// tools/lora-hosting-calculator
LoRA Hosting Cost Calculator
Building a SaaS that serves personalized images? Each customer LoRA needs to be hosted, routed, and served. This tool calculates the real infrastructure cost — VRAM constraints, GPU count, and when managed platforms beat DIY.
Flux LoRAs: 150–700 MB each (avg ~500 MB)
LoRAs
LoRAs per GPU
28
24GB − 10GB base = 14GB free
GPUs to keep all loaded
1
RTX 4090 × 1 on RunPod
Compute / mo (DIY)
$245
No team cost included
Total DIY (compute + team)
$8,245
Including $8,000/mo overhead
DIY — all LoRAs loaded
$8,245
per month
GPU compute$245
Team overhead$8,000
RTX 4090 × 11 GPU
Pros
Zero per-image overhead · Full control · Cheapest compute at scale
Cons
Need to build LoRA routing · Manage GPU health · Cold restarts · DevOps overhead
Runflow
recommended~$490
estimated / month · contact for quote
Compute (est.)~$490
Team overhead$0
LoRA routingincluded
LoRA limitunlimited
Pros
Automatic hot-swapping · No VRAM planning · Enterprise SLA · Any number of LoRAs
Cons
Higher compute cost vs raw GPU · Less control over hardware
Per-image API
$750
per month · 30,000 images
Providerfal.ai
Rate$0.025/image
Team overhead$0
Pros
Zero infra · Pay only for images generated · No LoRA count limits
Cons
Cost scales linearly with volume · Less control over pipeline
The LoRA hosting math
VRAM reality check
Flux Dev base model takes 10GB. Each LoRA adds ~0.5GB. A single RTX 4090 (24GB) fits 28 LoRAs simultaneously.
The hidden cost of DIY
DIY compute alone is $245/mo. Add an AI infra engineer and that becomes $8,245/mo. Runflow eliminates the engineering overhead entirely — no LoRA routing to build, no GPU restarts to handle, no scaling to manage.
DIY costs assume 24/7 GPU rental at RunPod rates · LoRA VRAM based on Flux LoRAs: 150–700 MB each (avg ~500 MB) · GPU Cost Calculator →