How I Built a Production AI Agent for $5/month Using Open Source + OpenRouter
Dev.to AI
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Generative AI
How I Built a Production AI Agent for $5/month Using Open Source + OpenRouter I've spent the last six months building and deploying AI agents for various startups. The common refrain I heard? "AI is expensive." Most teams default to OpenAI's API, paying $15-20 per million tokens. But here's what I discovered: you don't need to. With the right combination of open source tools and smart API aggregation, I've built production-grade AI agents that cost less than a coffee subscription.