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[Question] How much does Matrix homeserver cost on average? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello, How much does a small matrix server that I and my friends can use cost on average? I will also set up Whatsapp, Signal and Discord bridge on the server.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A basic VPS will only work for a while as they are usually SSD space limited and Matrix likes to blow up it's database size. Of course it depends on the usage and what rooms your users join, and there are some ways to partially scrub the database, but all in all Matrix server costs tend to increase over time.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

usually SSD space limited and Matrix likes to blow up it’s database size.

Since v1.61, the Synapse Matrix home server (which I guess you mean with "Matrix" in this case) has gotten new controls to keep the media directory smaller and you can run synapse_janitor SQL commands to reduce the DB size.

all in all Matrix server costs tend to increase over time.

This is correct.

My database of a server running since 2018 or so is about 57GiB in size and I didn't compact it for about a year now. The media directory is 21GiB in size, however I limit uploads to 10MiB.

I guess a server with 100GiB of SSD space is plenty enough if you don't join the largest rooms with >20,000 members. A server with 480GiB RAID-1 costs you about 24€ at kimsufi.com, so that's what I'd plan for to run a Matrix system with a pleasant experience. You still have to do backups, of course, which adds another 10-15€ per month…

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that fits to the general experience, although maybe worth mentioning that you really need SSD space or otherwise Synapse will be super slow. Also don't cheap out on RAM, as Synapse will easily take 1-2GB just for itself.

It has certainly gotten better, but I still wonder if it is worth it in the end. A XMPP server with similar functionality takes 10-100 times less resources (i.e. happily runs on a 5€/month VPS) and is pretty much maintenance free after setting it up. But of course the bridging situation is a bit better Matrix side right now and joining Matrix rooms through xmpp is not the best experience either (but there is a fork of the official xmpp<->matrix bridge that is improving a lot lately).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It has certainly gotten better, but I still wonder if it is worth it in the end. A XMPP server with similar functionality takes 10-100 times less resources

Yep, that's why I suggested Dendrite. It's in beta, so not 100% functional yet, but way lighter on resources.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Synapse has been very much optimized lately. Dendrite won't save space on media. Probably not on database, and it hasn't been optimized for small memory use yet.

"for instance Synapse uses 5-10x less RAM than it used to (my personal federated server is only using 145MB of RAM atm!" - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

How does that compare to Dendrite?

Synapse uses 5-10x less RAM than it used to

That's impossible. Maybe it uses 1/5th or 1/10th of the RAM. But if you use 5 times less, that is 500% less, which would amount to Synapse downloading the system 4 times more RAM than it used to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, it's an unfortunate expression, but not mine, so I didn't edit when quoting.

Dendrite is still trying to reach spec compliance. IIUC they haven't spent much effort on optimizing resource use.