Complete cost transparency — every dollar accounted for, every dollar beyond costs funds freedom.
These costs are shared openly because transparency matters. All revenue from The Trinity Beast subscriptions goes directly to the Cross Power Ministries of Pakistan (CPMP) bank account in Pakistan. Cory Dean Kalani, as the Administrator and Sole Support for all US operations, is reimbursed for the technology infrastructure costs listed below, plus a 10% administration fee on net revenue after technology fees. Every dollar beyond operating costs funds freedom from brick kiln debt bondage in Pakistan.
Visual breakdown of where every dollar goes after savings plans are applied. ECS compute is the largest component, followed by the database, cache layer, and development tooling.
Estimated monthly costs based on us-east-2 pricing as of April 2026. The "On-Demand" column shows what you'd pay without any commitments. The "You Pay" column reflects the net cost after all active savings plans and reservations are applied.
| Resource | Configuration | On-Demand | You Pay | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ECS Fargate (4 containers) | 4 × 8 vCPU / 32 GB, 24/7 | $1,361 | $1,033 | −$328 |
| Aurora Serverless v2 (writer + reader) | 2–18 ACU, avg ~6 ACU total (Optimized I/O) | $701 | $592 | −$109 |
| ElastiCache | cache.r7g.2xlarge, Valkey 7.2, single node | $637 | $265 | −$372 |
| ALB | Trinity-Beast-TCP-ALB + LCU | $30 | $30 | — |
| NLB | Trinity-Beast-UDP-NLB + NLCU | $25 | $25 | — |
| CloudWatch | Logs, metrics, 5 dashboards, 18 alarms | $15 | $15 | — |
| Route 53 | 5 DNS records (api, lrs, udp, www, root) | $3 | $3 | — |
| CloudFront | Global edge distribution, low traffic | $5 | $5 | — |
| WAF (CloudFront + ALB) | 2 Web ACLs, 10 managed rule groups, 2 rate-based rules | $15 | $15 | — |
| GuardDuty | Threat detection — VPC flow logs, CloudTrail, DNS analysis | $4 | $4 | — |
| Kiro AI IDE | Implementation & support — AI-powered development environment | $200 | $200 | — |
| Other | S3, ECR, Lambda, Secrets Manager, EventBridge, SES | $5 | $5 | — |
| SQS (Standard Queue) | trinity-beast-queued-usage-logs — $0.40/million messages | $1 | $1 | — |
| Total Estimated Monthly Cost | ~$2,630 | ~$2,334 | −$437/mo | |
Savings breakdown: ECS Fargate covered by two Compute Savings Plans ($0.63/hr 3-year + $0.09/hr 1-year). The 4th container (Webhook) is partially covered — the on-demand portion (~$340/mo) is offset by remaining savings plan capacity, with the uncovered balance at on-demand rates. Aurora covered by two Database Savings Plans ($0.111/hr + $0.45/hr, both 1-year). ElastiCache covered by a 3-year reserved node. All plans are No Upfront.
For ~$2,334/month (estimated with 4th webhook container — savings plans partially cover the new service), The Trinity Beast provides:
Migrated from MemoryDB db.r7g.2xlarge (primary + replica) at ~$2,383/month to ElastiCache cache.r7g.2xlarge (single node) at $637/month — saving $1,755/month ($21,060/year). Aurora is the source of truth; the cache layer is rebuilt by the nightly sync job in 16 seconds. No replica needed because cache loss is a performance event, not a data loss event.
Purchased a 3-year No Upfront reserved node for cache.r7g.2xlarge — reducing the hourly rate from $0.873 (on-demand) to $0.363 (reserved), saving $372/month ($4,464/year, $13,392 over 3 years). Zero upfront cost. Size flexibility within the r7g family means scaling up is covered by the reservation. Reservation ID: ri-2026-04-28-16-40-37-233, expires April 28, 2029.
