Check this out: how I Stopped Overpaying For AI Models (And You Can Too)
honestly, I gotta say... I'm pretty bad at math when it comes to my own money. I was burning through cash on AI infrastructure like it was going out of style before I finally sat down and did the math. And what I found kinda pissed me off, because I've been overpaying for MONTHS.
This is the post I wish someone had written for me six months ago. Its basically my whole journey of comparing every open source AI model I could get my hands on via API, versus trying (and failing) to self-host them. If you're an indie hacker or solo dev like me, buckle up because this stuff actually matters for your burn rate.
Why I Even Started Caring About This
So heres the thing. I'm building a SaaS that does a LOT of AI inference. We're talking hundreds of thousands of API calls per day for summarization, classification, the usual indie hacker stuff. I started on OpenAI because, well, thats what everyone does. And then I looked at my bill.
