Cost Optimizer

Intelligent cloud platform comparison and recommendation engine that finds the cheapest infrastructure for your requirements.

Purpose

Analyze application requirements (users, traffic, database, storage) and recommend the most cost-effective cloud platform with detailed cost breakdown and savings estimate.

When to Use

Activates when user mentions:

• "cheapest"
• "budget"
• "cost-effective"
• "compare platforms"
• "save money"
• "affordable hosting"
• "under $X/month"

What It Does

1. Analyzes Requirements:

   • Expected users (100, 1000, 10000, 100000+)
   • Traffic/requests per month
   • Database needs (type, size)
   • Storage requirements
   • Geographic distribution

2. Compares Platforms:

   • Hetzner Cloud - EU-based, budget-friendly ($5-50/mo)
   • Vercel - Global edge, serverless ($0-240/mo)
   • AWS - Full-featured, enterprise ($10-500/mo)
   • Railway - Developer-friendly ($5-100/mo)
   • Fly.io - Global, modern ($0-50/mo)
   • DigitalOcean - Simple, balanced ($6-100/mo)

3. Calculates Costs:

   • Compute (server instances, serverless functions)
   • Database (managed vs self-hosted)
   • Storage (object storage, CDN)
   • Bandwidth (egress charges)
   • Additional services (monitoring, backups)

4. Recommends Best Option:

   • Primary recommendation with rationale
   • Alternative options
   • Cost breakdown
   • Savings estimate vs alternatives
   • Trade-offs explanation

Example Usage

User: "I want to build a SaaS for 1000 users with Postgres, as cheaply as possible"

cost-optimizer:

Analyzing cost options for your SaaS...

Requirements detected:
- Users: ~1000
- Database: Postgres
- Type: Full-stack SaaS
- Priority: Cost optimization

Platform Comparison:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OPTION 1: Hetzner Cloud (RECOMMENDED) ⭐
Monthly Cost: $11.33

Breakdown:
  • CX11 server (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM): $5.83
  • Managed Postgres (2GB): $5.00
  • Storage (20GB): $0.50
  • Bandwidth: Included
  • SSL: Free (Let's Encrypt)

Pros:
  ✅ Lowest cost
  ✅ Simple, predictable pricing
  ✅ EU-based (GDPR-friendly)
  ✅ Managed database included

Cons:
  ⚠️ EU-only (no global edge)
  ⚠️ Manual scaling
  ⚠️ VM-based (not serverless)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OPTION 2: Railway
Monthly Cost: $20

Breakdown:
  • Server (512MB RAM): $5
  • Postgres (512MB): $5
  • Additional resources: $10

Pros:
  ✅ Developer-friendly
  ✅ Auto-scaling
  ✅ GitHub integration

Cons:
  ⚠️ 77% more expensive than Hetzner
  ⚠️ Can get costly at scale

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OPTION 3: Vercel + PlanetScale
Monthly Cost: $0 (Hobby) or $60 (Production)

Breakdown:
  • Vercel Hobby: Free (limited)
  • PlanetScale Hobby: Free (5GB)

  OR

  • Vercel Pro: $20
  • PlanetScale Scaler: $39
  • Total: $59

Pros:
  ✅ Global edge network
  ✅ Serverless
  ✅ Free tier available

Cons:
  ⚠️ Free tier very limited
  ⚠️ Production: 5x more expensive
  ⚠️ Vendor lock-in

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

RECOMMENDATION: Hetzner Cloud

Savings: $48.67/month vs Vercel ($584/year)

Best for:
  • Budget-conscious developers
  • EU/European audience
  • Predictable costs
  • Full control over infrastructure

Next steps:
  1. Use hetzner-provisioner skill to deploy
  2. Estimated setup time: 15 minutes
  3. Can upgrade to CX21 ($7/mo) if scaling needed

Cost Comparison Matrix

Test Cases

See test-cases/ for validation:

1. test-1-basic-comparison.yaml - Small SaaS comparison
2. test-2-budget-constraint.yaml - Stay under $20/month
3. test-3-scale-requirement.yaml - 10k users requirement

Integration

Works with:

• devops-agent - Gets requirements from strategic planning
• hetzner-provisioner - Executes recommendation
• architect-agent - Informs platform choice in architecture

Accuracy Target

• 95%+ recommendation accuracy (cost within 10% of estimate)
• 100% coverage of common SaaS scenarios
• Real-time pricing (updated quarterly)

For detailed usage, see README.md and test cases