How to cut your AI compute without downgrading your product:
First... figure out what your users are doing.
> How complex their tasks are
> Which tasks need an answer right now
> Where you're running the biggest models
Knowing your workload is key here
Then set up 3 things:
1. A routing layer that sends every task to the right model based on complexity (small open source models for simple tasks, bigger ones for complex work, frontier models only when essential)
2. Full caching on your prompts plus tighter prompt management (cached tokens are much cheaper & smaller prompts stop the model from doing unnecessary things)
3. Batching for every background task (anything that isn't time-sensitive runs only when the GPU has spare capacity)
Now you have an AI product that:
> Serves the same quality
> Handles more users
> Stays affordable for you
All without charging customers $500/month