I think the opposite, at the start it's a no-brainer. Setting up cloud infra for a simple website or web api is so so simple, and between free tiers and startup credits, costs $0.
I think it depends. For example, if I needed machines running 24/7 running some stuff, then I would eat through those cloud credits so fast. For example, managed k8s is actually pretty cheap in the cloud, but you can't turn off their logging solution, and even on the lowest setting, storage for those logs will cost you an arm and a leg. However, if you can use something like serverless or even just regular vms, you can be super cheap at the start. It all just depends on what you're doing.
