It feels redundant to agree with this comment. I will anyway.

"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."

"I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one."

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As for the calculator, I think it points to a bigger problem. Customers need to know what the platform will charge and a way to compare platforms in general. If the only way to truly know how much something will cost is to run their code on it, then maybe that's the thing that someone needs to implement.

There are big issues with this in the most-naive implementation in that people can easily abuse the ability to run code. That suggests that perhaps we need a benchmark-only environment where benchmarks themselves are the only thing allowed out of the environment. This may require a fair-amount of engineering/standards effort but could be a game-changer in the space.

A framework for being able to run this on many platforms to compare performance and pricing would lead to customers generating packages for vendors to compete. Though, I suppose it could also hide some devilish details like step-changes in rates.

This same framework would be useful for other things too, like testing how implementation changes affect future bills. Also, how pricing changes between vendors might become more-advantageous over time.

Of course, the sales folks might balk because they would rather have a conversation with everyone they can. Maybe I'm just advocating for a more advanced and complex calculator? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