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brian austin
brian austin

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I built a $2/month Claude API — here's the curl command

#api #claudeai #developers #buildinpublic

I built a $2/month Claude API — here's the curl command

Everyone talks about building AI products. Very few talk about the infrastructure cost of running them.

I built SimplyLouie — a Claude-powered AI assistant that costs users $2/month (or local currency equivalent). After 40+ days of running it, here's what I actually learned about the developer side.

The API is real and open

SimplyLouie has a developer API tier. You get a key. You hit the endpoint. Claude responds. It costs $2/month for end users.

Here's the actual curl:

curl -X POST https://simplylouie.com/api/chat \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "message": "Explain async/await in JavaScript with examples",
    "context": "developer"
  }'
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Response:

{
  "response": "Async/await is syntactic sugar over Promises...",
  "model": "claude-sonnet",
  "tokens_used": 187
}
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Docs: simplylouie.com/developers

Why I didn't just use the Anthropic API directly

I tried. Here's the developer cost math:

Approach Monthly cost Problem
Anthropic direct Variable $0.003/token × your users × their messages
OpenAI direct Variable Same scaling problem
SimplyLouie API $2/month flat Fixed cost, no surprise bills

When you're building for emerging markets — Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, India — unpredictable API costs are a product-killer. Your users can't pay $20/month. You can't absorb variable costs at scale.

Fixed cost = predictable unit economics.

The architecture behind $2/month

How do you offer Claude at $2/month sustainably?

Rate limiting by tier — not unlimited, but more than enough for typical developer workflows:

  • 50 messages/day on free tier
  • 200 messages/day on paid ($2/month)
  • API tier: 500 requests/day

Context window management — most conversations don't need 200k tokens. 4k context covers 95% of real developer use cases.

Model selection — Claude Sonnet hits the price/performance sweet spot. Opus for complex reasoning, Sonnet for everyday dev tasks.

Real use cases I've seen

Developers using the SimplyLouie API are building:

  1. Upwork proposal generators — takes job listing, outputs tailored proposal in under 2 seconds
  2. Code review automation — paste PR diff, get structured feedback
  3. API documentation writers — input endpoint spec, get markdown docs
  4. Bilingual content converters — English ↔ local language for regional products
  5. Test case generators — function signature → unit test scaffold

All of these run on $2/month because they're batch workloads, not real-time chat sessions.

The global developer angle

Here's the thing Anthropic and OpenAI miss: most of the world's developers are not in San Francisco.

In Lagos, a developer earns ~$500/month. $20/month for ChatGPT is 4% of their income.
In Manila, $20/month is 3 days of salary for a junior developer.
In Karachi, $20/month ChatGPT costs as much as a week of groceries.

But they're building products. Competing on Upwork. Submitting to Product Hunt. Writing the same code.

SimplyLouie charges in local currency:

The revenue model (yes, it's sustainable)

50% of SimplyLouie revenue goes to animal rescue. That's not a marketing line — it's in the product DNA.

The product started when I adopted Louie, a rescue dog. He was going to be put down. The shelter needed money. I needed AI tools. The math worked out.

$2/month × scale = real rescue funding.

What I'd do differently

If you're building an AI product for emerging markets:

  1. Price in local currency from day one — don't make users do conversion math
  2. Fixed monthly pricing beats usage-based — your users budget monthly, not per-token
  3. Rate limits are a feature — they communicate value tiers, not just constraints
  4. API-first architecture — even if your UX is a chat interface, developers will find your API

The developer API is available at simplylouie.com/developers.

If you're building something on top of it, I want to hear about it.

SimplyLouie is a $2/month Claude-powered AI assistant. 50% of revenue funds animal rescue. Built for the 6 billion people who can't afford $20/month AI.

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