I am not sure, but since the AI boom began, I probably spent about 200-300€ on it, which is a lot for me as a student. But the value I'm getting out of it is a multitude higher. My eating habits became way healthier because of OpenClaw, this website's design was purely made with Gemini 3.1 Pro (used for free because of a student subscription), I even used Codex to circumvent TOS limitations to save money (I will not say more without a lawyer!).

I know these subsidized subscriptions solely existed to vendor-lock users, but seemingly this is a bit harder to enforce, because from a user point of view the next model is only one string away. Probably it's a combination of a lack of funding, high costs and opportunistic users like me surfing from one subsidized tier to the next. Whatever it is, there seem to be signs for the golden era of AI is coming to an end and the enshittification is beginning.