There's really no controversy that AWS, Azure, and GCP are substantially more expensive than bare metal providers, if you're simply comparing machine specs.
So if all you're doing is setting up root access and handling everything yourself, then yes, you're throwing huge wads of cash down the toilet with those platforms versus renting a VPS on Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.
The economic disparity can flip, though, if you use these services as they're intended. i.e., take advantage of features that are charged incrementally and optimise to reduce how much they're activated per user transaction, where "user transaction" is a key user action such as a page serve or a reported being emailed.
The costs can be much lower when you're only using what you need, and not paying for large capacity to be sitting around in case of a peak usage moment. And even more so when you consider there are automatic upgrades and ops to ensure high availability.
So if all you're doing is setting up root access and handling everything yourself, then yes, you're throwing huge wads of cash down the toilet with those platforms versus renting a VPS on Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.
The economic disparity can flip, though, if you use these services as they're intended. i.e., take advantage of features that are charged incrementally and optimise to reduce how much they're activated per user transaction, where "user transaction" is a key user action such as a page serve or a reported being emailed.
The costs can be much lower when you're only using what you need, and not paying for large capacity to be sitting around in case of a peak usage moment. And even more so when you consider there are automatic upgrades and ops to ensure high availability.