What did you stop paying for in the last year because AI rewrote your stack?

Genuine question because I'm curious if it's just me or this is happening everywhere.

In the last 12-18 months, AI coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, that family) got good enough that I've quietly stopped paying for a bunch of stuff I used to consider essential. Not on principle, just because it's now faster and cleaner to ask an agent to write the exact thing I need than to buy a bloated plugin or pay for a SaaS that does 80% of what I want plus 50 features I'll never touch.

Some examples from my own setup:

• A custom contact-relay script instead of a Forms plugin and a transactional email service. Built in an evening, costs $0/month to run on a Worker, does exactly what I need and nothing else.
• A redirect manager I wrote instead of buying one of the premium "link shortener" SaaS tools. Same with click logging, geo routing, A/B splits — that whole category got absorbed into one small custom layer.
• Sprite generation and image pipelines that used to mean a designer or a complicated paid tool, now done locally by an AI-assisted script that runs on my own machine.
• Server management itself. I used to actually log into VPSes and configure nginx. Now most of my stuff lives on Cloudflare with config-as-code and an agent that updates the configs when I ask.

The pattern I notice — anything where the "premium plugin" or "SaaS" was charging you for assembling 20 small features into a UI, that whole layer is collapsing. The features are now cheaper to generate than to license.

So the genuine question: what did you drop in the last year? Plugins, SaaS subs, freelancers for small jobs, server-side stuff — anything where AI made the paid option look silly? Or are you in the opposite camp where you tried it and decided the paid tools were still worth it?

Curious where this lands for the people here actually running sites day to day.

I like the image. Impressed that all the spelling is correct.
If you know the problems AI has with that - then you know. :eyebrow:

But, I've got nothing that I've replaced.
Perhaps it's because I am an ex-coder and can keep my hand in - but I had no little tools and subscriptions to replace.

However, I will say that I have been using free ChatGPT to create basic text boxes and css layouts within 10 seconds.
I've not tried any of the paid tiers for coding etc, I've not seen the need.

Oh - and Leonardo.ai produces good images so easily - great for the graphically challenged like me.

Although I have basic HTML knowledge, I had to pay for freelancers to build theme/style for my websites as I didn't know about CSS and styling. But now, I am using AI to build web pages much faster than before with more attractive themes/styling.

I didn't have any affiliate link clicks tracker until I was able to implement an affiliate click tracker and a postback system using AI which gives me more insights such as visitors behavior, best performing web pages and CTAs etc.

I am not paying freelancers to anymore to troubleshoot errors in my stack. AI is doing it for me. 8-)

Applause to Claude and ChatGPT free plans for saving my money. :clap:

@TheGooner — your case is the cleanest one I've heard, honestly. Ex-coder + no SaaS subscriptions to begin with = nothing to replace, just augment. The "free ChatGPT for 10-second CSS" workflow is basically perfect for that profile. No upsell needed.

The one thing that might be worth poking at, since you mentioned you've not seen the need for paid tiers — it's not the tier that changes the game, it's the interface. The same model in a chat window vs. the same model running as an agent in your code editor or terminal (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor) are two completely different tools.

Chat = "I dictate, then copy-paste". Agent = "here's the repo, fix the rate-limiter, run the tests, tell me what you did" — you supervise instead of dictate. For someone who can still keep their hand in, that shift can be addictive in a way the chat experience isn't.

Not pushing it on you, just flagging in case you ever wonder why people who started with free ChatGPT eventually ended up paying for something. It's rarely the model quality. It's the interaction model.

And cheers on noticing the spelling — that image is actually GPT's own new one-prompt image gen, not Leonardo. Same chat window, same free tier you're already using. Which is kind of the same point in a different layer: the interaction format keeps quietly shifting under everyone's feet even when the underlying model stays the same.

Did not replace anything but made my coding days much more rewarding, for non coders its still not good enough but soon it will be as simple as make me XYZ and you will have it.

AI didn’t really replace any fixed costs for me, but it did remove the need to hire freelancers for one-off tasks, especially small design jobs or troubleshooting something specific in my projects. If anything, it has added a roughly $20/month subscription, which is worth it for me.

Graphic Design, and complex coding.. My html and css could only go so far. Actually it's been a lifesaver with soem custom templates I have where the provider is no longe in Biz, I have been able to extend the life and/or modernise many things.

I'm finally able to add plugins that I've always wanted but couldn't afford.