Wiktionary
adv. (context idiomatic English) economical, especially if too economically.
Usage examples of "on the cheap".
So once you get blacklisted on the Strip, for any reason at all, you either get out of town or retire to nurse your act along, on the cheap, in the shoddy limbo of North Vegas.
They were telegraphic messenger boys (a group about to be rendered technically obsolescent), who swept up around the phone office, dunned customers for bills, and made phone connections on the switchboard, all on the cheap.
The sides of the machine were lined with view ports, and windows, large ones on the upper levels for the first-class passengers and smaller, meaner ones lower down for the poor and for those travelling on the cheap.
I had never seen one before, and the lurid covers on the cheap booklets were a bit shocking.
Well, one could not really expect great things to happen on the cheap, could one?
Splatters and runnels on the cheap stucco walls and the broken Mother Goose mobile bought for a dime.
When Joe commented that 'Becka's sister was a little on the cheap side, wa'ant she, 'Becka told him to hush up.