How I built pairwise AI model compare pages with Claude Haiku and a budget cap (opens in new tab)

When I added compare pages to the Top AI Tools directory, the first question I had to answer was: how many pairs am I actually looking at? With roughly 200 models across 8 pipeline tags, the naive upper bound is 200 × 199 / 2 ≈ 19,900 pairs. Generating content for each one with Claude Haiku would cost somewhere around $20 per run — not ruinous, but not something I wanted to run daily without thinking carefully. Here's what I actually built, where it falls short, and what I'd do differently if...