I checked my OpenAI and Anthropic dashboards every morning for a month. Then I stopped.

OpenAI usage page, check spend. Anthropic console, check spend. Add it up in my head. Close both tabs, annoyed before writing a single line of code. Every new project meant repeating it: new account, new key, new billing page, new error format. By the third project, I had four tabs pinned just for billing. The breaking point was small. An email saying I'd hit 80% of a budget I didn't remember setting. Not because I'd overspent, but because I'd lost track of my own guardrails across two…