In my opinion, yes, it is expensive to run a Hive node! But if you are serious about helping the Hive community, it will be worth it! 🙂

It costs a lot to purchase, run, and maintain a server computer for a Hive Witness node. The minimum recommended requirements for a Hive Witness node is 20 GB RAM, 350 GB local SSD (local Solid State Drives, not HDD or Hard Disk Drives), and a low-latency network connection. 🤔 See more at https://github.com/openhive-network/hive/blob/master/doc/exchangequickstart.md!

If you don't want to setup your own physical server and want to rent a VPS instead, you may check out #Privex's Hive "node-in-a-box" at https://www.privex.io/articles/steem-node-in-a-box. The title of the guide says "Steem" but is used for Hive node setup. 🤔

Hope my reply helps a lot! 😅