The main cost is using a third-party to scale and serve photos, about $11k. Case study: https://www.imgix.com/case-studies/unsplash https://www.imgix.com/case-

The main cost is using a third-party to scale and serve photos, about $11k. Case study: https://www.imgix.com/case-studies/unsplash https://www.imgix.com/case-studies/unsplash According to which Unsplash is serving 350 million image requests per month. That seems reasonable, given the scale of the operation. Any alternative would have to come underneath that price point, while providing the same reliability/benefits. That's a hard task, and definitely a major devops and development undertaking. This write up was informative - the optimal solution very rarely comes down to just dollars and cents. In fact I'd trust Unsplash _less_ if they moved from a good, solid system to rolling their own, just to save a few thousand per month.