This is really it: compliance. The cost is in having to prove that you did the right things. But I do wonder if we will see an easier path forward with that. After all if there was a way to pay someone a once a year fee for an audit and filling out the paperwork and the cost was lower than the cost of using AWS then surely people would do that and it is an opportunity for an audit business that is willing to work with self-hosted setups. Or just have GPT-5 fill out the compliance docs. I suspect it won’t be long until GPT-5 is reading them.