With Vercel/Netlify, you're paying for ease of use. For a lot of people, that tradeoff is worth it. Not everything can be free.
https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm...
Do you have a better source for your number.
As far as cost, 200/month is nothing, but those are not the numbers we hear about when things spiral out of controll due to a ddos or sudden surge in popularity.
But the market rate for a freelance midlevel US-based engineer would be about double per hour what you'd pay a full-time employee of the same level, to account for taxes/PTO/health care/etc.
Starts?!
I remember getting a sheet from an employer early in my career that fully broke down the cost of benefits and taxes and showed me the full cost of just my employment, not including overhead, profit, etc. it was rather eye opening because although I kid of knew it from accounting and finance, it never really impacted me quite as much before seeing the numbers.