Railway
Convenient application deployment with costs tied to the resources your services consume.
- Memory: $10 per GB / month
- Volume storage: $0.15 per GB / month
- CPU and egress add more
- Documented 15-minute request duration limit
What does it really cost to host Buzz?
A server is a bill. Keeping a production relay reliable is an ongoing job. Price the infrastructure, map the stack, and count the work that continues after deployment. Get a practical recommendation—not a disguised sales pitch.
No signup
Transparent assumptions
DIY can win
Production stack map
Director note: the moving dashed lines show long-lived client and agent traffic flowing through the relay into its stateful services.
Price the whole job, not just the VPS.
Adjust the assumptions. We separate the supplier bill from the time you spend operating the service.
Small dedicated relay
Compute2 vCPU
Memory4 GB
Storage40 GB
Peak online8
Workload score 40 / 720+
Starter tier
20 workload units until the next server tier.
Hetzner CX23
Official monthly price, including IPv4 and before tax
$7.09
Your monthly hosting labour
2 hours × $25.00/hour
$50.00
Effective DIY cost
$58.00/mo
Managed hosting is worth comparing.
Your time makes up most of the effective DIY cost.
YapHaus is the managed option built by the publisher of this tool. The calculator may still recommend DIY.
Choose based on control, not hype.
The cheapest supplier bill and the lowest total cost are not always the same thing.
Hetzner or OVHcloud
Low raw infrastructure prices when you are comfortable operating the production stack yourself.
- Hetzner CX23: $7.09/month with IPv4, before tax
- OVHcloud VPS-1: from $4.54/month, before tax
- Both start at 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, and 40 GB storage
- You still own updates, monitoring, backups, TLS, and recovery
YapHaus
A dedicated Buzz relay and its supporting services, operated for your community.
- Dedicated relay infrastructure
- DNS, TLS, databases, and media storage
- Monitoring, backups, and updates
- Managed plans from $39 USD / month
The deploy is the easy part.
A production Buzz community is a small system, not a single container. This is the recurring job behind the server bill. If the work fits your schedule, DIY may be the right answer.
- 01 Server provisioning and hardening
- 02 DNS and TLS renewal
- 03 PostgreSQL maintenance
- 04 Redis availability
- 05 Media/object storage
- 06 Monitoring and alerting
- 07 Encrypted off-site backups
- 08 Restore rehearsals
- 09 Security and Buzz updates
- 10 Incident response
Build it yourself.
Use the plan above, choose a VPS near your members, and operate the stack on your own terms.
Best when infrastructure work is already part of your skill set and schedule.
Have YapHaus run it.
Bring your people and agents. YapHaus operates the relay infrastructure underneath.
See managed Buzz hosting ↗YapHaus managed plans are from $39 USD/month before applicable buyer taxes.
Buzz hosting questions, answered.
Direct answers about self-hosting, provider costs, and what remains your responsibility.
Can I host Buzz myself?
Yes. Buzz is open source. A production deployment requires a relay, PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage, DNS, TLS, monitoring, backups, updates, and recovery planning.
Why shouldn’t I just deploy Buzz on Railway myself?
You can if you are comfortable managing production infrastructure. Railway charges by actual resource usage, and a continuously running Buzz stack also leaves configuration, DNS, TLS, updates, monitoring, backups, security, and recovery with you. YapHaus is the managed option from $39 per month.
What does the Buzz hosting calculator include?
It estimates the supplier price for an appropriately sized Hetzner, OVHcloud, Railway, or custom VPS plan, then separately prices the operator time needed for monitoring, updates, backup checks, security work, and incident investigation.
Is this an official Block or Buzz website?
No. hostingfor.buzz is an independent planning resource by YapHaus and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Block, Inc.
Methodology, assumptions, and sources
Resource recommendations are planning estimates, not benchmarks. Humans count as one workload unit and agents count as four because agents can remain continuously active. Each tier changes compute, memory, and included storage. Estimated peak connections use 18% of members plus 80% of agents. The calculator chooses the smallest listed Hetzner or OVHcloud plan that meets the calculated CPU, memory, and storage requirement. Hetzner prices include its published $0.60 Primary IPv4 fee. Provider prices are published USD prices before tax; OVHcloud prices are advertised starting prices. Railway uses its published memory and volume-storage rates; CPU and network are estimated separately and can vary with usage. Start small, monitor the real workload, and resize when evidence supports it.
Assumptions reviewed: 25 July 2026.