Building Adaptive Platforms: Keeping Costs in Check? 🤔

I’ve been researching how to build an adaptive coding platform, and it got me diving into similar models in other domains—like IXL for Math, LearnTheta for Aptitude, and Duolingo for language learning.

One thing that puzzles me: if I were to use a strong LLM for every operation, the compute cost would skyrocket, especially with heavy users. So how do these platforms keep costs in check while delivering real-time adaptation? I tried some free models, and results were not great.

Anyone with experience in this space? Would love to hear thoughts on backend optimizations!