Arxentra charges flat monthly rates with no hidden fees for bandwidth or API calls. AWS uses pay-as-you-go pricing that scales precisely but often results in unpredictable bills. For teams spending under $5,000 per month on cloud infrastructure, Arxentra typically costs 30-50% less for equivalent workloads. According to a 2025 CloudZero report, 64% of engineering teams exceed their AWS budget by at least 20% every quarter due to hidden transfer and API call costs.
This comparison uses publicly available pricing as of March 2026.
Who is this comparison for?
Q: Should I compare Arxentra and AWS if I am already on AWS?
Yes. Many teams discover that 60-80% of their AWS workloads are simple web apps, APIs, and databases that do not need the full breadth of 200+ AWS services. A 2025 Datadog survey found the average startup uses only 7 AWS services but pays the operational overhead of learning and managing a platform designed for Fortune 500 enterprises. Migrating standard workloads to a simpler platform can reduce both cost and operational overhead by 40-60%.
Q: Is this comparison fair to AWS?
We compare equivalent workloads at realistic configurations. AWS has advantages at enterprise scale that we note explicitly. Where AWS wins, we say so. Our goal is accurate total-cost-of-ownership numbers, not a marketing pitch.
Compute pricing comparison
| Spec | Arxentra Starter | Arxentra Pro | AWS EC2 t3.small | AWS EC2 t3.medium |
| vCPU | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| RAM | 1 GB | 4 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB |
| Storage | 10 GB SSD | 50 GB NVMe | 30 GB EBS (extra) | 30 GB EBS (extra) |
| Monthly cost | $5 | $20 | $15.18 + EBS | $30.37 + EBS |
| Bandwidth included | 1 TB | 5 TB | 100 GB free | 100 GB free |
| Monitoring | Included | Included | CloudWatch ($3.50+) | CloudWatch ($3.50+) |
| Load balancer | Included | Included | ALB ($16.20+) | ALB ($16.20+) |
Key insight: AWS EC2 pricing excludes storage (EBS costs $0.08/GB/month), bandwidth beyond 100 GB ($0.09/GB), CloudWatch monitoring ($3.50/month per dashboard), and load balancing (ALB starts at $16.20/month plus LCU charges). A t3.medium with 30 GB EBS, 500 GB transfer, basic monitoring, and an ALB actually costs approximately $85/month -- over 4x the listed on-demand rate.
A Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud report found that 32% of cloud spend is wasted, with AWS's complex pricing model being the primary contributor. Arxentra eliminates this by bundling monitoring, load balancing, and bandwidth into every plan.
Database pricing comparison
| Feature | Arxentra Managed PostgreSQL | AWS RDS db.t3.micro | AWS RDS db.t3.small |
| vCPU | 1 shared | 2 burstable | 2 burstable |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| Storage | 10 GB included | 20 GB ($2.30/mo) | 20 GB ($2.30/mo) |
| Automated backups | Included | 7-day free | 7-day free |
| Monthly cost | $7 | $12.41 + storage | $24.82 + storage |
| Multi-AZ option | Included | 2x price | 2x price |
| Point-in-time recovery | Included | Included | Included |
| Performance insights | Included | $0 (basic), $3.50 (detailed) | $0 (basic), $3.50 (detailed) |
AWS RDS charges separately for storage, backup retention beyond 7 days ($0.095/GB/month), data transfer out ($0.09/GB), multi-AZ deployments (doubles the instance cost), and Performance Insights at the detailed tier. A production-grade RDS setup with multi-AZ, 50 GB storage, and 30-day backup retention typically costs $75-95/month at the smallest tier. That is 10x the Arxentra equivalent for a comparable feature set.
For teams running PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MongoDB, Arxentra managed databases include automated backups, failover, and monitoring at a flat monthly rate. Review database options in detail at Services Overview.
Storage pricing comparison
| Tier | Arxentra Object Storage | AWS S3 Standard |
| First 50 GB | $0.02/GB | $0.023/GB |
| 50-500 GB | $0.018/GB | $0.022/GB |
| 500 GB-5 TB | $0.015/GB | $0.021/GB |
| API requests (per 10k PUT) | Included | $0.005 |
| API requests (per 10k GET) | Included | $0.0004 |
| Egress per GB | $0.01 | $0.09 |
S3 egress pricing is the most common source of AWS bill surprises. At 1 TB of monthly egress, AWS charges $90 in transfer fees alone. Arxentra charges $10 for the same transfer -- a 9x difference. For a SaaS application serving user-uploaded files, images, or documents, this difference compounds rapidly. A media-heavy SaaS serving 5 TB per month pays $450 in AWS egress versus $50 on Arxentra.
