While I tend to agree, I'm the type to have ~3 projects going at a time. I'm pretty young, but I can see myself spinning up a few projects a year. Each project needs a sql database, hosted by google for a few bucks a year, a server per service, a company email per project per person on the project, etc. I can easily see this being $50/month/project. So let's call it $150/month, $1800/year. If you're not making any money, that's a lot of bare minimum over a life time just to play around with. Then if you assume your side project isn't meant to be profit optimizing, you may never make money.

It really isn't a lot, but some people aren't in SF where they make massive profit. In more rural areas in the US, non-senior engineers can make ~$60k-$80k. In non-US roles, that's even lower. I can see this price range being meaningful.

Also, I know you can get cheaper with this, but if your goal is to spin up MVP's ASAP, you don't care to work hard to optimize ever penny out of your infrastructure. This is a nice breakdown, and I'll probably use it for the current project I'm spinning up as a test.