The original Pi Zero was $5, although it probably uses more power than an esp32.

IIRC that was the MSRP but you could never find them at that price.

it is also more capable than an esp32. Im dinking around with both. esp32 is very restrictive in its compute capacity. It isnt multifunctional at all either.

A pi zero is to play with, an esp32 is so tiny, that it is more of a build for a single thing, and then set it and forget it doing that single thing.

You cant really stack more and more cool stuff onto it and keep building on it.