How I stopped burning money on AI API calls (and got faster responses)

Short summary

Engineer reduced AI API costs by 70% using a middleware classifier that routes simple queries to GPT-3.5 and complex ones to GPT-4, achieving $30/month spend and 1.2s response time via Redis queue load-balancing. Key insights: tiered routing outperforms caching or compression; instrument monitoring early; avoid over-engineering before constraints emerge.

• •Built middleware classifier routing simple queries to GPT-3.5, complex ones to GPT-4, cutting costs 70% with maintained latency
• •Achieved $30/month cost and 1.2s average response using Redis queue for load-balancing and Grafana for metric tracking
• •Lessons learned: tiered routing beats caching; add monitoring before scaling; don't over-engineer without real constraints

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.