I checked my OpenAI and Anthropic dashboards every morning for a month. Then I stopped.

The mental tax of fragmented AI billing

OpenAI usage page, check spend. Anthropic console, check spend. Add it up in my head. Close both tabs, annoyed before writing a single line of code.

Every new project meant repeating it: new account, new key, new billing page, new error format. By the third project, I had four tabs pinned just for billing.

The breaking point was small. An email saying I’d hit 80% of a budget I didn’t remember setting. Not because I’d overspent, but because I’d lost track of my own guardrails across two dashboards I only half-watched.
The problem was never the money. It was running two mental models for what should’ve been one workflow.

So I replaced both dashboards with one number: credits. One key, one balance, that drops no matter which provider handles the request. Didn’t set out to build a product, just wanted to stop doing math every morning. Apiarium came after, once I noticed other people doing the same two-tab dance.