5 sessions. $12. Shipped.
TL;DR
A five-feature SaaS MVP (auth, CRUD, email, dashboard, payments) shipped for $11.47 in total AI costs across 5 sessions and 3 providers. The savings came from scope control and matching model complexity to task difficulty.
The project was simple on paper: a SaaS tool for freelancers to track invoices and send payment reminders. Five features — authentication, invoice CRUD, email reminders, a dashboard, and Inflow Pay checkout. I locked the scope before writing the first prompt and built across three providers to use the right model for each task. Total AI cost when I pushed to production: $11.47.
Session by session
Session 1 (Claude Sonnet, $2.84): Project setup, database schema, and auth flow. The AI tried to add user roles and an admin panel — scope expansion was caught and stopped before any extra code was generated. Session 2 (GPT-4o, $1.92): Invoice CRUD and PDF generation. The AI suggested a full document management system. Pulled it back to invoices only. Session 3 (Claude Sonnet, $3.21): Email reminders and scheduling. Clean session — the project memory already had the preference for minimal features from the first two sessions. Session 4 (DeepSeek, $0.89): Dashboard and basic analytics. Used a lighter, cheaper model for straightforward UI work. Session 5 (Claude Sonnet, $2.61): Inflow Pay integration and final polish. Shipped that evening.
Where did the cost savings come from?
The $11.47 figure is not a trick of using cheap models. Three of the five sessions ran on Claude Sonnet, which is not the cheapest option. The savings came from two things: scope control prevented the AI from generating code that would need to be reviewed, debugged, and deleted; and model selection matched the complexity of each task to an appropriately priced provider. The dashboard session ran on DeepSeek because the task was simple UI — no reason to pay Sonnet rates for straightforward component generation.
Why this matters for builders
You can replicate this approach without DriftLess. Before each session: write down what this session will produce — one sentence, no ambiguity. After each session: calculate the cost (your provider dashboard shows token usage) and diff the output against your scope sentence. If the AI added anything you did not ask for, note it. After a week of this, you will have a clear picture of how much drift you are actually paying for.
How DriftLess keeps costs visible
DriftLess keeps cost visible through hosted credit balances, build-size estimates, and optional provider keys on Team when direct provider billing matters. When scope is locked and the active task is explicit, you naturally build leaner. The $11.47 MVP was not an exercise in frugality. It was the natural result of knowing what you are building and what you are spending.
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