I Was Paying $65/Month for 3 AI Subscriptions. Here's How I Cut It to $10.

In January, I sat down and added up what I'd spent on AI subscriptions over the past year. The number was $780. That's rent in some cities. For three chatbots that do roughly the same thing.

ChatGPT Plus: $20/month. Claude Pro: $20/month. Gemini Advanced: $25/month. I'd subscribed to each one at different times for different reasons and never canceled any of them. Classic subscription creep.

Here's exactly how I consolidated everything down to $10/month without losing access to any model I actually use.

Why I Had Three Subscriptions in the First Place

It wasn't stupidity. Each subscription started for a legitimate reason.

I got ChatGPT Plus when GPT-4 launched. It was the only game in town for serious AI work. When Claude 2 came out and turned out to be better for long documents and writing, I added Claude Pro. Then Google offered Gemini Advanced with 2TB of storage, and since I was already paying for Google One, the upgrade felt like a deal.

Each one was justified individually. Combined, they were absurd. But I kept all three because I genuinely used different models for different tasks. GPT-5 for coding. Claude for writing and research. Gemini when I needed something from my Google Drive.

The Moment I Snapped

I was working on a project that required switching between all three within an hour. Copy context from Claude, paste into ChatGPT, verify something in Gemini. Three tabs, three logins, three separate conversation histories. I lost track of which model I'd already asked what.

Then I got rate-limited on Claude Pro. In the middle of a deadline. A service I pay $20/month for told me I'd used it too much and to come back later. That was the moment I started looking for alternatives.

What I Tried First

Dropping to one subscription: I tried using only ChatGPT Plus for two weeks. GPT-5 is good at most things, but its writing feels robotic compared to Claude, and I missed being able to throw 200K-token documents at it. Going single-model felt like a downgrade.

Using free tiers + one paid: I kept Claude Pro and used free ChatGPT and free Gemini. The free tiers are frustrating. Rate limits, model restrictions, and the constant nag to upgrade. I burned more time hitting walls than I saved in subscription costs.

API access: I looked into using the APIs directly through a custom interface. Token-based pricing is unpredictable. One heavy research day cost me $4.50 in API calls. Over a month of regular use, I estimated I'd spend more than the subscriptions.

Finding the Aggregator Model

A coworker mentioned Admix during a team standup. An AI aggregator that bundles 350+ AI models, including GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini, for $10/month. I was skeptical. That price felt too low. There had to be a catch.

I signed up for a month to test it. The catch never materialized.

The Actual Savings

$660 a year is real money. The exact saving depends on which plan and billing period you choose, but the comparison is straightforward.

What I Gained Beyond Money

The financial savings are obvious. What surprised me was the workflow improvement. Having every model in one interface eliminated the tab-switching tax. I start a task with whichever model makes sense, switch to another mid-conversation if I want a second opinion, and keep everything in one place.

I also discovered models I never would have tried. Mistral's latest model is surprisingly good for quick tasks. Llama 3 handles certain coding problems differently than GPT-5 in useful ways. With 350+ AI models available, I've found specialized tools for specific tasks that the big three don't handle as well.

What I Lost (Being Honest)

I don't have custom GPTs anymore. I used maybe three of them regularly, and I've replicated their functionality with system prompts. Not a big loss for me, but it might matter to you.

I lost the native Google Workspace integration from Gemini Advanced. I still use Google's free Gemini tier for quick Drive searches occasionally. It works fine for that.

I lost the 2TB Google One storage. I was only using 200GB, so I downgraded to a cheaper Google One plan. Net savings still massive.

How to Make the Switch

If you're stacking AI subscriptions and want to stop:

1. Check your actual usage. Look at which models you use daily vs. which you're paying for out of habit.
2. Sign up for Admix and run it alongside your existing subscriptions for one billing cycle.
3. If the aggregator covers your needs, cancel the individual subs. Don't cancel first and hope for the best.
4. Keep one direct subscription only if you depend on platform-specific features (custom GPTs, Google integration, etc.).

The whole process took me about two weeks of overlap testing. Two weeks to save $660 a year was worth it for me.