#Systemdesign Query Series, Epi1, how will you minimize cost with better architectural decision on this problem without using 2nd method mentioned below , need a live streaming method to users at a very minimal cost quality can be 360p but expense shouldn't be at max pain The four decisions that shape everything 1. host first: 4 vCPU, 9 GB, Munich, no CDN on vixitai.com. A 720p stream is ~2.5 Mbit/s — 100 concurrent viewers of one kitchen is 250 Mbit/s. Transcoding and egress both exceed this box by orders of magnitude, permanently. Cameras push to a managed provider 2. A three-tier viewing ladder. Continuous live for every browsing user is financially fatal. T0 = cached poster on feed cards (~free), T1 = 1 fps JPEG snapshots from R2 when Kitchen View opens (~2% of cost), T2 = true LL-HLS at 480p only on an explicit tap or an active order, with per-user daily minute budgets in Redis. At 200k DAU that's roughly $2.4k/mo vs ~$36k/mo uncapped — ~15× on the largest line in the P&L. The ingredient panel is live in all three tiers, since it's JSON over a socket and costs nothing. #systemdesign #cloudflare #youtube #hls #lld #startup