$20/Month AI Tools? That's a Luxury Tax on Developers Outside the US I was grabbing coffee in Jakarta last month when a developer friend mentioned she'd been using free tier services for months because $20/month for an AI tool felt impossible. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, that same $20 is what you spend without thinking—basically lunch money. That gap haunted me. Because it's not just unfair. It's actively exclusionary. ## The Math That Doesn't Add Up Let's be real about numbers. $20 in San Francisco gets you: - Half a fancy lunch - A parking meter for a few hours - A subscription to one AI tool In Lagos, Nigeria? That's roughly ₦33,000. For context, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood is around ₦150,000-₦250,000. So $20 represents 2-3% of someone's monthly housing cost. In Jakarta, Indonesia? $20 is around 320,000 IDR. A bowl of good street food costs 15,000 IDR. You could eat well for a week with that money. San Francisco? You can't even get a mediocre burrito. ## Why This Matters for Developers Here's where it gets serious. A freelance web developer in Lagos could use an AI coding assistant to: - Debug faster - Write better documentation - Land bigger clients - Charge rates competitive with Southeast Asia But if they can't afford $20/month, they're watching their peers (in countries where $20 is trivial) pull ahead. They're building slower. Competing with one hand tied. I talked to a developer in Lagos who was underbidding Indian developers because she didn't have access to the same tools. Not because she was less skilled—because the pricing was built for a different world entirely. ## The Hidden Cost of "Global Pricing" Most AI companies claim they offer "global pricing." What they actually offer is one price everywhere. Which means: - Developers in San Francisco pay $20 and think it's cheap - Developers in Jakarta pay $20 and skip their coffee for a month - Developers in rural India? They can't afford to participate at all This isn't inclusion. It's just global inequality with extra steps. PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) adjustments exist for a reason. Netflix uses them. Spotify uses them. Yet most AI startups charge the same everywhere. Why? Probably because they're built in California and haven't thought about it. ## What Actually Needs to Change Transparent regional pricing. If you can afford to charge $20 in the US, you can afford to charge $5-8 in Southeast Asia or Africa. You won't go broke. Stripe and Wise have figured out payments across borders. Why haven't AI companies? Freemium models with teeth. Free tiers that actually let you work, not just experiment. A developer should be able to ship real projects on the free tier. Sliding scale options. Some companies are doing this. Let developers in lower-income countries pay what makes sense for their income, not your price list. Investment in emerging markets. The best developers aren't only in San Francisco. Some are in Lagos. Some are in Jakarta. Some are in Bogotá. Pricing them out ensures you're not building with them. ## The Real Talk I get it. Building software costs money. But we've normalized a pricing structure that assumes everyone makes a San Francisco salary. That's not global. That's colonial pricing dressed up as accessibility. A $2/month tier isn't charity. It's recognizing that a skilled developer in Indonesia isn't less valuable than one in California. They're just competing in a different economy. The future of AI development isn't built by people who can afford American prices. It's built by everyone with a good idea and internet connection. Pricing structures that lock out 90% of the world's developers? That's leaving talent on the table. Let's change that. --- *I'm building an affordable AI assistant ($2/month) with 50% of revenue going to animal rescue. [simplylouie.com](https://simplylouie.com)*