Four Ways to Stand Up a Studio

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Four ways to stand up a studio,
priced against each other.

Rent it, buy it, run it in the cloud, or split the difference — with the power bills and bandwidth floors that usually get left out.

Published — measured or primary source, cited on the line Yours — we ask, because only you know it
There is no third category. Where a number does not exist in a source we could check, this tool asks you for it rather than filling it in. That means the buy column stays blank until you put a real quote in — we would rather show you nothing than a plausible figure we made up. Component prices we did verify are listed further down as a starting point for getting quotes.
Your numbers — the buy and cloud columns need these

Every field here was previously a figure we invented. No published source exists for any of them, so they are now yours to supply. Leave one at zero and the column below will tell you it is incomplete rather than quietly guessing.

Office space and furniture are excluded — price those in the Studio Budget Builder, since they are the same across the rent, buy and hybrid columns.

Evidence, not curves

What we could actually verify about buying

We looked for a residual-value study for GPU workstations. None exists that we could find. So instead of drawing a depreciation curve, here are the individual observations, and you decide what they mean for your resale field above.

The part nobody budgets

Physical plant

Every one of these is measured or published. They apply to any column that keeps hardware in a building you pay for.

Every source

Where these numbers come from

Every figure this tool uses is listed in our public data register with its source, the date we retrieved it, and a confidence grade assigned by who published it — not by how sure we feel. Where no source exists that we could stand behind, the tool asks you instead of filling in a number. Twelve figures were removed for exactly that reason, and they are listed too.

Free and informational. Not tax, legal, accounting or engineering advice, and not a quote — a binding quote comes from us in writing. Third-party figures belong to their publishers and can change without notice to us. Verify before you commit money. Found an error? Tell us and we will fix it.

See the data register →
A · Primary B · Measured C · Verified 2nd D · Our price