amadan
docs: tier economics — the public cost-vs-price record (#664)
The living cost model behind the space-upgrade prices: input rates, formulas, per-tier profit estimates, break-even storage (the number that sets #561's quotas), and what could invert it all. The forerunner of the public ledger promised in #550 Part 11 — prices as checkable claims.
Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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| +# 🤖 Tier economics — what a space costs us, what a space pays us |
| + |
| +This is the public record of how Eleven's space-upgrade prices relate to what |
| +spaces actually cost to run. It exists because of a commitment made in #562: |
| +**the price is the cost plus resilience, and that should be a checkable |
| +claim.** When the public ledger ships (#550 Part 11), this document is the |
| +cost-model half of the books; until then it's the working version, re-derived |
| +whenever prices or input rates change. |
| + |
| +Living doc: the *formulas* are the contract; the *numbers* are a snapshot |
| +(dated below). If you're reading this to make a decision, re-derive first. |
| + |
| +## Principles (decided in #562, held here) |
| + |
| +- **Self-hosting is free forever.** The paid thing is our hosting convenience, |
| + never the software. |
| +- **We can only price what ciphertext exposes**: storage bytes, member counts, |
| + space counts. Never content, never analytics. |
| +- **Paying deanonymizes you to Stripe, not to us.** The ledger holds two opaque |
| + Stripe ids, a tier key, and a period end per paid space — no email, name, or |
| + card detail, ever. |
| +- **The free tier is first-class.** Constraints (storage quotas) ratchet later |
| + and only for *new* spaces; existing spaces keep what they have. |
| +- **AI is never bundled.** Model tokens are the one marginal cost that can |
| + dwarf a subscription; bot/AI usage is a metered add-on (design in #562). |
| + |
| +## The price book (as of 2026-07-11) |
| + |
| +| Tier | Price | Billing | |
| +|---|---|---| |
| +| Family | €5/year | annual only | |
| +| Community & Friends | €4/month or €40/year | toggle | |
| +| Business | €99/month or €999/year | toggle | |
| + |
| +What paying buys today: the space stops counting toward the account's |
| +three-space creation limit, and it is never reclaimed as unused. Per-tier |
| +powers (storage quotas, member counts) arrive with #561 and will be recorded |
| +here when they do. |
| + |
| +## Input rates (snapshot, 2026-07-11) |
| + |
| +| Input | Rate | Source | |
| +|---|---|---| |
| +| Stripe fee (EU consumer card) | 1.5% + €0.25 per charge | Stripe pricing; EUR settlement, no FX | |
| +| Attachment storage (R2) | ~€0.014/GB-month | $0.015, zero egress | |
| +| DB snapshots (S3) | ~€0.021/GB-month | $0.023 | |
| +| Box (whole cloud plane) | ~€35/month | Hetzner + fixed services | |
| +| Resident-process slot | ~€0.81/month | box ÷ 40-instance capacity | |
| + |
| +**Hibernation is live** (the activator, #550 Part 4): an idle space is an S3 |
| +prefix, not a process — its marginal cost while asleep is storage alone. |
| +A space only pays the slot rate for the fraction of time it's awake. |
| +One deliberate exception: **a space with a bot sidecar never sleeps** (the |
| +sidecar's WebSocket holds it awake) — one more reason AI usage carries its own |
| +meter instead of hiding in a flat price. |
| + |
| +## The model |
| + |
| +For a tier with gross annual revenue `G` across `n` charges/year: |
| + |
| +``` |
| +net = G − (0.25 × n) − (0.015 × G) # Stripe fees out |
| +cost = GB_stored × storage_rate × 12 # media, the only real dial |
| + + slot_rate × 12 × awake_fraction # compute while awake |
| + + ~€0.10 # wakes, requests, push (noise) |
| +profit = net − cost |
| +break_even_GB = net ÷ (storage_rate × 12) # where a space stops covering itself |
| +``` |
| + |
| +Message *text* is never material: a decade of busy family chat is ~50 MB |
| +(~€0.01/year). The only way a space outspends its price is stored media. |
| + |
| +## Estimates per tier (snapshot, 2026-07-11) |
| + |
| +Usage profiles are typical-case estimates, not caps: |
| + |
| +| Tier | Gross/yr | Net/yr | Profile (est.) | Cost/yr (est.) | Profit/yr (est.) | Margin | Break-even storage | |
| +|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |
| +| Family €5/y | €5.00 | €4.68 | 10 members, 5 GB, mostly asleep | ~€1.00 | ~€3.70 | ~74% | ~28 GB | |
| +| C&F €40/y | €40.00 | €39.15 | 40 members, 25 GB, awake ~20% | ~€6.30 | ~€32.90 | ~82% | ~230 GB | |
| +| C&F €4/m | €48.00 | €44.28 | same | ~€6.30 | ~€38.00 | ~79% | ~265 GB | |
| +| Business €999/y | €999.00 | €983.77 | 150 members, 100 GB, awake ~50% | ~€22.00 | ~€962 | ~96% | ~5.9 TB | |
| +| Business €99/m | €1,188.00 | €1,167.18 | same | ~€22.00 | ~€1,145 | ~96% | ~7 TB | |
| + |
| +Readings: |
| + |
| +- **Break-even storage is the number that matters.** A Family space must hold |
| + ~28 GB of media *forever* before €5/year stops covering it. That makes |
| + #561's storage quotas easy to set generously: ~20 GB Family, ~100–200 GB |
| + C&F, ~1–2 TB Business keeps every tier structurally unable to lose money |
| + while feeling unlimited in practice. |
| +- **Stripe's fixed fee punishes small monthly charges.** Family pays 6.5% of |
| + gross in fees on its single annual charge; a hypothetical €0.42/month |
| + Family would pay ~11×. C&F monthly hands Stripe €3.72/year vs €0.85 on |
| + annual. The picker defaults to Annual for this reason (and because a space |
| + is a years-scale commitment). |
| +- **The fixed floor is small.** The whole plane costs ~€420/year; roughly 85 |
| + Family spaces, or a dozen C&F annuals, or one Business space cover it |
| + outright. Beyond that, margin is contribution toward resilience and the |
| + co-operative endgame (#550 Part 10). |
| +- **Business margin is deliberately not an infra story.** At ~96% margin the |
| + price is buying priority support, SLAs, and features to come — not bytes. |
| + If that feels wrong when the books go public, that's the conversation the |
| + books exist to force. |
| + |
| +## What could invert these numbers |
| + |
| +1. **AI/bot usage** — excluded above by design; metered add-on or BYO key. |
| +2. **Media hoarding past break-even** — bounded by #561 quotas when they land. |
| +3. **A space that never sleeps** — bot-sidecar spaces; today that's a known |
| + subsidy, priced into the margins above. |
| +4. **Rate changes** — Stripe, R2/S3, or box pricing move; re-derive. |
| + |
| +## Re-deriving |
| + |
| +Update the two snapshot tables (input rates + estimates) and the date stamps; |
| +the formulas don't change. Current prices live in the provisioner's price book |
| +(`LCHAT_STRIPE_PRICES` on the cloud service; see |
| +`cloud-provisioner.md § Billing`); money truth lives in the Stripe dashboard; |
| +entitlement truth in the provisioner ledger. Related: #550 (architecture + |
| +public books), #561 (limits/meters), #562 (pricing decisions), #614 |
| +(member→admin subscriptions — a different product, same Stripe account). |