Cloud vs. on-premises: 5-year cost calculator.

Comparing the real 5-year cost, not just the sticker price.

Deciding whether to keep a physical server on-site or move to the cloud usually comes down to cost, but the real comparison is harder than it looks. On-premises costs show up as one big expense every few years, hardware, plus smaller recurring costs for backup, power, and maintenance that are easy to forget when you're only looking at the price tag of a new server. Cloud costs are the opposite: a smaller, predictable line item every month, but it recurs every month for five years and can add up to more than people expect.

This calculator lets you plug in your own numbers for both sides, hardware and setup costs, ongoing maintenance and power for on-premises, or per-machine monthly cost and migration fees for cloud, and totals each option over five years so you're comparing like with like. If you don't know what a comparable cloud VM actually costs, use the Azure or AWS pricing calculators linked below to get a real number instead of guessing.

The result is a starting point, not the whole decision. Cost alone doesn't capture downtime risk, data-loss risk, or how well either option fits your specific applications, read the linked explainer before deciding on price alone.