Homelab vs Cloud vs Colocation: Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership

For hosting small web applications (Elixir/Phoenix stacks with low traffic), the three-year total cost varies dramatically by approach. Based on 2026 European pricing with Tallinn, Estonia electricity at €0.248/kWh: | Option | Upfront | Monthly | 3-Year Total | Trade-off | |--------|---------|---------|-------------|----------| | 4× used ThinkCentre M720q | €450 | ~€6 electricity | **€666** | Own hardware, home internet dependency | | 3× Orange Pi 5 Plus (ARM) | €300 | ~€2 electricity | **€372** | Cheapest, but ARM ecosystem constraints | | 4× Beelink EQ14 (new, N150) | €620 | ~€4 electricity | **€764** | New with warranty, capped 16GB/node | | OVH Kimsufi dedicated | €0 | ~€12–26 | **€432–936** | Zero hassle, older hardware, basic support | | Colocation (own M920q) | €150 | ~€20 | **€870** | Datacenter uptime, own hardware | | Hetzner CX53 VPS (32GB) | €0 | €32 | **€1,152** | Easy scaling, but 32GB ceiling | | Hetzner auction dedicated | €0 | ~€42 | **€1,512** | 64GB, same datacenter as existing VPS | **Key insights:** - Home hosting with used enterprise hardware wins on pure cost by a wide margin — a 4-node cluster costs roughly €20/month equivalent over 3 years - The Hetzner Server Auction runs Dutch-style pricing and offers retired-but-functional servers with 1Gbps uplink; a Helsinki auction server sits on the same private vSwitch as an existing Hetzner VPS - Colocation in Tallinn (providers include Infonet DC, EstNOC, CSpace) runs ~€26–30/month for a single mini PC including metered electricity at NordPool spot rates - The electricity cost trap: a Dell R710 rack server at 150W idle costs €328/year at Tallinn rates — the "cheap used hardware" argument only works if the hardware is energy efficient - Production Phoenix/Postgres stacks at idle consume ~150–300MB per application — 4GB of RAM comfortably runs multiple idle apps