I am trying to capture costs for starting into homelab/selfhosting.
VPNs, search engines, absolutely everything and anything.
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Domain is about $15/yr
Email for my domain is $20/yr
VPN is about $50/yr
Yeah thats… Pretty much it for me.
Unless we want to include donations? But that doesnt fit the word “subscription” IMO.
For a stretch, subscription should include every rent seeking expenses(not specifically for homelabbing); house rent, water, electricity, gas, phone, internet, monthly bus pass etc etc
Oh most of those I go pay as you go. Instead of a bus pass I cycle and pay for new bikes as required.
Which email host do you use? I can’t decide which one to go for. I want something like migadu but they seem a bit scary with their message limits. The other option I have in mind is purelymail but I don’t know if I trust them yet
My domain’s registrar is namecheap, i tried their email on a whim, i’ve had no complaints in the 7ish years I’ve been using them. Privateemail.com
I checked it out, looks like they don’t support catch all and have an artifical limitation on “aliases”
For me, I think I would like to have catch all working without paying too much
I’m pretty sure they do support catch all, because that’s what I have. Or at least they used to and I’m grandfathered in.
looked it up, seems like a quick setting:
I’m pretty sure I have the cheapest, one email address option with catch-all. I didn’t set up any aliases.
Ooh, thanks for this. Yeah, I got confused by the pricing page
When marketing is directed towards normies and not nerds.
Not who you replied ti, but I’ve been on purelymail for about a year and a half. No complaints. $10.yr is great, and their billing statements claim I could be around $3/year if I switched to their advanced billing. I have nagging concern that they’re hosted on AWS, and if your goal is to completely free yourself of US tech giants, then purelymail won’t.
Thanks for the input! Yeah, I haven’t heard of any bad experience with them. Maybe I just need to take the leap of faith. Although the ownership change recently was a bit concerning but it seems like the operation quality hasn’t reduced
There are subscription costs for homelabbing?
Electricity. Off-site backup. FOSS project donations. Thigh-high socks. Domains.
Thigh-high socks
They’ve even put programmer socks behind subscriptions, world is a fuck
Planned obsolescence means that the thigh high socks degrade quickly, forcing consumers to purchase new pairs more often than they really need too. The fabrics are now less resistant to excessive sweat, moisture, and oils. Shrinkflation also means you get less sock for the same amount of money, increasing the margins for the sock megacorporations. Additionally, the missing sock ghost (who routinely steals socks from a pairs leaving victims with just the one) has struck a deal with Big Programmer Socks to increase the number of lost sock pairs over time in exchange for a large share of the profits.
the missing sock ghost
This guy I have beef with. Also the missing keys fairy.
The socks, oh jesus the socks. So much money.
Electricity $200 Off-site backup $130 FOSS project donations $800 Thigh-high socks $3600 Domains £150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
Im good at the economy. If you turn off the electricity you have an extra $300 for your Thigh-high socks
I hear of VPS and VPN, then there is domains and loads I dont know about.
Hosting for two:
- Domain - $300/yr (it’s a great domain, don’t judge me.)
- Proton Duo - $180/yr
- Kagi Duo - $168/yr
- Nabu Casa (Home Assistant) - $65/yr
- Donations to FOSS projects & initiatives - $250/yr
- Lingering security camera subscription (next to go) - $120/yr
- ISP Unlimited Data - $600/yr gofuckyourselfISP
- Typical added network load ~50W - $131/yr
- ~10yr Hardware Upgrades - $200/yr
I just upgraded my home storage setup, so offsite backup is now running at my parents house, saving me ~$250/yr (but probably costing them ~$50/yr in added utility costs)
Kagi Duo
I understand the concept, free search engines aren’t free, but I’m just not there yet enough to pay for a search engine. I don’t have ads on my network period, haven’t in decades. I also filter heavily through pFsense and other means. So, while I am admittedly still contributing somewhat to a major search engine, at the very least I have still retained most of my data, and search results must be selected with prudence.
