I have a couple of $10/yearly (so less than $1 a month) VPSs. (Found them on Lowendbox.com). Some uses:

- Tailscale exit nodes (I don't use them to stream Netflix or torrents over, but sometimes they're useful to browse "this content is not available in your region" sites, to use WhatsApp while transiting through Bejing airport, ...)

- Invidious

- FreshRSS.org

- Vaultwarden

- some silly scripts

I treat these as disposable and can spin them up again from daily backups if needed. So far the stability has been good as with more expensive infrastructure providers.

My home setup is not $5/month VPS but a sub $100 second hand thin client running KVM is used for: - Home Assistant

- Immich photo hosting

- Music Assistant

- Pihole

- Hister

- Invidious

Obviously the storage requirements for media and photos are higher, these go to a (more expensive) Synology NAS, and are backed up externally, but that's beyond the scope of this post. The Home Assistant + Pihole storage requirements are minimal.