We’ve been running Make for about two years and our bill keeps climbing. A big chunk of that growth isn’t actually Make execution costs. It’s everything around Make—separate OpenAI API subscription, separate Anthropic account for specific tasks, integration layers to route requests between them. We end up maintaining auth for each one, debugging whose service is slow, and reconciling five different invoices.
I’ve been trying to model what the cost looks like if we moved to a platform with unified AI model access. On the surface, the appeal is obvious—one subscription covers everything instead of juggling five. But I need to understand whether the per-execution costs actually favor consolidation, or if the math is more subtle.
Specifically: when you consolidate your five subscriptions into one platform’s unified model access, does the cost math change enough to justify switching? Or are we just trading one payment structure for another without real savings? If we’re paying similar total costs, we might as well stay with Make since our team knows it. But if consolidation actually improves the unit economics, that’s a different conversation.
Has anyone actually done this calculation and moved? What did real total cost of ownership look like before and after?
We made this move about six months ago. Our situation was similar to yours—Make plus three separate AI model subscriptions. The honest answer is that the cost savings were real but not massive at first. What changed the math was the operational simplification.
When we consolidated, we eliminated the cost of custom glue code that routed requests between different models. We stopped paying for redundant functionality across platforms. And we got better visibility into actual model usage, which let us optimize which model we used for which task instead of defaulting to expensive ones out of habit.
The real financial shift came when we could scale more efficiently. One unified bill scales differently than five separate bills. As our execution volume grew, the per-execution cost actually dropped. That’s when consolidation became a clear financial win. At your current volumes, it might be break-even or marginally better. But the growth dynamics favor consolidation.
The consolidation question is really three separate things: unit cost per execution, operational overhead, and flexibility. Unit costs might be similar or slightly better with consolidation. Operational overhead definitely improves—you’re not managing five different API keys and billing cycles. Flexibility improves because you can experiment with different models without procurement overhead. When you add those together, consolidation tends to pay for itself pretty quickly. The challenge is that your finance team probably only cares about unit cost, not the operational savings. You might need to make the business case on total cost of ownership, not just per-API-call pricing.
The cost equation changes when you realize how much you’re overpaying for flexibility you’re not using. With five separate subscriptions, each optimized for a specific use case, you end up with tier levels designed for peak usage of each service. Consolidation lets you design around average usage across all models. That’s where real savings hide. Plus, unified logging and usage analytics become possible, which reveals optimization opportunities you couldn’t see before. The visible cost might be similar. The actual efficiency is usually 15-30% better.
You’re asking exactly the right question, and the math is more favorable than you think. Latenode’s unified subscription model for 400+ AI models eliminates the exact scenario you’re describing—juggling five separate accounts and invoice reconciliation.
Here’s what clients typically find: Make costs might be lower on paper, but accounting for the separate AI model subscriptions, you’re often spending 40-60% more total than moving to a unified platform. The per-execution cost on Latenode is execution-based, which scales differently than Make’s per-task model. At high volumes, the execution-based pricing consistently outperforms.
But the bigger shift is the operational savings. One billing cycle. One set of API credentials. Unified usage analytics so you actually see where money is going. No maintenance overhead for keeping in sync with five different vendor SDKs. Teams we work with report 300-500% ROI in the first year when they consolidate like you’re considering.
Worth running a side-by-side cost model with your current workflows to see the real numbers.