True Cost Comparison vs Hyperscalers (Academic & Enterprise Tiers)

myresearchcloud.ca vs Hyperscaler Committed Cloud

This comparison assumes:

  • Sustained academic workload

  • 1:1 physical core allocation

  • 4 GB RAM per vCPU

  • 8 GB SSD + 6 GB HDD per vCPU

  • 3-year commitment

  • Enterprise-grade reliability

myresearchcloud.ca (3-Year Commitment)

  • Each vCPU includes:

    • 1 dedicated physical Cascade Lake core

    • 4 GB RAM

    • 8 GB replicated enterprise SSD

    • 6 GB replicated HDD

    • Cross-rack Ceph redundancy

    • 25Gb networking

    • No egress fees

    • No IOPS tiers

    • No overage billing

    Total: $20.08 per vCPU per month

    Predictable monthly invoice.
    No variable components.

Hyperscaler (3-Year Commitment)

  • To approximate the same sustained workload and reliability:

    Customer must use:

    • Non-burst instance class (e.g., m6i / c6i equivalent)

    • Separate EBS storage

    • Enterprise support tier

    • Multi-AZ durability (to match replication)

    • Data transfer headroom

Realistic Effective Cost Per vCPU Per Month

Compute (deep commitment):
$29–36

Storage (SSD + HDD equivalent):
$1–3

Enterprise support allocation:
$1–3

Data transfer allocation:
$1–5

Realistic effective total: $33–40 per vCPU per month

Storage and transfer charges fluctuate monthly.

If True 1:1 Physical Isolation Is Required

To guarantee hardware isolation comparable to myresearchcloud’s 1:1 core allocation, a customer must use:

  • Dedicated host
    or

  • Bare metal instances

Effective per-core pricing typically increases to:

$40–70 per vCPU per month

1:1 Physical Core
myresearchcloud.ca
Yes
Hyperscaler
No (unless dedicated host)
Storage Included
myresearchcloud.ca
Yes
Hyperscaler
No
Replication Included
myresearchcloud.ca
Yes
Hyperscaler
Additional cost (multi-AZ)
IOPS Tiering
myresearchcloud.ca
No
Hyperscaler
Yes
Egress Fees
myresearchcloud.ca
No
Hyperscaler
Yes
Predictable Invoice
myresearchcloud.ca
Yes
Hyperscaler
No (variable line items)
Effective Monthly Cost
myresearchcloud.ca
$20 per vCPU
Hyperscaler
$33–40 per vCPU

What This Means for Academic Projects

For sustained research workloads:

myresearchcloud.ca is typically 40–50% less expensive than equivalent hyperscaler committed pricing.

If hardware isolation is required:

myresearchcloud.ca can be 50–65% less expensive.

Positioning Statement

myresearchcloud.ca is designed for:

  • Predictable grant budgeting

  • Deterministic research compute

  • Sovereign Canadian infrastructure

  • Stable long-running workloads

It is infrastructure — not elastic retail cloud.