Ditch SSR.

Offload compute to the user’s browser.

Use Service Worker, don't ever send a request to the server unless you really need to.

Cache aggressively.

Have a replica database on the browser, sync the diffs.

Don't build services, build a protocol, buy the nodes.

Distribute your database keep them with the nodes, use sqlite.

Use memory cache.

You don't have to spend millions for AWS.

You can handle the whole planet, for 10k a month.

Cheaper if you are read-only.