Self-hosted Feature Flags ROI Calculator: 10-minute Worksheet for Finance Approval
This page contains a copyable worksheet for calculating the ROI of migrating from a SaaS feature flag platform to FeatBit. All assumptions are explicit and adjustable. Designed to produce numbers your finance team can validate and a payback period your CFO can approve.
TL;DR
- ▸SaaS feature flag pricing usually compounds across six independent billing axes: seats or feature tiers, request or CDN traffic, MAU, service connections, logs/eval/experiment metrics, and enterprise governance features.
- ▸At 50 engineers the real all-in bill is ~$3,800/mo — not the seat-only number shown on the pricing page.
- ▸Service connections scale with your infrastructure, request meters scale with your delivery model, and MAU or event fees scale with product success. All three grow independently of seat count.
- ▸Mid-org annual savings: ~$34,500/yr (payback ~4 mo). Enterprise: ~$130,000/yr (payback ~2 mo). Self-hosting eliminates all six axes simultaneously.
Assumptions
All numbers in this worksheet are based on the following assumptions. Replace with your actuals.
| Variable | Small team | Mid org | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineers using flags | 15 | 50 | 150 |
| Backend services | 5 | 30 | 80 |
| Avg pods per service | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Total service connections | 10 | 90 | 240 |
| Monthly active users (MAU) | 10k | 100k | 1M+ |
| Flag evaluations /mo | 5M | 50M | 500M+ |
| Active flag count | 30 | 150 | 600 |
| Fully-loaded eng rate ($/hr) | $150 | $150 | $150 |
| Cloud region | us-east-1 | us-east-1 | multi-region |
SaaS Cost Inputs
Enter your current SaaS spend below. Use your last invoice or contract total for accuracy.
| Cost item | Small (~15 eng) | Mid (~50 eng) | Enterprise (150 eng) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ① Seats / feature tiers /mo | $300 | $1,500 | $4,500 |
| ② Requests / CDN traffic /mo | $80 | $250 | $1,200 |
| ③ MAU /mo | $50 | $200 | $800 |
| ④ Service connections /mo (pods × $12) | $120 | $1,080 | $2,880 |
| ⑤ Logs / eval events / metrics /mo | $30 | $300 | $1,000 |
| ⑥ Governance / compliance tier /mo | $120 | $500 | $2,000 |
| Total SaaS cost /mo | $700 | $3,830 | $12,380 |
| Total SaaS cost /year | $8,400 | $45,960 | $148,560 |
Self-host Cost Inputs
| Cost item | Small (~15 eng) | Mid (~50 eng) | Enterprise (150 eng) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infra (Postgres + FeatBit services) /mo | $70 | $130 | $380 |
| Ops labor @ $150/hr /mo | $300 | $450 | $750 |
| Monitoring / alerting /mo | $20 | $40 | $100 |
| License (FeatBit Enterprise) /mo | ~$333 | ~$333 | ~$333 |
| Total self-host cost /mo | $723 | $953 | $1,563 |
| Total self-host cost /year | $8,676 | $11,436 | $18,760 |
| Migration one-time cost (optional) | $4,500 | $9,000 | $22,500 |
Migration cost = 2-wk eng (small), 3-wk (mid), 5-wk (enterprise) at $150/hr fully loaded. Amortize over 3 years if required for approval. FeatBit Enterprise Standard starts at $3,999/year — one price, all-inclusive (fine-grained RBAC, SSO, audit log, priority support). Community Edition (MIT open-source) is available free for teams that do not need enterprise governance features.
ROI Summary Table
| Metric | Small | Mid | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual SaaS cost (all axes) | $8,400 | $45,960 | $148,560 |
| of which: service connections ④ | $1,440 | $12,960 | $34,560 |
| of which: seats + governance ①⑥ | $5,040 | $24,000 | $78,000 |
| Annual self-host cost | $8,676 | $11,436 | $18,760 |
| Annual gross savings | −$276 | $34,524 | $129,800 |
| Migration one-time cost (optional) | $4,500 | $9,000 | $22,500 |
| Net savings — year 1 | −$4,776 | $25,524 | $107,300 |
| Net savings — year 2 | −$5,052 | $60,048 | $237,100 |
| Net savings — year 3 | −$5,328 | $94,572 | $366,900 |
| Simple payback period | not cost-driven | ~4 mo | ~2 mo |
Interpreting the Numbers
Small teams (≤20 engineers): not cost-driven — data ownership case
With FeatBit Enterprise at $3,999/yr included, self-host totals ~$8,676/yr vs ~$8,400/yr SaaS — marginally more expensive. The financial case for self-hosting at small scale is not cost savings; it is data sovereignty, no vendor lock-in, and building operational muscle before you scale. Teams that are comfortable with Community Edition (free, MIT) do have a positive cost case, but if you need SSO and fine-grained RBAC the honest answer is: cost-neutral, governance-driven.
Mid organizations (30–80 engineers): ~$34,500/year savings, ~4 month payback
Full SaaS bill reaches roughly $3,800/mo once seats or feature tiers ($1,500), service connections ($1,080), request traffic ($250), MAU ($200), event volume ($300), and governance requirements ($500) are included. Against $953/mo self-host cost (including Enterprise license), annual gross savings are roughly $34,500. $9,000 migration cost recovered in about 4 months. A clear finance approval case.
Enterprise (100+ engineers): ~$130,000/year savings, ~2 month payback
Six billing axes compound to ~$12,380/mo SaaS spend: seats or feature tiers ($4,500) + request traffic ($1,200) + MAU ($800) + service connections ($2,880) + logs and metrics ($1,000) + governance/compliance ($2,000). Total SaaS ~$148,500/year vs $18,760 self-hosted (including FeatBit Enterprise at $3,999/yr). $22,500 migration recovered in under 2 months. 3-year net savings exceed $366,000.
FAQ
How do I present this to a CFO who has never seen a "feature flag" before?
Frame it as: we currently pay a SaaS subscription made up of seats, traffic meters, and governance features. We can run the equivalent self-hosted platform on our existing cloud infrastructure for $Y/mo including maintenance. Switching saves $Z/year with a payback period of N months. No reduction in engineering capabilities.
Should I include the risk of self-hosting in the ROI model?
Yes. Add a risk cost line: estimated cost of one additional P2 incident per year attributable to infrastructure management = 4h ops × $150/hr = $600/year. This is a realistic downside to acknowledge and is dwarfed by the savings at mid-to-enterprise scale.
Can I use these numbers in a budget request?
These figures are illustrative estimates. Replace all inputs with your actual SaaS invoice summary, your actual cloud instance costs for the proposed infrastructure, and your actual engineer hourly rate for the ops time estimate. The structure of the model is valid; the numbers are placeholders.