cloud cost calculator
Cloud pricing terms
Cloud pricing pages are full of precise terms that are easy to misread during early planning. This guide explains the terms Stratos uses so the calculator output is easier to interpret and challenge.
The definitions are written for comparison work, not procurement law. Provider contracts, product documentation, and billing exports remain the source of truth for a final purchase or migration plan.
On-demand or pay-as-you-go pricing is the public rate for usage without a long-term commitment. It is a good neutral starting point because it does not require account-specific discounts, but it is rarely the final optimized price for steady production workloads.
A vCPU is the virtual CPU unit exposed by most VM services. Equal vCPU counts do not guarantee identical performance, so Stratos treats vCPU as a sizing input and exposes processor preference and selected meter details where possible.
OCI uses OCPU for many compute shapes. Stratos converts vCPU to OCPU with 1 OCPU = 2 vCPU so users can enter one workload size while still seeing the OCI equivalent.
GB-month is storage capacity billed over time. A 500 GB volume kept for one full month is 500 GB-months. A stopped VM can still incur GB-month storage charges if the disk remains provisioned.
Balanced SSD is a practical middle category for general-purpose block volumes. Provider products differ in included IOPS, throughput, durability, and rounding, so the selected meter should be reviewed when the workload is storage-sensitive.
Performance SSD usually targets workloads that need higher IOPS or throughput. The comparison can change quickly when a provider charges separately for provisioned performance, disk size tiers, or throughput settings.
Hot, cold, infrequent, and archive storage classes trade access cost, retrieval behavior, and minimum-retention expectations against stored-data price. A low storage rate can be misleading if data is frequently read or restored.
Windows PAYGO means the operating system license is included in the cloud usage price when the provider exposes that meter. Stratos separates OS/license cost from base compute when the pricing data supports it.
BYOL means the user brings an eligible license. In Stratos, this removes customer-owned license cost from the estimate. The calculator does not determine whether a license is valid for a specific provider or deployment model.
A region family is a broad geography used for comparison when exact provider regions differ. It helps users compare roughly equivalent locations while still showing the actual provider region code selected by the calculator.
Commitments can reduce compute cost in exchange for term, spend, or usage obligations. Stratos labels commitment modes as illustrative because real discounts depend on provider programs, accounts, terms, and eligible resources.
Private discounts are account-specific rates negotiated with a provider or partner. They are intentionally excluded from the public calculator because they are not visible in generic public price files.
Reading an estimate
A lower monthly number is a starting signal, not a final answer. Check whether the provider result used exact CPU and memory, whether storage was rounded to a tier, whether Windows licensing was included, and whether the selected region is acceptable for latency, compliance, and operations.
Also check what is outside the estimate. A workload with heavy egress, managed database usage, backups, monitoring, or enterprise support can change ranking after surrounding services are added. Stratos keeps those excluded items visible so users do not mistake a focused VM comparison for a full bill forecast.