The cost of scaling an application is linked to two major factors. The first is the speed of the selected stack used to implement the software. Specifically, the speed and capacity of processing algorithms and answering requests. The second factor is the ability to scale the application of the business part. How long is it applied to features and especially the predictability of new features? The time to create something new or redesigning something that already exists is also expensive.
With microservices architecture, the cost of scalability is usually related to the concept of having smaller areas and parts which are less integrated. Even then this cost is very important.
Think of two applications, one with strong interactivity ...