The cheapest AI stack that actually works for a solo worker
You do not need five subscriptions. A free tier, one cheap model, and one automation tool cover most of it.
I audited my AI spend and found I was paying for overlap. Three tools did the same job under different branding. Cutting to a lean stack saved money and decision fatigue.
The core: one free-tier chatbot for everyday questions, one low-cost model for bulk writing and coding, and one automation tool to connect them to my calendar and inbox. That is it. Everything else was a feature I opened twice.
The trick is matching the model to the task instead of reaching for the flagship by default. Drafting a tweet does not need the most expensive brain on the market.
If a tool does not change what I ship or how I feel at the end of the day, it gets canceled. The cheapest stack is the one you actually use, not the one with the most features.