I’ve seen other instances do this, so I figured I might as well too. Right now the instance is hosted on a relatively medium sized VPS with object storage. Lemmy uses very little resources, so I run some personal stuff on the server as well (like a screenshot hoster, blog, etc) but if I need to upgrade I can eventually.
VPS: $13.99
Object storage: as of right now it is $2.20 (and growing, slowly but surely)
I’m not opposed to donations, but it’s not required. The biggest cost is likely going to be object storage more and more.
I’ll double check tomorrow where we stand with on the gigs. Im currently in bed, but last I checked it was quite a lot but I have no clue