"Open source is free like a puppy, not free like a beer."
This adage has never been truer than it is for Spotify's Backstage in 2025. While the repository is free to clone, turning that code into a secure, scalable, and adopted Internal Developer Portal (IDP) is a massive financial and operational undertaking.
For engineering leaders, the question isn't "Can we build this?" As Roadie CEO David Tuite highlighted at BackstageCon , the real question is: "Should we spend millions of dollars a year to maintain this?"
In this guide, we break down the real math behind self-hosting Backstage. We look beyond the initial setup and examine the deep technical challenges, from the misalignment of skills on your platform team to the relentless pace of upgrades, that make "free" software incredibly expensive.
1. The Headcount Reality
Before discussing technology, we must look at the human capital required. Backstage is not a tool you install; it is a product you build and maintain.
Our research into the State of Backstage found that organizations satisfied with their self-hosted setup typically dedicate 3 to 12 full-time engineers to the platform.
If you assign a single engineer to "figure it out," they will spend 100% of their time on maintenance—dependency updates, security patches, and keeping the lights on—leaving zero capacity for feature development or driving adoption.
2. The "TypeScript Tax": A Fundamental Skill Mismatch
Beyond the number of heads, there is the issue of the type of skills required. Backstage is not a binary you configure with YAML; it is a set of libraries written in TypeScript and React that your engineers can combine together to build an IDP.
This presents a critical problem for most infrastructure and platform teams.
The DevOps Skill Set: Your platform engineers are likely experts in Go, Python, Terraform, and Kubernetes. They live in the terminal and think in terms of infrastructure-as-code.
The Backstage Requirement: To customize Backstage, you need to write React components, debug frontend hooks, manage CSS themes, and handle complex Node.js build pipelines.
The Reality: When you ask a Senior Cloud Engineer to center a <div> or debug a React context error, you are not only misusing their expensive skillset, but you are also setting them up for frustration. Even if they can technically write the code needed to customize Backstage, these engineers won't have the user experience skills required to produce a portal that your teams love to use.
To run Backstage successfully, you essentially need to hire Frontend Platform Engineers, a niche and expensive role, or constantly borrow time from product teams who would rather be shipping features.
3. The Hidden Infrastructure Bill
Getting Backstage running on a laptop takes ten minutes. Getting it ready for the enterprise takes months. When you choose to self-host, you take ownership of a distributed system that requires significant "plumbing."
Authentication & Security
Backstage provides the framework, but you build the doors.
The Work: You must manually register OAuth applications (Okta, Google, GitHub), configure backend resolvers, handle session cookies, and manage CORS policies.
The Risk: You are responsible for vulnerability management. Backstage relies on hundreds of Node.js dependencies. When a security advisory comes out for a nested dependency, you are the one who has to patch, rebuild, and redeploy.
The TechDocs Pipeline
TechDocs (docs-like-code) is a flagship feature, but it requires external infrastructure to work at scale.
The Work: It is not "plug and play." You must provision cloud storage (AWS S3, GCS), configure IAM roles, and build a dedicated CI/CD pipeline to generate static HTML from Markdown and push it to storage.
Search Infrastructure
The default search engine is basic. For a production-grade experience, you need to manage a dedicated Elasticsearch or OpenSearch cluster, adding another layer of cost and maintenance.
4. The Maintenance Treadmill (Day 2 Operations)
Backstage moves fast. According to the 2025 State of Backstage report, 56% of adopters cite upgrades as their biggest pain point.
Unlike other infrastructure tools where an upgrade is often just bumping a version number in a config file, upgrading Backstage often requires code changes.
Breaking Changes: You will frequently need to refactor your App.tsx or backend wiring to accommodate changes in the core APIs.
The New Backend & Frontend Systems: In 2024, Backstage introduced a completely new backend architecture followed closely by a new frontend system . Teams self-hosting Backstage are currently spending months refactoring their entire plugin ecosystem and UI logic to migrate to this new system.
Plugin Rot: Open-source plugins are often abandoned. If a community plugin you rely on breaks, you become the maintainer.
5. The Financial Math: Calculating TCO
Now, let's translate that technical effort into dollars.
The Cost of Waiting (Time to Value)
First, consider the cost of not having an IDP while you build it. Self-hosted implementations typically take 6 to 12 months to reach production. That is a year of paying salaries without seeing value. In contrast, managed solutions like Roadie typically go live in under a month, accelerating your ROI significantly.
The Hard Costs
The single largest cost of self-hosting is Headcount.
You are building an internal product team. Based on data from hundreds of implementations, a "minimum viable" self-hosted setup requires:
- Year 1 (Build & Launch): 3 Full-Time Engineers (FTEs).
- Year 2+ (Maintenance): 2 FTEs to handle upgrades, migrations, and support.
The 2025 Math: According to 2025 market data, the fully loaded cost (salary, equity, benefits) of a Senior Platform Engineer in top tech hubs averages $125,000.
| Cost Category | Year 1 Cost (DIY) | Recurring Annual Cost (DIY) |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering Salaries (3 FTEs Year 1, 2 FTEs Year 2) | $750,000 | $500,000 |
| Cloud Infrastructure (Hosting, DB, Elasticsearch) | $12,000 | $12,000 |
| Maintenance & Upgrades (20% of time) | Included in Salary | Included in Salary |
| Total TCO | $762,000 | $512,000 |
6. Comparison: Self-Hosted Backstage vs. Roadie
Roadie provides the exact same underlying technology (Backstage) but removes the technical implementation layer.
| Feature / Requirement | Self-Hosted Backstage | Roadie (Managed) |
|---|---|---|
| Time to Value | 6 to 12 Months | < 1 Month |
| Required Skills | TypeScript, React, Node.js | No Code / Config Only |
| Team Required | 2–3 Full-Time Engineers | Part-time Admin |
| Upgrades | Manual Code Refactoring | Automated / Handled by Roadie |
| Search Engine | Manage your own Elasticsearch | Included & Optimized |
| Security / SOC2 | You handle the audit | SOC2 Type 2 Certified |
7. The Opportunity Cost
This is the cost that doesn't show up on a spreadsheet, but it's the one that kills momentum.
If your best Platform Engineers are spending their weeks debugging React components, upgrading Node.js versions, or fixing broken TechDocs pipelines, they are not building your platform.
They aren't optimizing your Kubernetes clusters, they aren't improving your CI/CD pipelines, and they aren't helping product teams ship faster. They are maintaining a CMS tool.
Conclusion: Buy the Outcome, Don't Build the Tool
Backstage is the standard for IDPs, but "free" software is expensive.
Roadie allows you to buy the outcome, a centralized, adopted, and secure developer portal, without paying the tax of building and maintaining it yourself.
Ready to see how Roadie can transform your developer experience? Contact us for a personalized demo or start your free trial today.
Next Steps
If you're evaluating whether to self-host Backstage or use a managed solution like Roadie, here are some recommended resources to guide your decision:
- Getting Started with Roadie - Learn how to quickly set up your Internal Developer Portal with minimal overhead and start seeing value in days instead of months.
- Explore Backstage Plugins & Integrations - Discover the 80+ pre-configured plugins and integrations that Roadie supports out of the box, eliminating weeks of setup and configuration work.
- Tech Insights: Scorecards for Engineering Standards - Understand how to define and track engineering standards across your organization without building custom tooling.
- Software Templates (Scaffolder) - Learn how to create golden paths to production that embed best practices and accelerate service creation.
