Better internet connection - a lot of hosts have 40Gbps connections now, and it’s a data center grade connection with a lower contention ratio.

And also better infrastructure in general. VPS's are running on a datacenter with (most likely) failsafes for everything. Multiple internet connections, pretty beefy setup for power reundancy with big battery banks and generators, multiple servers to take your stuff over in case a single unit fails, climate controls with multiple units and so on.

I could get 10Gbps connection (or theoretically even more) to my home, but if I want all the toys the big players are working with that would mean investing at least several tens of thousands euros to get anywhere and more likely hundred or two thousands to build anything even near to the same level. And that doesn't include things like having mechanics to maintain generators, security stuff to guarantee physical safety and so on, so even if I had few millions to throw on a project like this it wouldn't last too long.

So, instead of all that I have a VPS from Hetzner (I've been a happy customer with them for a long time) for less than a hamburger and fries per month. And that's keeping my stuff running just fine. Obviously there's caveats to look for, like backups in case Hetzner suddenly doesn't exist anymore for whatever reason, but the alternative could as well be setting up a server farm in the Moon as that's about as difficult to reach as getting similar reliability from them for ~100€/year.

Definitely, just was unsure if self hosting means doing the hosting yourself or hosting for yourself, if that makes sense, if its either or thats nice