You can buy a raspberry pi with 16GB RAM and 128GB of SD storage for $150, and point it at a VPS with a static IP for $5/mo. For personal projects (on top of the massive cost savings) it’s much more satisfying to own your own whole server rather than just figure out how to configure something like aws and risk the costs of misconfiguration.
Usually your ISP gives you a dynamic IP address if your on a domestic internet plan, so you can’t map your home to a DNS record. Reverse proxying into a VPS is generally cheaper than adding a static IP address onto your internet plan.
