Maaz Ullah Khan Warsi

Honestly, depends entirely on scale — but let me break it down realistically. **Early stage (0–10K users):** - Single VM or small Kubernetes node: ~$20–80/month - Database (PostgreSQL/managed): ~$20–50/month - Object storage for images/videos (S3/GCS): ~$5–20/month depending on usage - CDN: basically free at low volume - **Total: ~$50–150/month** **Growth stage (10K–100K users):** - Multiple nodes, managed DB with replicas, Redis cache, CDN properly configured - **Total: ~$500–2,000/month** **Instagram-scale (millions of users):** - You're looking at millions per month — GPU clusters for ML feeds, massive CDN costs, multi-region replication, the works. Not even close to relevant unless you're funded. The real killer isn't compute — it's **storage and bandwidth** for media. Images and videos eat money fast. My advice? Start boring-reliable: 1. One containerized app on a single node 2. Managed Postgres (don't self-host DBs early) 3. S3 for media + CloudFront/Cloudflare in front 4. Scale when you actually need to What's your stack looking like? Are you building this solo or with a team?