Moderate to move
Pub/Sub on DigitalOcean: what it becomes and what it costs.
On DigitalOcean, Pub/Sub becomes NATS JetStream / Redpanda on DigitalOcean Droplets, or a DigitalOcean managed database. Pub/sub ports; push subscriptions and GCP integrations need rework.
Effort grade
Moderate
Same software, self-hosted: you patch, back up and fix it
Cost after the move, before engineer time
30% of today
$40 per TiB published and delivered; NATS JetStream on a CX33 (€8.49) carries most workloads, about 30%.
Engineer time
6 h a month
To run the replacement: patching, backups, on-call. Plus about 5 engineer days for the move itself.
Other ways to replace it
The report lets you pick any of these per service; the figure and the grade follow.
Redpanda Cloud or Confluent Cloud (BYOC)
Kafka protocol run by the vendor on servers you rent: no brokers to own; publishers and subscribers move to Kafka clients.
90% of today · Moderate
Your own Pub/Sub line, from your export
Drop one month of your Google Cloud cost export and the report prices every service, Pub/Sub included, on DigitalOcean list prices of 18 Oct 2026, net of the engineer time to run it. In your browser; nothing is uploaded.