I hear you! I was on the same boat - I had telemetry locked down as much as possible, but I eventually got tired of the arms race and decided to give Kagi a spin.
Took a while to commit but a big selling point was being able to bring my very non-technical wife along for the ride.
If you’re interested, try something like searxng and route it through a VPN or vps.
I do run a Searxng private instance and love it.
and here I thought the idea was to avoid to have subscriptions 🤣
Yearly:
- ~80€ for 6 domains (using all of them)
- 125€ electricity (480kWh, 0,26€/kWh)
- 540€ VPSes (joint projects where other admins have access, not entirely paid by myself though, still planning to migrate one of them into homelab)
Not counting ISP since we have that anyways.
0.26€/kWh? Jeez I thought $0.14 CAD during peak was bad
Wow… In Italy the average for households is 0.28-0.33
Our green party is and was historically the main anti-nuclear power sponsor
Yeah it’s like that in Europe. Part of it is covered by my mini photovoltaic (600Wp), but that’s not enough.
I was tempted to say $0, but then I thought harder about the problem.
Technically I do have ongoing costs
- PAYG costs for Usenet-news (iirc, $22USD for 500GB block)
https://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=home
- News indexer (I think…$60 every 5 years?)
Electricity (whatever tiny amount raspberry pi sips). At a guess, maybe $50/yr.
So, amortised over time - very low but not zero. In theory, if I dropped Usenet, it would even lower. And theoretically, I could run the pi off a single solar panel and a diy solar kit but I’m not busy pretending to be Robinson Crusoe just yet. Though… It might be a cool project.
This is why torrents are better! I torrent the highest quality files I can find so I’d blow through that 500gb quickly.
Unlimited Usenet plans are pretty cheap to depending on sales.
Edit to add: I’m not a quality snob, but I’d probably blow through 500GB way too quickly.
Use to last me 2-3 months… but my media library is more or less complete now, with little churn. Also, I don’t ever go above 1080p.
I need to check if Radarr / Sonarr works with straight torrents (it must do; I haven’t used them for ages / have been using 1337 manually, but I seem to recall torrents being a source).
Debatable :) Torrents rely on seeders. I’ve downloaded movies and TV shows >5 yrs since initial upload via Usenet. Yes, things expire there too (eventually), but when the getting is good, it’s uniformly good / fast.
OTOH, 1337 has been pretty decent to me of late.
It’s tricky. On one hand, Jellyfin and the arr stack are what got me into self hosting. OTOH…torrents are simpler - I can plug my external SSD directly into my router, which streams to NovaPlayer on any android device - nothing else needed. Want a new show / movie? Grab the torrent, punt it across to ssd via samba share. It auto populates.
https://github.com/nova-video-player/aos-AVP
It’s…simpler. Arguably more elegant / less moving parts.
Dunno.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i’m on two private trackers that aren’t that hard to get into and I routinely download 10 plus year old 50 - 100 gb files with good seeds. I have never run into something not decently seeded since I went private.
Which trackers if you don’t mind saying? DM me if easier.
Would love to hear about these trackers too!
Usenet…boy that brings back some memories from back in the day. Surprised that it seems to still be going strong.
Yarrr! But it really mostly is Yarr these days. So don’t go firing up Trumpet winsock to check Forte Agent :)
Things just seemed…simpler back then.
They were, I think. Or we were just younger.
Ahh yeah. Good ol winaock. DLL. Just copy the DLL and magically these programs are connected???
I remember it being a touch more …analog…back in the day. ATDT commands and all.
But yeah, Win 3.11+ trumpet winsock and Free Agent were the shit. Rec.martial.arts was home back then (along with mIRC).
Lemmy reminds me a bit of the old Usenet fora.
People still hang on IRC :). Shoot people still use mIRC among other venerable clients.
