Deployment-scoped licensing, so consolidating your infrastructure does not create a new penalty for having become more efficient. Legible enough that a finance reviewer can model it without a call.
Price opens the conversation and is the receipt for a different cost basis; it is never the brand.
Flat per server, not metered by core or socket count, up to 100 servers. Above that, a custom quote.
The license follows the deployment rather than counting what you consolidated onto.
Fewer hosts under management is supposed to cost less. Here it does.
Of that $441,600/year, $245,760 is VMware's own license and $195,840 is 2,880 hours of estimated management overhead at $68/hour, fully loaded (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), not just the sticker price.
Your own assumptions, live, not a quote for either platform. Basalt is $800 per server, per year, up to 100 servers; above that it's a custom quote (see Pricing & licensing).
Run the numbers with your own infrastructure, then put Basalt beside your incumbent in a controlled environment, with a rollback story written down before anything moves.