Foyer Pays $3k/mo for AI Coding Tools That Would Cost $30k–$40k Under Enterprise Plans

Foyer, the startup that built the Merlin AI browser extension and is developing the audio-recording companion app Thine, pays roughly $3,000 a month for individual OpenAI and Anthropic coding accounts across its 25 employees. CEO Pratyush Rai said enterprise plans based on API usage would cost the company $30,000 to $40,000 monthly.

CTO Siddhartha Saxena estimated he would have incurred a $4,000 bill on OpenAI’s Codex in April under a pay-as-you-go enterprise account; his $200 individual plan covered the same usage.

Rai said the company’s token consumption has grown dramatically because the lower costs let developers experiment freely. About 20 people previously worked on Merlin AI, which reached 900,000 Chrome users. The extension is now maintained by three developers using AI coding tools.

Rai said the team now performs work that would have required 50 people two or three years ago. Foyer has raised $8 million and currently employs around 15 developers. Rai said the company’s low costs have allowed token usage to increase by a factor of 100,000 compared with earlier levels.

An Anthropic spokesperson said small teams can operate effectively on individual plans, while larger companies choose enterprise tiers for security, governance, and usage visibility. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. Rai said the current pricing structure is not a winner-takes-all market.

He added that further declines in token prices, driven by semiconductor improvements and more open-source models, could reduce a $30,000–$40,000 monthly bill to $2,000–$3,000 and support development of the compute-heavy Thine app.