M4.xlarge (m4.xlarge, 4cpu, 16gb, no storage) is about $100 per month. This cpu is 7 years old(slow! and power hungry) and has 36 threads. This means it runs

M4.xlarge (m4.xlarge, 4cpu, 16gb, no storage) is about $100 per month. This cpu is 7 years old(slow! and power hungry) and has 36 threads. This means it runs 18 of these instances. The total revenue so far for one cpu is 100x18x12x7 = $150k If used as a spot instance it’s 144/month, so about 200k A standard i9-14700k gen has 32 threads, but it can run 12 of these instances (max 192mem). This CPU will cost you $800. Memory is cheap, so for about 1-2k you’re all set, and have a machine that’s way faster and cheaper. Basically, buy a bunch of NUCs and you’re saving yourself around $1500 per month per NUC. It pays itself back in 1 month Cloud hosting is —insane— Not even touching memory ballooning for mostly idle applications. Lastly, don’t give me reliability s an argument. These were all ephemeral instances that have no storage, so you’ll have to pay for that slow non-nvme storage platform.