
Try It Yourself
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