Summit also has the setting to use imgur instead in cases where the instance upload rules are too strict.

Voyager can do it too, via PWA even. Don’t even need to press the upload button, simply copy and paste the image, it gets uploaded and included in the comment automatically.

I think with file size limits it's not really so bad for cost. Lemmynsfw proves that.

Add image hosting with an ephemeral approach like 4chan, where posts older than a day get little interaction and low-quality content is deleted after a month. This keeps a long-term archive of high-quality content without clutter.