Comment by Sparkyte

Data isn't cheap never was. Paying the licensing fees on top make it more expensive. It really depends on the circunstance a managed database usually has exended support from the compaany providing it. You have to weigh a team's expertise to manage a solution on your own and ensure you spent ample time making it resilient. Other half is the cost of upgrading hardware sometimes it is better to just outright pay a cloud provider if you business does not have enough income to outright buy hardware.There is always an upfront cost.

Small databases or test environment databases you can also leverage kubernetes to host an operator for that tiny DB. When it comes to serious data and it needs a beeline recovery strategy RDS.

Really it should be a mix self hosted for things you aren't afraid to break. Hosted for the things you put at high risk.