Can confirm cloud GPU is way overpriced if you're doing 24/7 rendering. We run a bare metal cluster (not VFX but photogrammetry) and I pitched our board on the possibilities. I really did not want to run a bare metal cluster, but it just does not make sense for a low margin startup to use cloud processing.
Running 24/7 for three months, it's cheaper to buy consumer grade hardware with similar (probably better) performance. "Industrial" grade hardware (Xeon/Epyc + Quadro) it's under 12 months. We chose consumer grade bare metal.
On thing that was half surprising, half calculated in our decision was despite the operational overhead how much less stressful running your own hardware is. When we ran experimentally on the cloud, a misrender could cost us 900 euro, and sometimes we'd have to render 3 times or more for a single client. Bringing us from healthily profitable to losing money. The stress of having to get it right the first time sucked.
Running 24/7 for three months, it's cheaper to buy consumer grade hardware with similar (probably better) performance. "Industrial" grade hardware (Xeon/Epyc + Quadro) it's under 12 months. We chose consumer grade bare metal.
On thing that was half surprising, half calculated in our decision was despite the operational overhead how much less stressful running your own hardware is. When we ran experimentally on the cloud, a misrender could cost us 900 euro, and sometimes we'd have to render 3 times or more for a single client. Bringing us from healthily profitable to losing money. The stress of having to get it right the first time sucked.