What goes into the cost of a phone farm?
Four things: the devices, the network each device uses, power, and the automation, which is either software plus your own time or a team that runs it for you.
The devices are mostly a one-off. The rest is every month, which is why a farm is cheaper or dearer over a year for reasons that have little to do with the phones.
Why is the network the biggest cost?
Because every phone needs its own identity: a dedicated mobile proxy is about $41 a month per phone, so in under three months it costs more than the used phone itself. Fifty phones on mobile proxies is over $2,000 a month before anything else.
Phones with their own SIMs bring that down the most, and a SIM is also what WhatsApp needs to register a number. That is the strongest reason to run your own phones.
Is a box phone farm cheaper than loose phones?
A little, per phone: a box of 20 current Samsung S20 boards is about $1,560, so roughly $78 a board, with older boards for less, and it needs fewer PCs and less power. Boxes come in twenties, so you pay for the spare boards too. The internet and the automation cost the same either way.
Are cloud phones cheaper?
Up front, yes: nothing to buy. Running 24/7 they cost about $20–63 a device a month depending on the provider, and none of them include a proxy or a SIM, so over a year they usually land close to owning the hardware.
Their builders are included, but the flows are still yours to build and fix. MationX runs on cloud phones as well as your own.
What is the hidden cost?
Your time. Apps update, a step stops working, and someone has to notice and fix it. The calculator assumes eight hours a month; change it to what your farm really takes.
With MationX that time is ours: a pilot from $1,000, then a monthly that grows with the farm while the price per phone drops.