💸 The $30/1M Token Mistake I Made in My First Month.

🌱 New Job, New APIs, New... Surprises

It was my first few weeks at the company. Exciting project, friendly team, lots of AI talk — basically, a dream setup for any developer.

Task?
Integrate OpenAI's language model into our system. Simple enough, right?

Well...

😬 The Mistake: I summoned the wrong model

I had picked a legacy OpenAI model. You know, the kind that still thinks Elon Musk works at OpenAI.

Price?
YES $30 per 1 million tokens.

I was basically burning tokens like confetti at a New Year’s party — except each piece cost money.

🧑‍🏫 The Help I Got

Thankfully, my team lead didn’t throw a keyboard at me.

Instead, he calmly walked me and said the golden words:

“Let’s switch to Gemini — better, faster, cheaper.”

One config change later, and voila!
Problem solved.
Cost slashed.
Self-esteem... rebooting.

🧾 A Mini Rant to OpenAI

Dear OpenAI,
Why is the older model priced like it’s some kind of vintage collector’s item?

The newer models (like GPT-4o) are cheaper, faster, and better — yet the legacy ones silently drain your wallet if you're not careful.

A friendly request:

If a model is outdated, maybe don’t charge enterprise-tier prices for it.
Or at least slap a “Caution: Financial Risk Ahead” label on it.

Sincerely,
A developer whose onboarding came with a surprise OpenAI invoice — courtesy of the company.