Leveling Up with Eric Siu I Spent $1,200,000 on AI. These Are The Tools I'm Keeping
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Mar 26, 2026 A deep cost audit of AI tool choices and where teams waste money. Practical swaps that cut token bills, from OAuth tricks to cheaper model pairings. Strategies for auditing cron jobs and rolling a cheaper agent fleet. A look at running open source models locally and the hardware tradeoffs involved.
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Audit Revealed 84% AI Cost Reduction
- Eric Siu audited his AI spend and cut costs from over $5,000/month to $800/month without losing capabilities.
- The audit revealed an 84% reduction by switching models and reconfiguring agents rather than removing features.
Move Agents To OAuth ChatGPT To Save Tokens
- Do run model substitution tests and use OAuth-connected ChatGPT instances to avoid API token charges.
- Eric saved $1,000–$1,700/month by moving some agents from paid APIs (Opus) to OAuth ChatGPT and testing trade-offs like coding vs creative performance.
Run Cron Jobs On Cheaper Models
- Do audit cron jobs and run noncritical tasks on cheaper models to cut recurring costs.
- Eric swapped expensive model runs (e.g., recruiting cron every 30 minutes) from Opus to Sonnet and saved roughly $630/month just for that change.