The original headline is "How I Cut Our AI API Bill by 95%: What Actually Worked"

Short summary

CTO reduced AI API costs 95% (from $11K to $400/month) by implementing tiered model routing with quality scoring. Core tactics: route simple tasks to cheap models (Qwen3-8B at $0.01/M vs GPT-4o at $10/M), escalate to premium only when quality threshold drops, cache FAQ queries (50-80% hit rate). Real example: support chatbot reduced from $420 to $28/month through tiering (85% reduction).

• •Shift from GPT-4o-for-everything to per-request model selection saves 97–98% per task type
• •Implement tiered routing with quality scoring: try cheap first, escalate only when needed (85% reduction on support chatbot)
• •Add caching for FAQ/common queries achieves 50–80% hit rate at zero quality cost

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