WordPress monolith vs headless hosting cost
Status: assumptions model, not audited projection
This methodology compares the 5-year infrastructure cost of a WordPress monolith and a headless WordPress architecture on Cloudflare.
Related pages: benchmark protocol and methodology index.
Traffic scenarios
| Scenario | Monthly Pageviews | Peak-to-Average Ratio | Cache Hit Range | Image Bytes Share | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A small business | 100,000 | 5x | 60-85% | 60% | 5 years |
| B mid-market publisher | 1,000,000 | 10x | 60-85% | 60% | 5 years |
| C large publisher | 10,000,000 | 20x | 60-85% | 60% | 5 years |
Monthly cost table
| Scenario | Architecture | Hosting | CDN | Images | Ops Hours | Monthly Total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Monolith | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
| A | Headless | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
| B | Monolith | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
| B | Headless | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
| C | Monolith | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
| C | Headless | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending | pending |
Publication gate
Do not publish a measured result until at least one production migration has 12 months of audited billing.