I believe this story, but being from a third world country it's not feasible to spend anywhere near that much. Also, as others have mentioned I am wary of "rug-pulls" when it comes to proprietary models and services. That is why I am all-in on Deepseek currently, with Aider (and Roo for MCP integration). When the main api is lagging I just switch to the same model with a different provider on OpenRouter. Theoretically I could host my own if I got that busy.
Solo developer doing small jobs but I code every day and $10 per month would be a busy month for me. I still read every line of code though..