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TL;DR
"The average developer spends over $100/mo on AI tools. Most of it is overlap. Heres how to find the waste."
Heres something nobody talks about: the average developer is spending over $100 a month on AI tools and most of them dont even know the total.
I see it all the time. Someone signs up for ChatGPT Plus because everyone else did. Then Claude Pro because it writes better code. Then Cursor because VS Code felt slow. Then Copilot because their company already pays for it but they forget to cancel the personal one. Then Perplexity because Google search got worse.
Each one is $10 or $20 a month. None of them feel expensive. But add them up and youre looking at $80 to $150 a month. Thats $1,000 to $1,800 a year. On subscriptions.
The real waste isnt in any single tool. Its in the overlap. If you have ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro, those two do about 90% of the same things for most people. If you have Cursor and Copilot, youre paying for two code assistants when you only use one at a time.
The tricky part is they all feel different enough to justify keeping. ChatGPT has web browsing and image generation. Claude has longer context and better coding. Cursor has the IDE integration. Copilot has the inline completions. Each one has that one thing the others dont do.
But heres the question nobody asks: is that one thing worth $240 a year?
I tracked my own stack for a month. Here it is:
Total: $90/mo. $1,080/year.
When I actually looked at my usage, ChatGPT was getting maybe 5 queries a week. Everything else was going through Claude or Perplexity. Thats $240 a year on a tool I barely touch.
After tracking this for a month, I came up with a simple framework. For each tool in your stack, answer these three questions:
1. Does another tool in my stack do 80% of what this does? If yes, one of them is a candidate to drop. You dont need three chatbots.
2. When was the last time I actually used this? Check your browser history. If you havent opened it in two weeks, you dont need it. Cancel and resubscribe if you miss it.
3. Am I on the right tier? A lot of people are on Pro plans when the free tier covers their usage. ChatGPT Free is genuinely good now. Gemini has a solid free tier. Not everything needs to be a paid subscription.
Based on what were seeing from users tracking their spend on AIPowerStacks, the typical breakdown looks like this:
The most common overlap we see is people paying for both ChatGPT and Claude. Second most common is paying for both Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Third is paying for multiple content generation tools like Jasper and Copy.ai.
AI tool companies are counting on you not adding up the total. Every $20 subscription is designed to feel trivial. But trivial times six is $120 a month. Trivial times twelve months is $1,440 a year.
The companies building these tools are some of the most well-funded in history. They are very good at making you feel like you need the premium tier. Most of the time you dont.
My suggestion: spend 10 minutes this week adding up your AI subscriptions. All of them. The number will surprise you. Then ask yourself which ones youve actually opened in the last 7 days.
The tools that survive that test are your real stack. Everything else is noise.
Based on tracked data, the average individual spends $80-150 per month across 3-6 AI subscriptions. Teams spend significantly more at $150-250 per person per month.
ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are the most common overlap. Both are general-purpose chatbots that handle coding, writing, and analysis. Cursor and GitHub Copilot is the second most common — both are AI code assistants.
If you mainly code, Claude Pro is the stronger choice. If you need web browsing, image generation, and plugins, ChatGPT Plus is better. If you do both, pick the one you use more and use the other on the free tier.
Track your subscriptions in one place, identify tools that overlap in function, check if youre on the right tier, and cancel anything you havent used in two weeks. Most people can cut 20-30% of their AI spend without losing any capability.
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