I see startups spending $5,000/month on AI tools. VC-funded companies buying every shiny thing.

We’re bootstrapped. Our entire AI spend is under $500/month. Here’s exactly how.

The $500 Stack

Claude Pro: $20/month Our primary AI tool. Writing, analysis, brainstorming, coding help. Worth every penny.

ChatGPT Plus: $20/month Secondary tool for web browsing, image generation, and when Claude is slow.

Zapier Starter: $29/month Connects our AI tools to everything else. Automates the boring parts.

API Budget: $100/month For custom integrations. Mostly Claude API for our customer support bot.

GitHub Copilot: $19/month For our one developer. Pays for itself in time saved.

Otter.ai Pro: $16/month Meeting transcription. One seat is enough—we share access.

Buffer for AI: $150/month** Set aside for experimenting. New tools, one-off projects, API spikes.

Total: $354/month + $150 buffer = $504/month

That’s it. That’s the whole stack.

What We Don’t Pay For

Enterprise AI tools: Jasper, Writer, Copy.ai—these are $50-500/month for what Claude does better for $20.

AI features in other SaaS: We strip these out wherever possible. Notion AI, Grammarly Premium, etc. Redundant when you have Claude.

Custom model training: Not worth it at our stage. Prompting gets us 90% there.

Multiple seats: We share accounts where ToS allows. One AI subscription goes far.

What This Stack Actually Does

Content creation Blog posts, emails, social media, product descriptions. All first drafts from Claude, edited by humans.

Customer support Tier-one support handled by Claude API. Routes complex stuff to our human support person.

Meeting productivity Otter transcribes. Claude summarizes. We spend less time in meetings and more time building.

Development acceleration Copilot for coding. Claude for debugging and code review. Our one dev moves like a team of three.

Research and analysis Competitive analysis, market research, report summarization. Would take days manually. Takes hours now.

The Tradeoffs

Being cheap isn’t free. Here’s what we sacrifice:

Speed: Sometimes we wait for rate limits. Sometimes Claude is slow.

Convenience: Juggling multiple tools is more work than an all-in-one solution.

Features: Enterprise tools have bells and whistles we don’t get.

Support: Pay for cheap tools, get minimal support.

Worth it? For us, absolutely. The money we save goes into things that actually grow the business.

How to Trim Your AI Spend

1. Audit everything. List every AI tool and feature you pay for.
2. Identify overlap. You probably have three tools doing what one could.
3. Consolidate to core tools. Claude or ChatGPT handles most text tasks.
4. Cancel AI add-ons. Strip AI features from tools where you have dedicated AI.
5. Set a budget. We literally have a $500 cap. Forces prioritization.

When We’ll Spend More

Our budget will grow when:

• Customer volume requires more API capacity
• We hire more people who need seats
• A new tool demonstrably saves more than it costs

Until then, $500/month is plenty.

The dirty secret of AI spending: most companies waste money on tools they barely use. The bootstrapped constraint forces you to actually get value from what you pay for.

Sometimes the scrappy approach isn’t just cheaper. It’s better.