I used to use Aerads (had the UK sub) and my recollection is that they cost me £160/year and took up two binders. I then went to the Jepp version which was £125/year and (due to thinner paper) was 1 binder which was much more convenient. And it had most of the military plates too.
I thought the Aerad plates looked "nicer" but this soon became totally irrelevant because as soon as one moves to electronic versions, one finds that Aerad don't have a product, and the paper versions because near-impossible to manage for say Europe.
A friend of mine married a girl working for some Gatwick airline whose entire job was stuffing the monthly Aerad updates into the binders for the company's pilots
She must have been desperate for a marriage; anybody would do
I reckon European-coverage binders would weigh 10-20kg which is ridiculous - like the Jepp Bottlang VFR books I used to carry. I had 20kg of them on a trip to Crete.
So a "lone pilot" has to go electronic eventually, to save the updating time, and that rules out Aerad.
Cost-wise, I don't think there is any huge difference between the paper and the electronic versions. Europe is pricey any way you look at it - the whole of Europe is about £1000-1500/year.