Your actual infrastructure costs. Compared directly.
A structured 36-month TCO framework for engineering managers, CFOs, and procurement teams evaluating TomatoRTC against hosted RTC platforms. All figures use AWS us-east-1 list pricing (June 2026), single-region.
TCO components
Three line items make up your total cost.
The same license tier applies to both self-managed and managed deployments. Infrastructure and operations are where the paths diverge.
Required for both self-managed and managed deployments. Same tier either way — Starter, Business, or Enterprise.
Self-managed: your account, your bill. Managed: pass-through at cost. Signaling, SFU, TURN, egress, database.
Self-managed: your team bears the ops burden. Managed: +monthly ops fee. STT/LLM/TTS provider costs are not included.
Sizing basis
Three profiles used throughout this guide.
SFU topology assumed for all profiles. Mesh topology reduces server costs at Small scale.
Note
Profile A · Small
Starter License — 50 CCU, 720p, single region.
At 50 CCU, TomatoRTC crosses below hosted per-minute pricing around month 12–18 depending on growth rate. Self-managed stays well below the managed option at this scale.
$28k/yr license + ~$306/mo infra
+$3,500/mo ops fee on top of infra
$28,000/yr · t3.large signaling, c6i.xlarge SFU
$0.004/min · 50 CCU · 4h/day · 22 days
Profile B · Medium
Business License — 500 CCU, HA pair, two SFU nodes.
Self-managed TomatoRTC breaks below hosted RTC per-minute cost from roughly month 3 onward at 500 CCU sustained usage. HA signaling pair, Redis, and Aurora included.
$84k/yr license + ~$1,581/mo infra
+$6,500/mo ops fee on top of infra
$84,000/yr · 2× c6i.2xlarge SFU, HA TURN
$0.004/min · 500 CCU · 4h/day · 22 days
Profile C · Large
Enterprise License — 5,000 CCU, autoscale SFU fleet, multi-region ready.
Enterprise includes unlimited regions. Multi-region (3 regions) adds approximately 2.6× infra cost. Reserved instances reduce monthly infra by 30–60% versus list prices shown here.
$220k/yr license + ~$9,677/mo infra (mid)
$220,000/yr · 4-node signaling cluster
$2,000–$6,000/mo avg · ~40 TB egress
3 regions · unlimited regions at Enterprise tier
36-month comparison
Cumulative cost diverges significantly at Medium and above.
Hosted per-minute fees compound linearly with usage. TomatoRTC's flat license means cost growth decelerates as the license becomes a smaller share of a growing total.
Note
When TomatoRTC wins
Four conditions that make TomatoRTC the lower-TCO choice.
The crossover point varies by profile, but the pattern is consistent: flat license beats compounding per-minute costs at sustained scale.
- Sustained high CCU Hosted per-minute fees scale linearly with usage. TomatoRTC license is flat — cost per session falls as usage grows.
- Platform engineering capacity You operate the stack and skip the managed ops fee. Self-managed is the highest-margin deployment path.
- Features hosted platforms can't sell Full audit chain, custom AI workers, air-gap deployment, E2EE with your own keys — no add-on tier unlocks these.
- Replacing multiple vendors Twilio Video + TURN + separate AI pipeline → one licensed platform. License cost consolidation changes the math.
When hosted wins
Three situations where hosted RTC is likely the right economic choice.
TomatoRTC is not the right fit for every team. Knowing the real gaps is part of buying well.
TomatoRTC fits
- ✓ Sustained high CCU with predictable usage patterns
- ✓ Team with platform engineering bandwidth
- ✓ Compliance needs: audit chain, tenant isolation, data residency
Hosted fits better
- ✗ Bursty or low-usage products where CCU peaks are rare
- ✗ No engineering capacity to manage infrastructure or upgrades
- ✗ Needs turnkey production-native media parity today — TomatoRTC native signaling foundations ship, but media maturity varies
Sensitivity notes
Four variables that can move these estimates materially.
The profiles above use conservative midpoint assumptions. Each factor below can shift monthly cost by 30–400% in the direction noted.
The largest variable. Heavy relay-only deployments (STUN-blocked enterprise networks) can 2–4× cost estimates. Model your relay ratio before committing to a profile.
STT/LLM/TTS provider API costs depend entirely on provider pricing and call volume. These are not in the tables above — add them separately via BYO provider.
1-year reserved: ~30–40% discount. 3-year reserved: ~50–60% discount. Production deployments with committed usage will see materially lower monthly infra.
3-region Enterprise deployment: ~2.6× infra cost due to per-region SFU and TURN fleets. Shared global control plane keeps overhead bounded. Enterprise license includes unlimited regions.
SOC 2 evidence kit (+$35k/yr) is excluded from default TCO tables — add when procurement requires structured audit evidence. See /certification-readiness/.
Get your TCO estimate.
- 1 Run the sizing worksheet
Use the three profiles above as starting points. Estimate your CCU peak, relay ratio, and whether your team will self-manage or use our managed option.
- 2 Talk to a technical account manager
We'll validate the estimate against your specific topology, usage pattern, and compliance requirements — no commitment required.
- 3 Start with Starter
Deploy locally in 15 minutes. Run the kitchen-sink demo. Upgrade when your production usage warrants it.