How I Built My Indie AI Stack — A Practical Guide for 2026

A developer built an indie AI stack that reduces costs by 40-65% compared to using GPT-4o for every request. After testing 184 models through Global API, the stack uses five models including DeepSeek V4 Flash, Qwen3-32B, and GLM-4 Plus, with routing logic to select the best model per task. The setup achieves comparable quality, 1.2-second average latency, and 320 tokens per second throughput.