I’ve been digging into our current automation setup, and something’s been nagging me. We’re running Camunda for workflow orchestration, but every time we need to integrate an AI model—whether it’s GPT for content generation, Claude for analysis, or something specialized—we’re spinning up separate subscriptions. Each one comes with its own API keys, billing cycles, procurement overhead, and vendor relationships to manage.
We’ve got at least 8 different AI subscriptions on the books right now. When I started adding up the actual costs—not just the monthly fees, but the onboarding time, the duplicate infrastructure, the overhead of tracking 8 separate dashboards—it’s honestly staggering. And that’s before accounting for the licensing complexity when we need to audit what’s being used where.
I stumbled on the fact that some platforms are consolidating access to 400+ AI models under a single subscription. The appeal is obvious: one invoice, one set of credentials, simpler procurement. But I’m skeptical about whether that actually reduces our total cost of ownership, or if we’re just moving the spend around.
Has anyone actually gone through this consolidation? What did your actual cost look like after switching? And more importantly—when you’ve got everything under one subscription, how does that change the way you manage licensing compliance and cost allocation across different teams?
We went through this exact thing about 18 months ago. The math looked good on paper—consolidating 6 different model subscriptions should’ve been a slam dunk. But what actually changed the game for us was realizing we weren’t just paying for access. We were paying for redundancy, for integrations we barely touched, and for the ops overhead of maintaining all those vendor relationships.
When we moved to a unified subscription, we saw something unexpected. Because we had all the models in one place, we actually started experimenting with different approaches. We’d spin up a quick workflow using Claude for one task, then realize we could use a different model that was cheaper for that specific workload. With separate subscriptions, we never would’ve noticed because each one was siloed.
the real win wasn’t just the 35% cost reduction on the subscription fees themselves. It was consolidating our procurement cycle from 8 vendors to 1, killing off redundant integrations, and having our team actually think strategically about which model fit which job instead of just using whatever was already licensed.
One heads-up though: switching does require some coordination upfront. We had to audit what we were actually using across all 6 subscriptions, migrate the workflows, and test everything. That took us about 3 weeks of focused effort. But the payoff is real.
I’d also ask whether your current setup even covers what you actually need. We found a lot of waste—models we paid for but never used, or situations where we were forcing a task into an expensive model when a cheaper alternative would’ve worked fine.
With a consolidated approach, you get flexibility without thinking about budget implications every time you want to try something new. That changes behavior in ways that actually reduce costs beyond just the subscriptions themselves.
The consolidation definitely works, but you need to be realistic about migration costs. Beyond the subscription savings, the hidden value is in operational simplification. One vendor relationship instead of eight means fewer maintenance headaches, simpler audit trails, and cleaner cost allocation per project. We were able to cut our finance team’s time spent tracking vendor invoices by roughly 40%, which is real money when you account for labor.
The tricky part is that you need to be intentional about how you structure workflows once everything is unified. You can’t just lift-and-shift your existing setup. We spent time actually designing for model selection—routing different tasks to different models based on cost and performance trade-offs. That’s where the real savings compound. Without that intentional design, you might just end up spending the same total amount on fewer vendors.
Cost consolidation is straightforward, but licensing complexity often increases if you’re not careful. You’ll need clear governance around who can use which models, what volume limits apply, and how costs get allocated back to teams. We implemented internal chargeback mechanisms so business units understood the actual cost of their workflows. That alone drove more disciplined model selection than any top-down mandate could.
From a contract perspective, ensure your unified subscription actually covers what you need at scale. Some platforms charge per execution or per token once you hit certain thresholds. That can negate the consolidation benefit if you’re doing high-volume AI integrations. Ask vendors for realistic volume projections based on your Camunda workflows, and make sure the pricing scales with you.
yes, conslidation works. we saved ~30% by moving 7 subs to one. the kicker is ops overhead dropped more than fees. one vendor, one agreement, way cleaner.
This is exactly the problem Latenode solves. We were in your shoes—juggling GPT subscriptions, Claude access, specialized models, all separate invoices. Using Latenode, we consolidated everything into one subscription that covers 400+ AI models. The math shifted dramatically.
First, we cut subscription costs by consolidating from 8 vendors to 1. Second, we stopped paying for redundancy and unused access tiers. Third—and this is the part that surprised us—we actually optimized our workflows better because we had visibility into all available models in one place. We could route tasks intelligently instead of forcing them into whatever was already licensed.
We went from managing 8 separate relationships, billing processes, and API key rotations to handling one streamlined setup. Our procurement team was genuinely relieved. And because Latenode’s pricing is execution-based rather than per-model or per-operation, we saw actual ROI within the first 2 months.
If you’re serious about consolidation and want the procurement hassle to disappear, check out what Latenode offers. It’s built exactly for this scenario.