Replacing $23/month in SaaS subscriptions (Google One 2TB + 1Password + Plex Pass) with a $170 mini PC drawing 15W idle breaks even in about 9 months. Replacing $10/month in Google storage with an $800 server never pays back.
Both answers come out of the self-hosting break-even calculator on my site. The gap between them is the argument. What you're replacing is the most important variable.
The ongoing side still has a bill
Self-hosting doesn't cost zero after the hardware. For a minimal stack it looks like this:
| Cost item | Typical amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity | $1–4/mo | 10–30W idle × 24/7 at $0.184/kWh |
| Backblaze B2 backup | $0.60–2/mo | ~100–300GB after deduplication |
| Domain name | $1–1.25/mo | $12–15/yr amortized |
| Total ongoing | $3–7/mo | Before hardware amortization |
Electricity is the biggest line. Its rate matters more than most guides acknowledge. The default is $0.184/kWh, the EIA May 2026 US residential average, where a 15W mini PC running 24/7 costs about $24/year, while at $0.13/kWh (roughly the cheapest US states, Idaho and Utah, in EIA's May 2026 residential table) the same box costs about $17/year and at California's $0.333/kWh it costs about $44/year. Use the rate on your own bill.
Two questions, kept apart on purpose
The calculator answers two different questions from the same inputs. The monthly self-host figure and the year-by-year table amortize the hardware over the lifetime you pick, so a $300 mini PC used for 5 years costs $5/month in hardware amortization and the same box used for 7 years costs $3.57/month. Break-even treats the hardware as upfront instead. It's the number of months of operating savings (SaaS cost minus electricity, maintenance and backup, with hardware amortization excluded) that it takes to recoup the purchase price.
Here are the calculator's own outputs for its defaults: Google One 2TB at $9.99/mo, Plex Pass at $6.99/mo and 1Password Families at $5.99/mo, a 5-year lifetime, 15 W idle, $0.184/kWh, $15/yr maintenance and Backblaze B2 at $1.20/mo. Only the hardware changes.
| Hardware | SaaS / month | Self-host / month | Monthly savings | Break-even | 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $300 mini PC (default) | $22.97 | $9.46 | +$13.51 | 1.4 yr | +$810 |
| $170 N150 mini PC | $22.97 | $7.30 | +$15.67 | 9 mo | +$940 |
On the $170 box the ongoing costs come to about $4.50/month (electricity $2.01, maintenance $1.25, off-site backup $1.20), or about $7.30/month once the $170 is spread over five years.
When the answer is "Never"
Now the $800 server against $10/month of Google storage. It never pays back. The operating savings alone would need about 12 years, more than two 5-year hardware lifetimes, so the calculator returns "Never" rather than a payback date.
That's deliberate. When break-even lands past the hardware lifetime you selected, the tool reports "Never", because a payback you can only reach after buying a replacement machine is not a payback. It's the same condition as the monthly-savings figure going negative.
Flip the inputs and it gets quick. Replacing $50/month in cloud subscriptions with a $200 mini PC breaks even in under 5 months.
What's worth replacing
The clear wins, where self-hosting is dramatically cheaper and reliable:
- Vaultwarden for 1Password Families or Bitwarden Premium
- Jellyfin for Plex Pass, with no transcoding session limits
- Uptime Kuma for UptimeRobot Solo
- Immich for Google One 2TB storage, if you have local storage
Nextcloud (for Dropbox or Google Drive) and n8n (for Zapier) are viable but take more effort. Nextcloud needs maintenance, and n8n has a steeper setup curve.
I'd keep paying for three things. Email, because of deliverability problems from residential IPs and high maintenance. CDN and DDoS protection, which aren't worth running yourself. Calendar sync, which is too fragile for too little savings.
Where the defaults are assumptions
The subscription presets use the vendors' published list prices at capture time. Plans change.
So confirm the current price before deciding, and treat the rest of the defaults the same way. The $0.184/kWh default is an average; your bill's effective rate is the number to use. The 15 W idle draw, $15/year maintenance and $1.20/month backup are my working assumptions for a small mini-PC stack, stated so you can replace them with your own measured numbers. The six hardware presets are street-price estimates for a class of machine. They are not quotes for a named SKU, and they aren't sourced the way the subscription prices are. Type in what you actually paid.
First published on my site, techfuelhq.com. AI agents adapted this post from that page, and every number here is copied from it.
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