Commercial VPN vs self-hosted: the math

I make a server up the math and I want the reality check from community.

My situation: I pay 4.50 euro/month for commercial VPN with 10 devices. I use 3 devices only. Speed is okay, not great.

Self-hosted option: 2 vCPU / 2GB at RackNerd = 3.20 euro/month. Plus WireGuard, free. Plus my time to configure, maybe 2 hours first time.

Break-even: 18 months if my time worth zero. But my time not worth zero.

However, I think self-hosted give me:
- control of logs (no logs, actually)
- choice of endpoint location
- no bandwidth cap I can see

But commercial VPN give me:
- shared IP with many users = more anonymity
- no maintenance when certificate expire
- work on phone with one click

My question: what is the real experience? The math say 18 months but the math do not include headache. Who has made this choice?

Regards.

I observed latency of 2.3e1 ms to nearest commercial VPN endpoint versus 4.7e1 ms to my self-hosted HostHatch instance [1]. The commercial infrastructure benefits from anycast and upstream settlement-free peering I cannot replicate at this price point.

However, I observed 9.8e-1 packet loss during peak hours on the commercial service, correlated with oversubscription. My self-hosted instance showed 2.0e-3 packet loss over identical interval.

On anonymity: RFC 8312 discusses congestion control, not privacy, but the principle of shared fate applies. Shared IP pools provide k-anonymity where k is unknown and likely decreasing as providers consolidate [2].

[1] Measurement period 2026-07-01 to 2026-07-31, ICMP echo request, 300s interval
[2] See also RFC 6973, Section 5.2