DeepSeek vs GPT-4o: What 6 Months of Data Taught Me About API Pricing

Let me start with a confession: I used to be the guy who signed up for every AI API provider directly. I'd have 14 different API keys scattered across my.en files, each with its own billing portal, rate limits, and - God help me - its own expiration dates on credits. I was a mess. But importantly, I was making decisions based on gut feelings, not numbers. That changed when I actually sat down and analyzed the data. After running over 200M tokens through various providers in the last six months, I've got some statistically significant findings to share.