Everything I've read says that self-hosting doesn't become cheaper than AWS for companies until you reach $1-$3 million per month spending when all costs are accounted for. Then there is the highly overlooked aspect that a good API like AWS has lets your expensive admins actually get things done hundreds of times faster than how most self-hosted IT can do. It usually takes months to buy and install additional capacity for most companies.
> good API like AWS has lets your expensive admins actually get things done hundreds of times faster than how most self-hosted IT can do
Depends. APIs must take into account many more cases than our own specific use case, and I find we are often spending a lot of time going through unnecessary (for us) hoops. And that's leaving aside possible API changes.