# Provenance stamped 2026-10-07 (roadmap#943): written by an API Evangelist sweep (undated — the file carries no date and git cannot supply one), not
# harvested from the provider. `method: generated` so the economics campaign may replace it with a
# dated, verbatim transcription; every figure below is unverified until it does.
# Coverage demoted 2026-10-07 (roadmap#942, PLAN.md Stage A): this file was written by an API Evangelist
# sweep and names no billing unit, meters or pricing category read from the provider — it restates the
# FinOps framework. It is `x-coverage: unmeasured`, and the FOCUS alignment it claimed has been removed.
x-coverage: unmeasured
method: generated
finops:
  overview: >-
    IPFS itself is an open-source protocol with no licensing fees. The primary
    cost drivers are infrastructure (self-hosted nodes or cloud VMs), storage,
    bandwidth, and optionally commercial pinning or gateway services for
    persistence and availability SLAs. The IPFS Foundation's public gateways
    and delegated routing endpoint are provided free as community utilities but
    are not suitable for production workloads.

  costDrivers:
    - name: Self-Hosted Node Infrastructure
      description: >-
        Running a Kubo node requires a server or VM. Costs depend on cloud
        provider, instance size, and region. A minimal node requires at minimum
        2 GB RAM and a fast SSD; production nodes benefit from 8+ GB RAM and
        high-IOPS storage.
      estimatedCost: $5–$100+/month depending on hosting provider and node size

    - name: Storage
      description: >-
        IPFS nodes store a local datastore (blocks) plus any pinned content.
        Storage costs are proportional to the amount of content pinned. Cloud
        block storage (EBS, GCS Persistent Disk) or dedicated NVMe drives are
        common choices.
      estimatedCost: $0.08–$0.25/GB/month (cloud block storage)

    - name: Bandwidth / Egress
      description: >-
        IPFS participates in a P2P network; nodes transfer data both to serve
        requests and to participate in bitswap. Cloud egress fees can be
        significant for high-traffic nodes. Inbound traffic is typically free
        from cloud providers.
      estimatedCost: $0.05–$0.12/GB egress (varies by cloud provider and region)

    - name: Commercial Pinning Services
      description: >-
        Third-party pinning services (Pinata, Filebase, Web3.Storage, Infura
        IPFS, Lighthouse) provide persistent storage with SLAs, dedicated
        gateways, and CDN acceleration. Pricing models vary; most offer a free
        tier.
      providers:
        - name: Pinata
          url: https://pinata.cloud/pricing
          freeTier: 1 GB storage, 100 files
          paidPlans: From $20/month (Picante) with more storage and bandwidth

        - name: Filebase
          url: https://filebase.com/pricing
          freeTier: 5 GB storage
          paidPlans: From $5.99/month; $0.01/GB storage, $0.01/GB bandwidth

        - name: Web3.Storage
          url: https://web3.storage/
          freeTier: 5 GB storage
          paidPlans: Varies; contact for enterprise

        - name: Lighthouse
          url: https://www.lighthouse.storage/pricing
          freeTier: Available
          paidPlans: Pay-as-you-go model based on storage and deals

    - name: Public Gateway Usage
      description: >-
        Using the IPFS Foundation's public gateways (ipfs.io, dweb.link,
        trustless-gateway.link) is free but subject to throttling for heavy
        use. Not recommended for production workloads.
      estimatedCost: $0 (best-effort, community resource)

  optimizationTips:
    - >-
        Use the public gateway for development and testing only; deploy your
        own node or use a commercial provider for production.
    - >-
        Enable garbage collection (ipfs repo gc) on self-hosted nodes to
        reclaim storage from unpinned content.
    - >-
        Use remote pinning services (/api/v0/pin/remote/*) to offload
        persistence to providers with geo-distributed storage rather than
        running multiple redundant nodes yourself.
    - >-
        Use the Delegated Routing V1 API (delegated-ipfs.dev) in lightweight
        clients to avoid the DHT overhead of a full node when content discovery
        is the primary need.
    - >-
        Use NDJSON streaming for routing queries to avoid the ~100-record
        truncation in JSON mode.
    - >-
        Cache gateway responses aggressively using the Etag and Cache-Control
        headers returned by the gateway; /ipfs/ content is immutable and can
        be cached indefinitely (max-age=29030400, immutable).