What a SCOPE client costs us to host
For Kyle, 3 November 2026. Supabase costs per client, low to high, what grows with the client's use, and how to charge for it. Prices are Supabase's and Cloudflare's as of 3 November 2026, with one database per client. Confirm on the billing page before a quote goes out.
The short version
- Each client costs us $115 to $800 a month, depending on how many users they have. Most of it is fixed: the database server, and backups that can restore to any minute.
- Plus one account fee for all clients: $25 a month on Supabase Pro, or $599 on Team. Team is what gets us Supabase's SOC 2 report for a client's security review.
- Storage is cheap. People watching video is what costs. A 200-hour video library costs under $10 a month to keep; a large workforce watching it can cost $90 to $360 a month.
- Charge a fixed monthly fee by client size, plus overage on two meters: library size and video watched. Most clients will never go over.
Cost per client, by size
| Small (up to 300 users) | Mid-size (300 to 1,000) | Large (1,000 to 3,000) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Database server | $15–60 | $60–110 | $110–210 |
| Restore to any minute (7 or 14 days back) | $100–200 | $100–200 | $100–200 |
| Test copy of their setup (synthetic data) | $0–15 | $0–15 | $0–15 |
| Their own web address | $0–10 | $0–10 | $0–10 |
| Logs kept past 7 days | $0–60 | $0–60 | $0–60 |
| Second database for reports | n/a | n/a | $0–211 |
| Fixed | $115–345 | $160–395 | $210–706 |
| Photos, documents, files | $0–5 | $0–7 | $0–15 |
| Data sent to users (not video) | $0–5 | $0–15 | $0–30 |
| Company sign-in users | $0–5 | $0–15 | $0–45 |
| Grows with use | $0–15 | $0–37 | $0–90 |
| Per client, a month | $115–360 | $160–430 | $210–800 |
Low is the smallest setup we would put a paying client on. High is what we would add if the first months show it is needed or the contract asks for it. Video viewing is extra; see the training library below.
What each line is:
- Database server. Bigger as users grow. Nobody has tested SCOPE with hundreds of users yet, so the first month's Supabase reports set the real size. Moving up or down is a dashboard change and a few minutes' restart.
- Restore to any minute. Without it a restore can lose up to a day of records (daily backups only), against the 5 minutes our recovery plan promises. Requires at least the Small server.
- Test copy. A second project per client for trying releases first. $0 if clients share one.
- Web address. Only if they want the app's data address on their own domain.
- Logs past 7 days. Pro keeps 7 days, Team 28. If a contract or our SOC 2 asks for longer on Pro, it is $60 a month per client.
- Second database for reports. Only if heavy reporting slows down capture.
- Company sign-in users. Only if their single sign-on runs through Supabase: $0.015 per user who signs in that month.
The database itself is not a cost. Each client gets 8 GB included; our 24-month demo is 0.34 GB. A 1,000-user client would take more than ten years to reach 8 GB.
The training library: storage vs. viewing
Clients may bring PowerPoints, PDFs, SCORM courses and video. Keeping files costs $0.021 per GB a month. Sending them to people costs $0.09 per GB, and a video is sent in full every time someone plays it.
| What the client brings | Library size | To keep, a month |
|---|---|---|
| Documents and PowerPoints only | 1–10 GB | under $0.25 |
| Documents plus 20 hours of video | 10–40 GB | under $1 |
| 200 hours of video | 100–400 GB | $2–9 |
| A whole video catalogue | 1 TB | about $21 |
| How much they watch | Sent a month | Cost a month |
|---|---|---|
| 650 users, 4 hours of video each a year | 110–430 GB | $10–40 |
| 3,000 users, 8 hours each a year | 1–4 TB | $90–360 |
| 3,000 users all watch one 1-hour refresher in the same month | 1.5–6 TB | $135–540 |
One hour of video is about 0.5 GB at 720p and 2 GB at 1080p, so the same hour watched costs us 5 to 18 cents. Asking for 720p cuts viewing cost by half to three quarters.
