I moved my AI stack away from Big Tech. Here's what I use instead.

The week I stopped paying $20/month for AI

It started when I read about someone migrating their entire digital stack to Europe — away from US Big Tech platforms. DNS, email, cloud storage, everything.

And I thought: what about AI?

I'd been paying $20/month for ChatGPT. Then $20/month for Claude. Stack those together and you're looking at $40-$480/year just to have AI assistance while you code.

For what? To rent access to a model that was trained on research funded by universities and open-source communities?

So I moved.

What I use now

For day-to-day AI assistance, I switched to SimplyLouie — Claude AI, $2/month flat.

Same underlying model. No usage caps that hit you mid-project. No "you've reached your limit, upgrade to Pro" messages. Just Claude, whenever you need it.

# The API works exactly like Claude
curl https://simplylouie.com/api/chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"message": "Review this code for security issues", "context": "production API endpoint"}'

For local models when I want full offline privacy, I use Ollama with a small model. But that requires a decent machine.

For everything else — quick questions, code review, debugging help — SimplyLouie at $2/month is the answer.

Why this matters beyond the money

The developer stack migration stories aren't really about money. They're about control.

When your AI tool costs $20/month, you're dependent on OpenAI's pricing decisions. Their terms of service changes. Their model deprecations. Their outages.

When it costs $2/month, the power dynamic shifts. You're not invested enough to be held hostage.

The math

If you're a developer in the US: $2/month is a rounding error. Switching saves you $216/year.

If you're a developer in Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya: $20/month is 1-3 days of average salary. $2/month is accessible. $20/month isn't.

This is why the movement to escape Big Tech AI pricing matters more in some places than others.

Region	ChatGPT/month	SimplyLouie/month	Savings
Global (USD)	$20	$2	$216/year
India	₹1,600	₹165	₹16,620/year
Nigeria	₦32,000	₦3,200	₦340,000/year
Pakistan	PKR 5,600	PKR 560	PKR 60,480/year
Bangladesh	BDT 2,200	BDT 220	BDT 23,760/year
Kenya	KSh 2,600	KSh 260	KSh 28,080/year

How to make the switch

1. Go to simplylouie.com
2. Start the 7-day free trial (card required, not charged for 7 days)
3. Use it alongside ChatGPT for a week
4. Cancel whatever you're replacing

The trial is real — 7 days, full access, card only charged if you don't cancel.

What I kept

I'm not dogmatic about this. I still use:

• GitHub Copilot for inline autocomplete (different use case)
• Google Search when I need current web info

But for conversational AI assistance? I moved. And I'm not going back.

The Big Tech AI exit is happening. The question is just whether you're paying $20/month or $2/month while it does.

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SimplyLouie is Claude AI at $2/month. 50% of revenue goes to animal rescue. simplylouie.com