# The Three-Cost-Center Problem: A Worked Pricing Example

> Hosting + seats + identity: price a 3-user, 5-app setup on Render/Railway plus WorkOS/Clerk/Auth0 plus Retool-style seats, and watch the twentieth tool die in a spreadsheet.

Published: 2026-09-19  
Canonical: https://agentcell.dev/resources/stitching-paas-plus-auth-guide  
Markdown: https://agentcell.dev/resources/stitching-paas-plus-auth-guide.md

> **TL;DR:** Nobody prices per-*app* at near-zero marginal cost with sharing and auth included. A small team pays for hosting, plus builder seats, plus identity — three unrelated cost centers for what should be one small bundle. This guide prices a concrete setup three ways so you can feel the arithmetic that kills tool #20.

## The scenario

A 6-person ops pod. Five small tools (reconciler, metric dashboard, sprint tracker, hiring pipeline, demo prototype). Each tool has 3–4 users; audiences overlap but differ. Traffic: opened a few times a week each. Run the numbers for one year.

## Option A: simple PaaS + auth vendor (the stitch)

| Line item | Math | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting (Render Starter × 5, always-on for sanity) | 5 × $7/mo | $420 |
| Identity (WorkOS, one SSO connection) | $125/mo | $1,500 |
| Builder time (wiring + maintaining auth in 5 apps) | ~2 days/app setup + upkeep | Unbilled but real |
| **Total cash** | | **~$1,920/yr** |

Swap Clerk Business ($300/mo → $3,600/yr) or Auth0 B2B ($150/mo → $1,800/yr) and the shape holds: identity dominates hosting by 3–8×, for *three users*. Add tool #6–20 and hosting scales linearly while identity stays flat — but every new tool repeats the auth-integration work, and nobody does that setup ten times.

## Option B: internal-tools platform (the seats)

| Line item | Math | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Retool Business, 2 builders | 2 × ~$55/mo | ~$1,320 |
| End users | (viewers often extra past tiers) | +? |
| Tools #6–20 | Rebuilt as components, if they fit | Unbilled but real |
| **Total cash** | | **~$1,320+/yr** |

Cheaper cash, different ceiling: only component-shaped tools fit, arbitrary agent-written code doesn't, and per-editor billing (Airtable bills every editor monthly regardless of activity; Power Apps $20/user) punishes exactly the 2-user tools. The fiftieth small tool never gets built here.

## Option C: per-cell consumption + bundled identity (the thesis)

| Line item | Math | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Five cells, 3 active-ish, 2 mostly asleep | Consumed vCPU + requests only | Small — the bill reflects the three, not the five |
| Identity (front door + share lists) | Bundled in org plan | Flat, no per-connection cliff |
| Auth code in apps | Zero — verified user at the boundary | None |
| Tools #6–20 | Idle ≈ free; sharing = a list change | ~Nothing until opened |

No final prices published yet — the shape is the claim, not any number: marginal cost of one more app near zero, org sign-in at the bottom of the pricing page. (Why consumption alone can't carry *our* revenue either: [scale-to-zero economics](/resources/scale-to-zero-economics/) states the org-plan hypothesis openly.)

## The decision tree

1. **Audience public or self-authed, steady traffic?** Simple PaaS (Railway/Render/Fly) — cheapest, no identity needed.
2. **CRUD-over-SQL inside components, governance this quarter?** Retool et al — pay the seats, get the audit.
3. **Bespoke agent-built tools, different tiny audiences, 5–20 of them?** That's the gap: per-app hosting steps plus enterprise-floored identity is 3–8× overkill, and per-seat rebuilds don't fit the code. This is the workload AgentCell prices for.
4. **Regulated production, horizontal scale, own-metal requirement?** None of the above — dedicated platforms (and our explicit non-fits list).

## FAQ

**Are these numbers exact?**
Illustrative from mid-2026 public pricing — verify before budgeting. The *ratios* (identity dominating hosting; per-seat exceeding tool value) are the durable point.

**What kills tool #20 in each option?**
A: repeating auth integration. B: seat fees exceeding a 2-user tool's value. C (thesis): nothing — that's the test the model must pass.

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