I coud easily spin-up a firecracker VM on-demand and put it behind an API. It boots up in under 200 milliseconds. and I get to control it however I wish to. And also, all costs are under my control.
I compared the costs with instances purchased from Hetzner or Contabo here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45613653
Bottomline: by doing this small stuff myself, I can save 35 times more.