Ran AWS CodeBuild for a production monorepo for 18 months. The bill started to look like a ransom note.
The "surprise" wasn't the per-minute cost, but the sheer accumulation of compute minutes from trivial tasks. Our `package-lock.json` changed? That's a 12-minute full install/build for a frontend PR. No layer caching across accounts seemed to work reliably. The config looked clean though:
```yaml
phases:
install:
runtime-versions:
nodejs: 18
commands:
- npm ci
build:
commands:
- npm run build
```
But the performance was dog slow compared to a decent self-hosted runner. And the cost for a mid-sized team? Let's just say you could run a small k8s cluster for the same monthly burn.
Anyone else done the math and jumped ship to self-hosted or another managed service? Specifically interested in the crossover point where the invoiced compute minutes become painful.