Compare equivalent operating periods and include human work. A server line item is not a substitute for Vercel’s complete managed platform, so list every service and responsibility your team would need to replace.
Enter the Vercel side
Use the number of paid developer seats, current seat price, projected managed-infrastructure usage, applicable credit, and fixed add-ons. Vercel pricing varies by resource and region; a recent usage projection is more defensible than a generic traffic conversion.
Enter the self-hosted side
Include servers, transfer, backups, monitoring, logs, deployment services, and recurring operator time. Account for patching, alerts, restores, incidents, scaling, and release maintenance rather than counting only routine deploy minutes.
Compare capabilities after cost
Review preview deployments, CDN behavior, image optimization, WAF and DDoS controls, observability, rollback, scaling, compliance, support, team access, and recovery objectives. Record one-time migration cost separately from the monthly model.