The issue is that Python has an internal limit on number of recursive function calls.
That limit is configurable as shown in Quentin Coumes’ answer. However, too deep a function chain will result in a stack overflow. This underlying limitation¹ applies to both C++ and Python. This limitation also applies to all function calls, not just recursive ones.
In general: You should not write² algorithms that have recursion depth growth with linear complexity or worse. Logarithmically growing recursion is typically fine. Tail-recursive functions are trivial to re-write as iterations. Other recursions may be converted to iteration using external data structures (usually, a dynamic stack).
A related rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t have large objects with automatic storage. This is C++-specific since Python doesn’t have the concept of automatic storage.
¹ The underlying limitation is the execution stack size. The default size differs between systems, and different function calls consume different amounts of memory, so the limit isn’t specified as a number of calls but in bytes instead. This too is configurable on some systems. I wouldn’t typically recommend touching that limit due to portability concerns.
² Exceptions to this rule of thumb are certain functional languages that guarantee tail-recursion elimination – such as Haskell – where that rule can be relaxed in case of recursions that are guaranteed to be eliminated. Python is not such a language, and the function in question isn’t tail-recursive. While C++ compilers can perform the elimination as an optimization, it isn’t guaranteed, and is typically not optimized in debug builds. Hence, the exception doesn’t generally apply to C++ either.
Disclaimer: The following is my hypothesis; I don’t actually know their rationale: The Python limit is probably a feature that detects potentially infinite recursions, preventing likely unsafe stack overflow crashes and substituting a more controlled RecursionError.
Why are recursive calls so much cheaper in C++?
C++ is a compiled language. Python is interpreted. (Nearly) everything is cheaper in C++, except the translation from source code to an executable program.