It's definitely not a simple calculation. A few years ago I went through
the same exercise deciding weather or not to do SMT on both sides or stay
single sided.

In very vague terms I came to the conclusion that components on both sides
cost more to assemble, but the board size is about half (resulting in more
per panel) which reduces both bare PCB cost and some reduction in assembly
cost as they can get more throughput. It was messy math and in the end I
considered it about the same either way. Within about +-10% anyway.

Something I didn't consider was that, at least for engineering protos,
double sided boards (that's components on both sides) are a fair bit more
difficult to do development work with. Harder to instrument and more of a
pain when laying on your desk.

-Denny
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