API pricing is such a shitty obnoxious dogshit practice that is now of course becoming standard because of course it is. internet barely costs money come the fuck on make a quality product
It used to be a respected standard for developers and hosts to be somewhat open and friendly to 3rd party devs, because ultimately they're customers and they're helping recruit and retain customers, they should be treated with respect. just because it's innovative and disruptive to invent the machine gun doesn't mean it's good
The internet (ie bandwidth) is cheap, but running servers, providing documentation and tech support all costs a decent amount of money.
However, treating an API as a profit center is a joke. These are literally companies developing software that makes the experience of owning a Tesla better. Making things unaffordable for those companies is putting short term profits over long term success of your product
I have the slightest bit of sympathy. So many companies got their shit scraped and fed into AI models. They lost out. They're afraid it will happen again.