AWS Hosting · Elastic by Design

Start at pilot price.
Grow without re-architecting.

The entire platform is defined as 9 CDK stacks built on serverless, pay-per-request services. A real-world pilot runs for roughly the price of a phone contract — and the same architecture carries 100,000 users with nothing re-built, because almost every component bills by usage, not by being switched on.

01The Hosting Picture

One serverless architecture, every scale

Each box is one of the deployed CDK stacks. Green-bordered services bill per request / per GB (they cost ~nothing while idle); amber-bordered services have a small fixed monthly floor.

flowchart TB
    subgraph EDGE["CdnStack - global edge"]
        CF["CloudFront CDN
per-GB transfer"]
    end

    subgraph API["ApiStack"]
        APIGW["API Gateway
~220 routes - per request"]
        L["14 Lambda functions
per ms of compute"]
    end

    subgraph AUTHS["AuthStack"]
        COG["Cognito
free < 10k MAU"]
    end

    subgraph DATA["StorageStack + DatabaseStack + CacheStack"]
        DDB[("DynamoDB
on-demand - per request")]
        S3["S3 + Glacier
per GB - archive $1/TB"]
        AUR[("Aurora Serverless v2
scales 0.5-128 ACU")]
        VAL["ElastiCache Valkey
t4g.micro ~$12/mo"]
    end

    subgraph MEDIA["MediaStack"]
        MC["MediaConvert
per video-minute"]
        TR["Transcribe
per audio-minute"]
    end

    subgraph EVENTS["Scheduled + async"]
        EB["EventBridge
capsule unlocks - hourly"]
        SQS["SQS queues
per message"]
    end

    subgraph OBS["MonitoringStack"]
        CW["CloudWatch
dashboards + alarms"]
    end

    U["📱 iOS · Android · Web"] --> CF
    CF --> APIGW
    APIGW --> COG
    APIGW --> L
    L --> DDB
    L --> S3
    L --> AUR
    L --> VAL
    S3 --> MC
    MC --> S3
    S3 --> TR
    EB --> SQS --> L
    L -.-> CW

    style U fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style CF fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style APIGW fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style L fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style COG fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style DDB fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style S3 fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style MC fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style TR fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style SQS fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style EB fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style AUR fill:#14262a,stroke:#fbbf24,color:#fde68a
    style VAL fill:#14262a,stroke:#fbbf24,color:#fde68a
    style CW fill:#14262a,stroke:#fbbf24,color:#fde68a

NetworkStack uses VPC endpoints instead of NAT gateways — avoiding the classic ~$35/mo-per-AZ fixed cost that quietly dominates small serverless bills.

02Why It's Elastic

Idle costs almost nothing; busy costs in proportion

flowchart LR
    A["🌙 Quiet pilot day
a few hundred requests"] -->|"Lambda + DynamoDB +
API GW bill ~cents"| B["Floor: ~$60-90/mo
Aurora min ACU + Valkey
+ CloudWatch basics"]
    C["🚀 Launch-day spike
1000x traffic"] -->|"same stacks scale
automatically, no deploy"| D["Bill rises with usage,
falls back after the spike"]

    style A fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style B fill:#14262a,stroke:#fbbf24,color:#fde68a
    style C fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style D fill:#0e3b2e,stroke:#4ade80,stroke-width:2px,color:#e8f4f0

The only "always-on" line items at pilot are the Aurora Serverless floor, the $12 Valkey cache node, and monitoring. Everything else — compute, storage, transcoding, delivery — is strictly pay-per-use.

03Indicative Monthly Costs

From a lean pilot to 100k active users

Indicative figures from the platform cost model (single region, video-heavy usage assumptions). The Lean Pilot trims the fixed layer — basic monitoring, Aurora auto-pause, no WAF — which is exactly how you'd run 10-30 real test families.

START HERE ~100 active users

Lean Pilot

~$160/mo

~$1.60 per active user

10-30 real families
Aurora auto-pause, basic monitoring
Full feature set incl. capsules + video
Cognito free tier covers all users

~1,000 active users

Early Growth

~$850/mo

~$0.85 per active user

Full monitoring + alarms
Media pipeline at volume
No architecture changes

~10,000 active users

Scale

~$3,200/mo

~$0.32 per active user

Aurora ACUs scale with load
S3 Intelligent-Tiering kicks in
Ad + subscription revenue offsets

~100,000 active users

Mature

~$18,000/mo

~$0.18 per active user

Storage becomes the main line
Glacier Deep Archive for capsules
Multi-AZ / multi-region option

Service	Lean Pilot (100)	1,000	10,000	100,000
Lambda compute	$5	$50	$300	$2,000
API Gateway	$3	$25	$150	$1,200
DynamoDB (on-demand)	$10	$50	$400	$2,800
S3 + Glacier storage	$5	$50	$500	$4,500
CloudFront delivery	$8	$100	$600	$3,500
MediaConvert + Transcribe	$15	$150	$700	$2,500
Aurora Serverless v2	$25	$90	$180	$450
ElastiCache Valkey	$12	$12	$50	$200
Cognito	$0	$0	$0	$280
Monitoring + misc (SES, SNS)	$77	$323	$320	$570
Total / month	~$160	~$850	~$3,200	~$18,000
Per active user	$1.60	$0.85	$0.32	$0.18

Indicative, single-region, video-heavy assumptions — consistent with the full cost model in the dev portal. At 100k users, $0.18/user/month is comfortably covered by opt-in advertising or minimal subscription revenue.

04The Growth Path

Scaling triggers, not migrations

Growing is configuration, not re-architecture. Each step is a dial turned, with the trigger that tells you when.

flowchart LR
    P["🌱 Lean Pilot
~$160/mo"] -->|"> 500 active users:
enable full alarms + WAF"| G["📈 Growth
~$850/mo"]
    G -->|"> 5k users: raise Aurora
max ACU - S3 tiering on"| S["🏗️ Scale
~$3.2k/mo"]
    S -->|"> 50k users: Multi-AZ,
Glacier Deep Archive,
reserved capacity savings"| M["🌍 Mature
~$18k/mo"]
    M -.->|"international launch"| R["Multi-region
data sovereignty"]

    style P fill:#0e3b2e,stroke:#4ade80,stroke-width:2px,color:#e8f4f0
    style G fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style S fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style M fill:#14262a,stroke:#34d399,color:#e8f4f0
    style R fill:#14262a,stroke:#8aa6a0,color:#8aa6a0

Deploy is one command per environment: ./scripts/deploy.sh dev deploy — the same 9 stacks, parameterised per stage.

Start at pilot price.Grow without re-architecting.