Tools & Insights

OpenAI API pricing 2026: the real 30-day bill

Supabase pricing in 2026: the real 30-day bill behind the $25 plan

Supabase Pro is $25 in 2026, but a growing SaaS paid $333 in a real month. A numbers-first 30-day bill across four cohorts, with compute, MAU, and egress itemized.

Vercel pricing 2026: the real 30-day bill

Three modeled 30-day Vercel bills, the $0.15-per-GB meter that actually moves the number, and when Hobby, a VPS, or a bundled host wins.

Claude Code pricing 2026: real 30-day bill for a solo dev, a team, and an agency

Three real 30-day Claude Code bills, the 5.5x token-efficiency math, and when the $200 Max plan beats the API.

OpenRouter pricing 2026: real 30-day bill vs direct providers

OpenRouter takes 5.5% on credit purchases with a $0.80 minimum, then passes provider rates through. Here is the real 30-day bill across Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mistral at four workload mixes, with the anti-patterns where the routing tax stops being worth it.

Effective hourly rate 2026: the only freelance number that matters

Your billable rate is a sticker price. Your effective hourly rate is the truth. A 2026 cohort breakdown of billable vs effective across five real freelance brackets, plus the math.

How to price AI features in SaaS without blowing your gross margin (June 2026)

A 1,500 customer SaaS shipped AI features and watched gross margin fall from 81% to 47%. We walk three pricing ladders and the COGS math that got it back to 73% in 8 weeks.

Cursor vs Claude Code: the real 30-day bill (2026)

Sticker is $20 for both. At a 5-engineer team shipping 100 pull requests a month in June 2026, the all-in 30-day bill diverges. Here is the honest math.

AI app builder cost in 2026: 6 platforms billed for 30 days

The sticker on Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, and Totalum is between $20 and $79. The 30-day bill on a real reference workload is $69 to $270. Here is what each pricing page leaves off, with the math.

Pricing your AI app: 3 ladders that converted at over 7%

Three pricing ladders beat flat per-seat pricing for AI products in our teardown of 40 launches: a credit ladder, a usage-with-floor ladder, and an outcome ladder. Each cleared a 7%+ trial-to-paid rate by aligning the price metric with the value metric and putting a visible cap on downside. Pick the ladder that matches how your users feel cost, tokens, runs, or results, and price the rung, not the seat.

True cost of running an LLM workflow in 2026

The sticker price per token is the smallest line in your LLM bill. Once you add retries, embeddings, vector reads, orchestration, and the platform margin, a "simple" agent workflow lands around $0.42 per run, roughly 4× the raw model cost. This breakdown shows where the money actually goes and which three levers cut a workflow bill the fastest without touching quality.

Build vs buy: when DIY beats SaaS at scale

Build-vs-buy isn't a values debate, it's a breakeven date. SaaS wins early because it converts a big upfront build into a small monthly fee. DIY wins once your usage-based SaaS bill exceeds the fully-loaded cost of owning the code, typically around month 18 for infrastructure-style tools. This piece gives you the formula, a worked example, and the three traps that make teams build too early.