I thought a VPS would replace my home server, but the real costs caught me off guard

A homelab enthusiast shares their experience experimenting with moving services from a home server to a VPS, driven by CGNAT limitations and uptime concerns. While a VPS solved the public IP problem and simplified remote access, storage costs quickly made it more expensive than expected. The key takeaway is that VPS and home servers complement rather than replace each other — VPS suits compute-light, network-facing services like Pi-hole and monitoring tools, while bulk storage and high-throughput workloads remain better suited to local hardware.