[gkop]

Tradeoffs are tradeoffs.

In your k8s example, by running a k8s cluster when you don't need one, a cost you pay is the overhead.

In the Cockroach serverless case, costs that come to mind include vendor lock-in when you evolve a pattern of production traffic that is hard to migrate to other solutions, and security and compliance challenges due to the virtualized instances running on shared clusters. In many cases these tradeoffs may be worthwhile. My point is that looking at it only in the dimension of scaling up and down, doesn't tell the whole story. The OP doesn't talk about tradeoffs, so in the comment section we must.

[jungturk]

In the case you mention, you've made a tradeoff to defer developing an in-house solution for supporting a potential future pattern of production traffic, and that can be a huge accelerator.

Further, once you're experiencing the types of success that demands a superior solution the priority to invest in such a solution is clear.

It isn't "lock-in" - there's enough experience and capability in the market to solve those problems _once you have to_. Solutions like this let you decide whether the right time is at start-up or scale-up.