S3 API request costs are also frequently overlooked. A busy application making 10 million GET requests per month pays $4 in API fees on AWS. On Arxentra, API requests are included in the storage price. A 2025 Vantage report found that S3 API costs account for 15-25% of total S3 bills for applications with high request volume.
Bandwidth pricing comparison
Q: Why does bandwidth matter so much in cloud pricing?
Bandwidth (egress) is the cost of sending data from your cloud to users. AWS charges $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB. For a SaaS application serving 500 GB of API responses monthly, that is $36/month in bandwidth alone on AWS versus $5 on Arxentra. Bandwidth costs scale linearly with traffic, making them the fastest-growing line item on most AWS bills.
| Monthly egress | Arxentra cost | AWS cost | Savings |
| 100 GB | $1 | $0 (free tier) | AWS wins |
| 500 GB | $5 | $36 | 86% |
| 1 TB | $10 | $90 | 89% |
| 5 TB | $50 | $450 | 89% |
| 10 TB | $100 | $900 | 89% |
At very low egress volumes (under 100 GB), AWS's free tier is cheaper. Above 100 GB, Arxentra's flat $0.01/GB rate is consistently 86-89% less expensive.
Total cost for a typical SaaS stack
A standard SaaS application running a web server, API server, PostgreSQL database, Redis cache, and object storage with 1 TB of monthly bandwidth:
| Component | Arxentra | AWS |
| Web server (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | $20 | $30.37 |
| API server (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | $20 | $30.37 |
| PostgreSQL (2 GB, multi-AZ) | $15 | $49.64 |
| Redis cache (1 GB) | $10 | $12.17 |
| Object storage (100 GB) | $2 | $2.30 |
| Load balancer | Included | $16.20 |
| Monitoring | Included | $7.00 |
| Bandwidth (1 TB) | $10 | $90.00 |
| Monthly total | $77 | $238.05 |
| Annual total | $924 | $2,856.60 |
Arxentra saves $1,932.60 per year for this stack -- a 68% reduction. The primary drivers are bandwidth costs (9x difference) and bundled load balancing/monitoring (which add $23.20/month on AWS).
When AWS wins
Migration considerations
Q: How difficult is it to migrate from AWS to Arxentra?
For standard web applications and APIs, migration typically takes 2-4 hours. The primary steps are containerizing your application (if not already), exporting your database with pg_dump or mysqldump, and updating DNS records. Arxentra provides a migration guide that covers the process in detail.
Q: Can I run some workloads on Arxentra and some on AWS?
Yes. A hybrid approach is common. Teams often run standard web applications, APIs, and databases on Arxentra while keeping specialized workloads (ML training, real-time streaming, IoT) on AWS. Arxentra supports VPC peering with AWS for low-latency communication between platforms.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does Arxentra have a free tier?
Yes. Arxentra offers a free Starter plan with 1 container, 512 MB RAM, and 5 GB storage. This is suitable for personal projects, small bots, and development environments. AWS offers a free tier with limited hours on t2.micro instances for 12 months.
Q: How does Arxentra handle scaling?
Arxentra supports horizontal auto-scaling based on CPU, memory, and request count metrics. You set a minimum and maximum instance count, and the platform scales within those bounds. Scaling events are logged in the dashboard. AWS auto-scaling requires configuring Auto Scaling Groups, launch templates, scaling policies, and CloudWatch alarms -- a process that typically takes 1-2 hours of setup.
Q: What about reserved instance pricing on AWS?
AWS Reserved Instances offer 30-40% savings on 1-year commitments and 50-60% on 3-year commitments. However, reserved pricing requires accurate capacity forecasting, upfront payment, and management of reservations across instance families and regions. The effective discount after accounting for unused reservations averages 20-35% according to a 2025 ProsperOps analysis. Arxentra pricing is always on-demand with no commitment required.
Q: What databases does Arxentra support?
Arxentra currently supports managed PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis. MySQL support is planned for Q3 2026. All databases include automated backups, point-in-time recovery, and monitoring. See the full list at Services Overview.
Q: Is there a cost calculator?
Yes. Use the Arxentra Pricing Calculator to estimate monthly costs based on your specific requirements. The calculator includes compute, database, storage, and bandwidth components with real-time totals.
Conclusion
For teams running standard web applications, APIs, and databases at under $5,000/month in cloud spend, Arxentra offers 30-68% savings over AWS with significantly simpler operations. AWS remains the better choice for enterprise compliance requirements, specialized services, and massive-scale workloads above $50,000/month. The best approach for many teams is starting with Arxentra for standard workloads and using AWS only for services that genuinely require its breadth.
Explore the pricing page or start a free account to test with your own workloads.