I don't know what the alternative is. Run a home server and pay an ISP $$$ for unusually high upload bandwidth/throughput? 99/100 times running it in the cloud is going to be cheaper, easier, and more resilient.
Of course, the delayed sticker shock is a problem.. I think Google cloud actually lets you create a budget that turns services off if they go over, so there's a solution here if you run a hobby project that you suspect might take off and cost you more than it's worth.
I've variously paid $5-$30 a month for a VPS/dedicated server to host all my random side projects over almost two decades, including websites for other people, email, etc; there's probably two dozen or more sites running on my Hetzner dedicated server, with storage and CPU and RAM to more than spare. And not once had to worry about extra fees or weird billing issues. Bandwidth has grown from 100Mbps to 1Gbps and I've never had traffic issues.
I'm on an older one that just got bumped up to €29/mo due to increasing electricity prices; it was €21/mo until now, and I can't blame them for that one. The specs are E3-1245 V2 / 16GB / 2x3T, there's over 45 vhosts on it across ~25 wwwroots plus other random services, and CPU usage is basically nothing. The cores are really there just to handle bursty stuff. Most random side projects and small websites don't need almost any resources on modern hardware.
Previously I was on a Scaleway Dedibox, which go as low as €15/mo right now. It was €10 at one point even.
> and pay an ISP $$$ for unusually high upload bandwidth/throughput?
But the ISPs I know do not bill $$$ if you use the max bandwidth (max bandwith they did advertize to you btw) for a sustained amount of time: they'll just start throttling you.
Anyway GP ain't asking about "cloud vs hosting at home" but about "cloud vs dedicated server(s)".
Of course, the delayed sticker shock is a problem.. I think Google cloud actually lets you create a budget that turns services off if they go over, so there's a solution here if you run a hobby project that you suspect might take off and cost you more than it's worth.