Buy the servers, or rent the compute?
Buying a server per person means paying upfront, powering it around the clock, and replacing it in a few years. Each one serves a single user. Renting from Pryvan is €1 an hour, only while it runs. Drag the sliders to see your team's real cost over three years.
Buy a server each · 3 years
€69,000
€60,000 upfront + power · 1 user each
Pryvan · 3 years
€11,880
≈ €330/mo · €0 upfront · unlimited at once
You save · 3 years
€57,120
vs buying 10 servers
Cumulative cost over 3 years
Based on 22 working days a month and the ~1 to 1.5 hours a day the average employee actually uses AI. Pryvan is metered by the minute from prepaid credit: €1 an hour on Max, €0.50 an hour on Core.
Most AI hardware sits idle most of the time.
Recent workplace studies agree on a number that should shape any hardware decision: employees who actively use AI spend roughly 1 to 1.5 hours a day with it. That works out to about 5 to 6 hours a week, or 15 to 20% of a 40-hour week.
It is a valuable hour. The same research finds AI saves those employees around 5 hours of work a week. But it is still one hour out of eight, and a server bought to deliver it stays powered on for all twenty-four.
When the machine is actually working
A bought server never sleeps. Counting every hour it draws power, it does real work for under 4% of them, and you pay for the rest.
By the numbers
- 1–1.5 h
- Active AI use per workday
- 5–6 h
- Per week, per employee
- 15–20%
- Share of a 40-hour week
- ~5 h
- Work AI saves them weekly
- ~162 h
- Idle hours per server, per week
If you buy the hardware
A server you own runs around the clock and is yours to power, cool and maintain. Even counting only working hours it sits idle about 85% of the time; across the full week it does nothing for more than 95% of the hours it is switched on. You pay for all of them, and you pay again to replace the box in a few years.
If you rent it
Pryvan's meter runs only while a machine is on. You pay for the handful of hours each week a colleague actually works with AI, and nothing for the rest. Scale that across a team and the choice is between buying ten machines that are idle most of the day and paying for a few hours of genuine use.
See the exact number for your team.
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