Allowance and overage
Yes, it makes sense, on two meters, because they grow for different reasons. The allowances cover a typical client with room to spare. The overage prices are about double our cost and easy to put on an invoice. Both are examples; set them by the margin we want.
| Meter | Included | Over that | Our cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library size | 100 GB | $10 per 100 GB a month | $2.13 per 100 GB |
| Video watched | 250 GB a month (about 250 to 500 hours of viewing) | $20 per 100 GB | $9 per 100 GB |
Library size is mostly a guard against a client uploading raw video, and is rarely billed. Video watched is the meter that matters: tell clients in hours, bill in GB. Supabase reports storage and data sent for each client separately, so overage is billed from real numbers.
What potential clients might bring us
Three example clients. These are illustrations, not real prospects: no client has given us user counts or library sizes yet.
| Example client | Our cost a month | Overage we would bill |
|---|---|---|
| Small hauler: 200 users, documents and PowerPoints, a few short videos (5 GB) | $115–360 | $0 |
| Mid-size operator: 650 users, 20 hours of video (10–40 GB), each watches 4 hours a year | $170–470 | $0–40 |
| Large multi-site company: 3,000 users, 200 hours of video (100–400 GB), each watches 8 hours a year | $300–1,165 | $160–790 |
"Our cost" includes the client's video viewing. For the large client, the overage alone covers what their viewing costs us.
How to price it
| Charge | How |
|---|---|
| Monthly hosting fee | By size band, at or above the high fixed cost: $345 small, $395 mid-size, $706 large. Moving them to a bigger server then never eats the margin. |
| Library overage | Above 100 GB, per 100 GB a month. |
| Viewing overage | Above 250 GB a month, per 100 GB. |
| Moving up a band | When their user count crosses it, or when the server has to go up a size for a full month. |
Account fee, shared by all clients
| Clients (mid-size) | On Pro ($25) | On Team ($599) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $185–455 | $759–1,029 |
| 3 | $505–1,315 | $1,079–1,889 |
| 5 | $825–2,175 | $1,399–2,749 |
| 10 | $1,625–4,325 | $2,199–4,899 |
Team spread over clients: $599 at one, $120 each at five, $60 each at ten. Team also keeps daily backups 14 days and logs 28. Our demo databases are on Micro (1 GB memory, read from both databases' settings), and the free $10 monthly credit covers that.
For scale: Patrick's Azure estimate, as Kyle noted it on 1 October, was about $1,200 a month for dev, test and prod shared by every client, before identity, extra backups, monitoring and video.
Before the first client
- Turn off Supabase's spend cap. The 100 GB of files and 250 GB a month of data sent are shared by the whole account, not given per client. With the cap on, once they are used up, Supabase stops uploads and downloads for every client instead of charging.
- Decide on restore-to-any-minute: standard for every client, or an option; 7 or 14 days.
- Pro or Team: Team before the first security review that asks for Supabase's SOC 2 report.
- Raise our 50 MB video limit. We set it on the free plan
(
20261022120000_training_material_video.sql); Pro allows far more. 50 MB is about 5 to 10 minutes of video. Ask for 720p at the same time. - SCORM is not built yet (Tier 4 in
lms-tier-1-2-plan.md). Storing it costs the same as any file; what is missing is a player to run it. - If a client is video-heavy, a video service such as Cloudflare Stream plays smoothly on a weak signal. Its viewing cost is about the same ($1 per 1,000 minutes watched); storing there costs more ($5 per 1,000 minutes a month: $60 for 200 hours versus about $9). Linking to the client's own video host costs us nothing and already works.
- Correct
soc2-readiness.md(OW-3, ORG-32): the project is on Micro, not Nano.
What is measured and what is assumed
- Measured: our demo database (338 MB: safety records 126 MB, routes and finance 129 MB, the demo's reset copy 62 MB), both databases' memory settings, and the change history's size (about 360 bytes per change).
- From Supabase and Cloudflare: every price, 8 GB per project, the shared account allowances, the Small minimum for restore-to-any-minute, and how replicas, log drains and the spend cap are billed.
- Assumed: client sizes, which server size each band needs, file and video volumes, how much people watch, and whether sign-in runs through Supabase. The 65 sites and 650 users in earlier notes come from Kyle's notes of Patrick's review, describing an unnamed plastics processor.
- Not included: Vercel, AI, email, our own time. If client data moves to Patrick's Azure setup, these Supabase numbers do not apply.
Sources: Supabase pricing, compute, disk, backups, read replicas, log drains, billing, spend cap, upload limits, Cloudflare Stream.