To complete the first draft of our AI tools roundup on withAgents, I sat down after my morning gym sesh today to start auditing where I’m spending $$$ on AI.

I knew it’d be a bit ridiculous. I try lots of things. A dabbler.

ALMOST $250/mo. ON TOOLS THOUGH!?
Man that’s a car payment monthly toll bill in the burbs!

Looking at the figure was a weird experience. I felt a sort of shame about it, but I was also already wondering how I could 'budget’ a few more things.

For example, I don’t pay for Higgsfield currently.
But I really want to try their $50/mo. ‘ultimate’ plan which has ‘UGC’ capabilities. If it really does what it says it does, that’s not a bad cost for great viral content.

But that’s the sort of thinking that gets me into trouble with AI.
I fall for buy into the marketing hype pretty easily. And I like these things.

With such a fractured ecosystem of tools with similar capabilities always one-upping the other, I’ve found myself signing up and then unsubscribing for tools for a while now. A sort of AI tool whiplash.

Do you do this?

Maybe it’s just me. I’m probably a bit of a foolish early adopter. I enjoy trying the latest/greatest and, even then, I feel always a bit behind. I like to put these tools to work. I literally use them for work every day and get more done. They’re honestly “tools of trade” for me. Worth it, in a way.

No doubt, this morning’s audit convinced me to cancel a few things that I’m not using so often any longer (I really don’t need multiple chat model subscriptions) but it also just highlighted to me how much of a pain managing all of this tool overload is getting.

Pre-AI, I really didn’t subscribe to any SaaS outside of my day job.
Unless you count web hosting. Now? Too many.

At some point, does it all consolidate?
Do we come up with new ways to manage the tool overload?
A new payment system for the AI ecosystem, perhaps?
TBD.