Pricing teardowns
Cursor vs Claude Code: the real 30-day bill (2026)
Sticker is $20 for both. At a 5-engineer team shipping 100 pull requests a month in June 2026, the all-in 30-day bill diverges. Here is the honest math.
10 min read18
Author
Camille Forster
Camille Forster writes BudgetForge's pricing teardowns and money-honest math. She has been pricing software and coaching makers on money since 2018.
AI cost
AI app builder cost in 2026: 6 platforms billed for 30 days
The sticker on Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, and Totalum is between $20 and $79. The 30-day bill on a real reference workload is $69 to $270. Here is what each pricing page leaves off, with the math.
12 min read28
Pricing
Pricing your AI app: 3 ladders that converted at over 7%
Three pricing ladders beat flat per-seat pricing for AI products in our teardown of 40 launches: a credit ladder, a usage-with-floor ladder, and an outcome ladder. Each cleared a 7%+ trial-to-paid rate by aligning the price metric with the value metric and putting a visible cap on downside. Pick the ladder that matches how your users feel cost — tokens, runs, or results — and price the rung, not the seat.
6 min read27
Build vs buy
Build vs buy: when DIY beats SaaS at scale
Build-vs-buy isn't a values debate, it's a breakeven date. SaaS wins early because it converts a big upfront build into a small monthly fee. DIY wins once your usage-based SaaS bill exceeds the fully-loaded cost of owning the code — typically around month 18 for infrastructure-style tools. This piece gives you the formula, a worked example, and the three traps that make teams build too early.
5 min read24
Unit economics
Effective hourly rate: the only freelance metric that matters
Your headline rate is a vanity number. Your effective hourly rate — total income divided by every hour the business consumed, billable or not — is what you actually earn. For most freelancers it lands 35–55% below the rate on their invoice once you count admin, sales, and unbilled rework. This piece shows how to compute it, why it's always lower than you think, and the three moves that raise it without raising your rate.
7 min read28