Three savings plans purchased during initial infrastructure buildout: two Compute plans ($0.63/hr 3-year + $0.09/hr 1-year) covering ECS Fargate, and one Database plan ($0.111/hr 1-year) covering Aurora Serverless v2 ACU-hours. These were purchased before the full cost profile was understood — the 1-year plans would have been 3-year terms with higher commitments if purchased today. Combined estimated savings: ~$100–150/month across compute and database. The 1-year plans expire in early 2027 and will be replaced with properly sized 3-year commitments.
Purchased a second 1-year No Upfront Database Savings Plan at $0.45/hr ($328.50/month) to cover the growing Aurora Serverless v2 baseline ahead of subscriber and partner onboarding. Combined with the existing $0.111/hr plan, total database commitment is now $0.561/hr ($409.53/month) — covering approximately 4–5 ACU at the discounted rate. 3-year Database Savings Plans are not yet available from AWS; both 1-year plans will be re-evaluated at expiration in April 2027.
The Lambda receipt handler uses public admin endpoints (/admin/invalidate-key) instead of VPC-internal access. This avoids a $32/month NAT Gateway — a small savings that adds up, and the architectural simplicity is worth more than the dollars.
Transparency note: The Compute and initial Database savings plans were purchased early in the project before the full infrastructure cost profile was understood. The 1-year Compute plan ($0.09/hr) would have been a 3-year term with a higher commitment. The Database commitment was increased in April 2026 with an additional $0.45/hr plan to cover the growing Aurora baseline ahead of launch. 3-year Database Savings Plans are not yet offered by AWS — only 1-year terms are available. All 1-year plans expire in early-mid 2027 and will be re-evaluated based on actual production usage.
| Commitment | Type | Rate | Monthly | Term | Expires | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute Savings Plan | ECS Fargate | $0.630/hr | $459.90 | 3-year | April 2029 | ✅ Active |
| Compute Savings Plan | ECS Fargate | $0.090/hr | $65.70 | 1-year | March 2027 | ✅ Active |
| Database Savings Plan | Aurora Serverless v2 | $0.111/hr | $81.03 | 1-year | April 2027 | ✅ Active |
| Database Savings Plan | Aurora Serverless v2 | $0.450/hr | $328.50 | 1-year | April 2027 | ✅ Active |
| ElastiCache Reserved Node | cache.r7g.2xlarge (Valkey) | $0.363/hr | $264.99 | 3-year | April 2029 | ✅ Active |
Total committed: $1,200.12/mo. All plans are No Upfront. The 1-year plans (Compute $0.09/hr and Database $0.111/hr + $0.45/hr) will be re-evaluated when they expire in 2027. Note: 3-year Database Savings Plans are not currently offered by AWS — only 1-year terms are available.
| Opportunity | Potential Savings | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Increase Compute commitment at 1yr renewal (Mar 2027) | ~$50–100/mo additional | 3-year term, higher hourly commitment |
| Re-evaluate Database commitment at renewal (Apr 2027) | Size to actual production ACU baseline | 1-year term (3-year not yet available from AWS) |
| Reduce to 2 containers (off-peak) | ~$335/mo | Reduced redundancy during low traffic |
Pricing as of: April 2026, us-east-2 on-demand rates.
| Service | Rate |
|---|---|
| ECS Fargate vCPU | $0.04048/vCPU-hour |
| ECS Fargate Memory | $0.004445/GB-hour |
| Aurora Serverless v2 | $0.12/ACU-hour |
| ElastiCache cache.r7g.2xlarge | $0.363/hour (3yr reserved) |
| ALB | $0.0225/hour + $0.008/LCU-hour |
| NLB | $0.0225/hour + $0.006/NLCU-hour |
| CloudFront | $0.085/GB (first 10 TB) |
| Route 53 | $0.50/hosted zone + $0.40/M queries |
Costs exclude data transfer between AZs and to the internet. Data transfer within the same AZ is free.