An AI tool is overpriced for your workflow if you open it less than three times a week, if a free alternative covers 80% of what you actually use it for, or if the premium features you’re paying for aren’t the ones driving results in your teaching business.
The Usage Test: Are You Actually Getting Value?
The simplest way to audit an AI tool is to check how often you reach for it. Open your browser history or app usage stats and count your sessions in the last 30 days. A $20/month subscription that you open five times a month is costing you $4 per use. A $20/month subscription you open daily is costing you under $1 per use. Same price — very different value.
Think of it like a gym membership. The membership isn’t overpriced because the gym is bad — it’s overpriced because you’re not going. If an AI tool is sitting unused, the problem might not be the price. It might be that the tool doesn’t fit your workflow, or you haven’t built the habit of using it. Solve the habit problem before canceling.
The Feature Test: Are You Paying for Features You Use?
Most AI tools tier their pricing around specific premium features — faster models, longer context windows, image generation, integrations. Before renewing, list the premium features you actually used in the past month. If you’re paying for ChatGPT Plus primarily for DALL-E image generation but you haven’t generated an image in six weeks, you’re paying for a feature you don’t use.
For teaching workflows specifically, the features that deliver the most value are: faster model responses (matters when prepping live), longer context (matters for curriculum documents), and higher message limits (matters during sprint prep weeks). If a tool’s premium features don’t map to those, question whether the upgrade was the right one.
What This Means for Educators
As a coach or trainer, your AI stack should directly serve your teaching output — lesson prep, student communication, course content, and community management. If a tool doesn’t touch at least two of those four areas regularly, it’s probably not earning its keep. Do a quarterly audit: list every AI subscription, rate it on usage and impact, and cut the bottom performer.
The Simple Rule
If you can’t name three things you did with a tool in the last two weeks, cancel it. You can always resubscribe when you have a clear use case. Unused subscriptions are the most expensive kind — they cost you money and attention without returning either.