$50/year electrical bill for a Pi?!
Nevermind, I just did some back of the napkin math and came out around 35 a year if I was running one full power 24/7, so yeah, that is the right ballpark guess for a maximum.
Yeah, same. Though at 3-5W … it really is just a very rough guess. Lemme ShitGPT it. Oh, I was way off
A realistic Pi 4B-only estimate is about A$8–A$12 per year in electricity, assuming it is on 24/7 and used for Jellyfin streaming around 10–12 hours per week.
Pi 4B measurements are typically around 2.7–2.85 W at idle, about 5.1 W under moderate server load, and around 6.4 W under full CPU stress. Using Perth/WA’s Synergy Home Plan A1 energy charge of 32.3719 c/kWh, excluding the daily supply charge, that works out very cheaply because the device uses only about 25–36 kWh/year.
Scenario Assumed usage Annual energy Approx. annual cost
Mostly idle 3 W 24/7 26.3 kWh A$8.51/year Idle + 12h/wk Jellyfin 2.7 W idle, 5.1 W streaming 25.1 kWh A$8.14/year Heavier Jellyfin/server use 2.7 W idle, 6.4 W streaming 26.0 kWh A$8.40/year Conservative wall-power estimate 4 W idle, 6.4 W streaming 36.5 kWh A$11.83/year
The bigger swing factor is storage, not the Pi. A USB SSD adds very little; a USB-powered 2.5" hard drive might add a few dollars per year; a powered 3.5" external drive left spinning 24/7 could push the total more into the A$15–A$30/year range.
So, for the Raspberry Pi 4B itself as a Jellyfin box: roughly A$10/year is a good mental estimate.
I went off the power supply maximum output. 5.1 volts, 3 amps, so 15 watts per hour. 24hrs per day, 365 days a year, so 131,400 watt-hours, or 131kilowatt-hours. My electricity is about $0.25/kwh (advertised at 0.09/kwh, but when you add on bullshit fees, the final rate is much higher), so I came up with $32.85 as the maximum amount any device connected to that power supply could cost.
Yep. But that would be 100% CPU, 100% of the time? Real life, it’s probably closer to 2w idle and maybe 5-7W under typical load.
More interesting…I think that technically means you could make a “UPS” for it using what…4xAA batteries?
Oh man…that would be cool. Stupid but cool.
A realistic Pi 4B-only estimate is about A$8–A$12 per year in electricity
That’s about what I calculated for my locale. Roughly $0.30–$0.85 per month, around $0.48/month at 4 W. Which is remarkable especially given what you can run on one.
Agree. I know the Pi’s are out of favour these days…but they are a cool little machine. I got mine running DietPi and a bunch o crap (the usuals - JF, arr stack, pi hole, syncthing, yadda yadda) and running headless the footprint (power and memory wise) is tiny.
I joked about the 4xAA batteries thing but iirc, there is actually a Pi-HAT that creates a micro UPS that’ll run the pi for maybe three to five hours just on double A batteries.
Edit: yep
https://pimodules.com/product/ups-pico-hv4-0-advanced
or more sensibly
I’ve got a drawer full of various models I’ve picked up here and there, mostly used that people were selling. I stumbled across a yard sale once where a guy and his son were selling a lot of computer equipment to raise money for his son to get some newer stuff for college. There was a whole box of them, maybe 10+ and I paid $100 for all of them. I use them from time to time for different projects. Good little learning boards.
Aside from domain costs, I don’t pay for any extra services in regards to my homelab. I pay for email as well because I don’t want to manage that.
VPNs, search engines, absolutely everything and anything.
WiresharkWireguard (VPN): free- SearxNG (Search Engine): free
- Equipment: widely varies
The whole idea of selfhosting is to cut out corporate subscriptions and to retain your privacy, security, anonymity, and data.
If the VPN is for phoning home, of course there’s free client and server software.
