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brian austin
brian austin

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The problem with Big Tech AI pricing (and why I'm paying $2/month instead)

#ai #webdev #programming #career

The problem with Big Tech AI pricing (and why I'm paying $2/month instead)

Claude Opus 4.7 just dropped. It's genuinely impressive — extended thinking, longer context, better reasoning. The benchmarks are real.

And then you see the price: $15/million input tokens, $75/million output tokens for API access. Or $20/month for ChatGPT Plus. Or $200/month for ChatGPT Pro.

For developers in San Francisco or London, that's a rounding error. For most of the world, it's a different story.

The math nobody talks about

The median software developer salary in the US is ~$110,000/year. $20/month for AI is 0.02% of monthly income. Basically free.

Now run that same math elsewhere:

Country Median Dev Salary ChatGPT $20/mo = SimplyLouie $2/mo =
🇺🇸 USA $9,100/mo 0.2% of salary 0.02% of salary
🇮🇳 India $800/mo 2.5% of salary 0.25% of salary
🇳🇬 Nigeria $450/mo 4.4% of salary 0.44% of salary
🇵🇭 Philippines $600/mo 3.3% of salary 0.33% of salary
🇰🇪 Kenya $550/mo 3.6% of salary 0.36% of salary
🇧🇷 Brazil $700/mo 2.9% of salary 0.29% of salary
🇮🇩 Indonesia $500/mo 4.0% of salary 0.4% of salary

For a US developer, $20/month AI is a trivial subscription. For a developer in Lagos, it's a significant chunk of income. For a developer in Jakarta, it's potentially a week of groceries.

The same product. The same price. Wildly different impact.

Big Tech's pricing problem

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google — they're not evil. They have to cover massive infrastructure costs, pay researchers, fund compute. The pricing makes sense if you're pricing for the US market.

But they're selling globally while pricing locally for Silicon Valley. The result: AI is practically free for people who are already wealthy, and unaffordable for people in emerging markets who could benefit most from productivity tools.

A developer in Nairobi with AI access can compete with a developer in New York. Without it, they're fighting with one hand tied behind their back.

What I built instead

I built SimplyLouie — a Claude API wrapper priced specifically for global developers:

  • $2/month (or local equivalent) globally
  • Direct Claude API access — same model, same quality
  • No upsells, no tiers, no "you need Pro for that"

Local pricing so it's actually affordable:

The developer API

For developers who want to build on top of this, there's an API tier:

curl -X POST https://simplylouie.com/api/chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "message": "Explain microservices vs monolith for a startup",
    "model": "claude-opus-4"
  }'
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Same Claude quality. Fraction of the direct API cost. Documented at simplylouie.com/developers.

A side note on the rescue dog

SimplyLouie is named after a rescue dog. 50% of revenue goes to animal rescue organizations. So when you pay $2/month instead of $20, you're not just saving money — you're funding animal rescue at the same time.

Claude Opus 4.7 is a genuinely impressive model. I'm glad it exists. I just think everyone should be able to use it, not just people lucky enough to be born in the right country.

7-day free trial, no credit card required. Try it: simplylouie.com

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