I built a tool to check if you're overpaying for AI subscriptions

fangyun — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:40:48 +0000

got my credit card statement last month and actually looked at it for once.

turns out i was paying $120/month across 6 AI subscriptions. ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Cursor, Copilot, Perplexity, Midjourney. each one was "just $20" so i never added them up.

the dumb part is three of them (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) do basically the same thing. same product in different packaging lol.

so i built a dumb page to check: https://aicosts.bmaster.cn

it does two things:

1. subscription checker — checkboxes for ~50 AI tools with real prices. check what you use, it shows monthly/yearly/weekly/daily totals. prices are editable since regional pricing varies.

2. API cost comparison — pulls live per-token pricing from OpenRouter for 300+ models. you enter your usage (prompts/day, avg tokens) and it estimates your monthly API cost, so you can compare "Claude Pro $20/mo" against "Claude API at my actual usage = $X/mo."

for me that number was $14/mo on API vs $20 for Pro. dropped two overlapping subscriptions, cut my stack to $50/month.

tech stuff:

vanilla js, no framework, no build step
the whole thing is one html file
no backend, no signup, no tracking
OpenRouter API is called directly from the browser (they support CORS)
subscription prices are hardcoded but editable in the UI
model pricing comes from OpenRouter's /models endpoint

i'm not a frontend person so the code is probably ugly but it works.

anyone else have a stack that crept up on them? curious what other people are paying.

DEV Community: fangyun

I built a tool to check if you're overpaying for AI subscriptions