What a managed database costs across compute, storage and IO.
Database bills are dominated by compute, so right-sizing the instance and adding replicas only when needed beats micro-optimising storage. Compare a raw VM on the container hosting calculator.
The Database Hosting Cost Calculator estimates your total monthly database bill by combining three line items: the fixed instance cost (the compute you pay per month), the storage cost (your storage in GB multiplied by the price per GB per month), and the backup cost (backup volume in GB multiplied by its per-GB rate). Adding these together gives a single recurring figure. The main drivers are your instance tier and, as data grows, storage and backup volume — the two variable inputs that quietly increase every month even when the instance size stays the same.
The key trade-off to watch is storage and backup creep. An instance price looks fixed, but retained backups and expanding tables compound over time, and managed providers often price backup storage separately from primary storage. Before committing, adjust the storage and backup GB inputs to reflect realistic growth over the next year, not just today's footprint. That shows whether a managed service's convenience is worth its markup versus the operational effort of self-hosting the same workload.
Mostly the instance size (vCPU and RAM), then storage and backups, then options like replicas, multi-AZ failover and provisioned IOPS. Managed services add a premium over self-hosting for handling patching and failover.
Managed saves engineering time on backups, upgrades and failover — worth the premium for most teams. Self-hosting on a plain VM is cheaper per GB but you own the on-call. The right answer depends on your team, not just the price.