[rmoriz]

Companies offering LIR services to hobbyists are probably not going to stay in business forever, as many of them are 1 person companies, too. Also keep in mind that they may change pricing. I understand, that with IPv6 the numbering strategy is almost always automatic and a renumbering can be done in a couple of hours, but it's still an inconvenience, especially when you have to update a lot of AAAA records.

I really think that when you start to operate an AS that you should have a direct RIR membership. And as mentioned above, RIPE has a higher financial entry barrier. I remember they had an object volume based pricing scheme 15 years ago, just like ARIN still has.

[icedchai]

None of us know what will happen in the future. All I can say is that currently, it is cheaper for a hobbyist to use a RIPE LIR than to use ARIN. If this changes in the future, I'll move to ARIN.

ARIN is lowering their costs gradually. When I first made the RIPE LIR or ARIN decision several years ago, ARIN wanted $500 just to register an ASN, on top of the yearly fees. I see they have removed that requirement.