But if it’s for spoofing a different location, you either get found out, or you have to pay.
I wanna live in a world where I do not pay for anything but there is stuff that you can only really get if you pay.
But if it’s for spoofing
Yeah. I just thu that in there thinking that in as an example. Of course, you’re right, you’d get clinked.
Wireshark has to be a typo right? I never knew the packet capture program did that.
Ahhh fuck Wireguard. This old brain is not functioning today.
To be fair, Wireshark is a far more memorable name than Wireguard. Sharks are very cool!
I am very concerned about selfhosting and exposing my network to the internet. I thought people had VPS etc.
A VPS is a Virtual Private Server, such as one would rent from a provider like digitalocean.com com or similar. Most of the crew here run their homelab off of equipment located in their residence. If a VPS is the path you’d like to take, then that would be a subscription. If you have equipment in your physical possession, that is yet another path. Either way, security is of utmost importance.
Tailscale being an alternative to a VPS then?
Tailscale is a layer on top of wireguard and is a VPN. Don’t open your home to the outside world, that’s just asking for trouble.
Tailscale is a great choice for you at this stage for accessing your stuff from anywhere and not worrying about anyone else. Downside is if Tailscale decides to enshittify some day you (a lot of us) will have to figure what our next move is.
For the casual and/or beginner, it really is an excellent service even at the free tier.
Tailscale is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is different than a VPS (Virtual Private Server).
ETA: Oops. I see your question has been answered multiple times. It seems you are a beginner at selfhosting and trying to get a grip on what’s necessary to start and trying to wrap your brain around all the acronyms. There is absolutely no shame in being a beginner. Everyone in this community was a beginner at some point in their life. So, don’t be bashful about asking questions. I’ve found the folks here to be patient and helpful.
Tailscale is a kind of VPN (virtual private network) not a VPS (virtual private server).
Do you mean a VPN? Tailscale has a free tier, or you can run a headscale instance on whatever hardware you like.
For my homelab:
Mullvad: ~$6/month Domain: $8/year
And whatever cost for electricity for running a singular mini PC, Pi4, and my synology.
Cost isn’t much.
Domain for $8 a year and 300Mbps fiber for $45 a month which snake ass AT&T keeps increasing in 5 dollar increments, so thank you for reminding me to call Spectrum for a quote so I can then call AT&T and harass them into giving me the correct price for another year.
AT&T just bought my fiber provider
call Spectrum for a quote so I can then call AT&T and harass them into giving me the correct price for another year.
It’s a shitty business model. Over the years I’ve found that in order to get the most out of Spectrum it is necessary to be a royal asshole and live in their phones. Here in this locale, Spectrum contracted with the local schools to be their ISP, so Spectrum became a utility just like water, power, etc. We even have a complaint form on our official county’s website to facilitate being a royal asshole when necessary.
$6.50 for nabu casa (home assistant cloud)
Domain was £50 for 10 years.
Usenet is £25 every 12 months.
Scaleway for a backup is about £1 a month.Then I pay £10 a month for ente.io. I have all my familys on my account and I don’t want to be in charge of self hosting it.
I pay for
My domain: $75 for 5 years
Usenet newsgroup access: $75 a year
Internet: $100 a month.
Domain only. Maybe $20 a year. Selfhosting email and VPN.
I don’t think you need too many subscriptions for self-hosting. Just the domain. And that’s only if you want to be fancy. You can just use an IP address. Or services like Netbird give you a free domain (
whatever.netbird.cloud). Uh, what else. Uh, the electricity subscription? My server idles at about 70w. It runs 24/7. (Netbird and Tailscale are free options for creating VPNs.)That’s kinda the point of self-hosting that you don’t have subscriptions.
starting into homelab/selfhosting.
There is a 1-time up-front cost though. You need to acquire hardware and right now AI is messing everything up. Hardware is at an all time high. Maybe you can find more affordable used hardware somewhere.
