Paid APIs are definitely a thing. Payment gateways do this.In the LLM era you can do this too - lots of data processing to be done.
But compare Aider/Claude Code with Cursor. One is much more popular than the other two despite being similar quality. GUIs are there to lower the learning curve.
In this era, it's not too hard to make a simple app in a day with AI as well. Cursor goes much faster than Flutterflow or Bubble. The bar is higher too - you now probably need a prototype before a pitch deck. It's probably not scalable, but that's prototyping for you.
But compare Aider/Claude Code with Cursor. One is much more popular than the other two despite being similar quality. GUIs are there to lower the learning curve.
In this era, it's not too hard to make a simple app in a day with AI as well. Cursor goes much faster than Flutterflow or Bubble. The bar is higher too - you now probably need a prototype before a pitch deck. It's probably not scalable, but that's prototyping for you.