Why do you think it's supposed to be cheap? Developers are expensive. Claude doesn't have to be cheap to make software development quicker and cheaper. It just has to be cheaper than you.
There are ways to use LLMs cheaply, but it will always be expensive to get the most out of them. In fact, the top end will only get more and more costly as the lengths of tasks AIs can successfully complete grows.
I am not implying in any sense a value judgement on cost. I'm stating my emotions at the realization of the cost and how that affects my ability to use the available tools in my own education.
It would be no different than me saying "it sucks university is so expensive, I wish I could afford to go to an expensive college but I don't have a scholarship" and someone then answers: why should it be cheap.
So, allow me the space to express my feelings and propose alternatives, of which scholarships are one example and creative programs are another. Another one I didn't mention would be the same route as universities force now: I could take out a loan. And I could consider it an investment loan with the idea it will pay back either in employment prospects or through the development of an application that earns me money. Other alternatives would be finding employment at a company willing to invest that $100/day through me, the limit of that alternative being working at an actual foundational model company for presumably unlimited usage.
And of course, I could focus my personal education on squeezing the most value for the least cost. But I believe the balance point between slightly useful and completely transformative usages levels is probably at a higher cost level than I can reasonably afford as an independent.
There's an ocean of B2B SaaS services that would save customers money compared to building poor imitations in-house. Despite the Joel Test (almost 25 years old! craxy...) asking whether you buy your developers the best tools that money can buy, because they're almost invariably cheaper than developer salaries, the fact remains that most companies treat salaries as a fixed cost and everything else threatens the limited budget they have.
Anybody who has ever tried to sell developer tooling knows, you're competing with free/open-source solutions, and it aint a fair fight.
There are ways to use LLMs cheaply, but it will always be expensive to get the most out of them. In fact, the top end will only get more and more costly as the lengths of tasks AIs can successfully complete grows.