An increasing market pressure through biosimilars and other factors lead to the necessity of economic process mode evaluations of antibody production processes. This work compares a fed-batch and a continuously operated platform process based on a cost of goods (CoG) calculation. For a production capacity of 200 kg(ApI)/a the comparison reveals great differences between the upstream and downstream CoG of both process modes. Whereas the fed-batch process has total specific CoG of 59 (sic)/g(mAb), the continuously operated process results in 84 (sic)/g(mAb), which is mainly caused by the expensive upstream part. Due to a high consumption of perfusion fermentation medium, the continuously operated upstream is about 33 (sic)/g(mAb) more expensive compared to the fed-batch upstream. Contrary to the upstream part, the continuously operated downstream is about 8 (sic)/g(mAb) cheaper than the downstream of the batch process. This difference is mainly caused by a better utilization of chromatography resins in the continuously operated downstream. As a result of this comparison, a third process mode is evaluated: the hybrid process. The hybrid process combines the beneficial parts of both process modes, i.e. a fed-batch upstream is combined with a continuously operated downstream. Compared to the fed-batch process, the hybrid process results in total specific CoG of 50(sic)/g(mAb) for a production capacity of 200 kg(ApI)/a, which corresponds with a reduction in CoG by 15%. Variation of the production capacity from 50 to 1000 kg(ApI)/a confirms the superiority of the hybrid process compared to the two alternative process modes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.