Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for students?

Posted by sonderotis on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:16PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I want to innovate with llms and build a mini-saas for my school bills but I do not know which llm service to use. Gemini, openai or mistral.

I want one that is not ridiculously expensive I am in a 3rd world country.

( 7 comments | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by agoren on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:52PM (#44954282)

You can try Lightning AI's model APIs https://lightning.ai/lightning-ai/models?section=allmodels&v...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by toomuchtodo on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:25PM (#44953973)

What would be the cost for you to self host and serve locally on a network? It's potentially more cost effective to aggregate resources to host "on prem" vs the ongoing SaaS costs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by sonderotis on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:32PM (#44954057)

So you mean firing up ollama and them later if it scales. going for llm service?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by toomuchtodo on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:33PM (#44954072)

Yes. I have seen examples of servers for developing countries that host local copies of Wikipedia and other open data sets, as well as an aggressive caching proxy for low bandwidth internet uplinks. Same idea, but local serving of LLM inference.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by downrightmike on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:23PM (#44953953)

You're probably going to end up switching around for daily limits.

Just note that no one is paying the real cost of AI, if they were, it would be plain to see that hiring a human is way cheaper. So burn that M$FT and VC money while you can.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by sonderotis on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:31PM (#44954046)

I do not have vc-money. Just the upkeep from my parent

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Which LLM service has the fairest pricing for stu... by downrightmike on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @01:35PM (#44954095)

Sorry, my point is that the free limits on these services are being paid for by VC and M$FT investments. Its free now because they are trying to capture the market and build better services while it is still early in the AI lifecycle

[ Parent | on HN ]