The original title is "Stop Guessing: How I Pick AI API Architecture at Every Scale"

Short summary

A practical framework for selecting AI API architecture based on company scale, emphasizing p99 latency over mean latency as the key metric. Startups should prioritize cost efficiency and model swapability, while enterprises need contractual SLAs and multi-provider redundancy. Includes real cost projections showing DeepSeek V4 Flash offering 97.5% savings over direct GPT-4o calls across growth stages from MVP to 100K users.

• •Prioritize p99 latency distribution over mean latency when evaluating AI API providers
• •Startups can save ~97.5% on inference costs using alternative models like DeepSeek V4 Flash vs GPT-4o
• •Enterprises need multi-provider setups with contractual SLAs; startups need one API key with model swapability

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.