Comparison
Where to run your server-side GTM container
The server container is the same Google software everywhere — what you are choosing is who keeps it running. That decision comes down to three questions: how much traffic you have, whether anyone on your team does infrastructure, and where your data is allowed to live.
The four options
| Managed sGTM (Stape) | Other managed (TAGGRS, Addingwell) | Google Cloud Run | Self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash cost / month | Free tier ~10k requests; ~$17 for 500k; ~$83 for 5M | Roughly €29–199 depending on tier | ~$45 per server on Google's own estimate; realistic production setups often land at $90–300 with two instances plus a preview server | $10–50 in server rent |
| Setup effort | Minutes — paste the container config | Minutes — same model | Hours, if you know GCP; you own the deploy, domain mapping, billing alerts | Days — TLS, scaling, monitoring, image updates are all yours |
| Ongoing maintenance | None — updates and scaling handled | None | Low but real: instance tuning, cost watching, image upgrades | Continuous — you are the ops team |
| Data residency | Choice of regions incl. EU (runs on major clouds) | EU-first positioning; TAGGRS runs its own infrastructure, Addingwell is France-based | Your choice of GCP region — still Google-owned infrastructure | The only route with full control (e.g. EU-owned providers like Hetzner or OVH) |
| Extras beyond hosting | Cookie-lifetime tooling, bot detection, CRM/webhook connectors, prebuilt integrations | Varies by vendor | None — bare Google image | None — bare Google image |
Prices as of July 2026 — check stape.io/price and Google's Cloud Run guide for current numbers.
How to decide
Take managed hosting when tracking is not your job
For most marketers, agencies, and small teams, the math is lopsided: a managed platform costs less than one hour of developer time per month and removes the entire failure surface of running a server. Stape is the biggest of these — the free tier is enough to validate a setup end-to-end before paying anything, and connectors for CRM webhooks mean your offline conversions can ride the same pipeline instead of monthly CSV uploads. Start here unless something below pulls you away.
Follow the setup guide with any managed host — the steps are identical from Step 3 on.
Take an EU-first vendor when residency is the requirement
If legal wants tracking data off US-owned clouds, look at TAGGRS (own infrastructure, EU residency as the headline feature) or Addingwell (France-based, now part of Didomi). Verify the residency claim in writing — infrastructure details differ more than the marketing does.
Take Cloud Run when you already live in Google Cloud
If your company has a GCP organization, billing, and someone who reads Terraform, Cloud Run is the official path and keeps everything inside one vendor. Budget honestly: Google's $45/month figure is per server at minimum scale — production traffic with two instances plus a preview server lands meaningfully higher, and cost surprises are the most common complaint. It is cheaper than managed hosting only when your traffic is high enough that per-request pricing crosses over.
Self-host only with real DevOps capacity
The container image is public and runs on any Docker host, so a $15 VPS technically works. You take on TLS renewal, scaling, uptime, monitoring, and tracking Google's image updates — for a component that silently loses conversion data when it falls over. Worth it in two cases: strict data-sovereignty requirements that exclude US clouds entirely, or an engineering organization where one more container is genuinely free.
Whichever host you pick, the container, the tags, and the verification steps are the same — the step-by-step setup guide covers all three routes. And if you are here because your offline conversion uploads broke in June, the CSV converter fixes the files you already have.