Why Developers Love Rebuilding the Tools They Could Just Pay For

There’s a certain type of programmer — let’s call them vibe-coders — who loves building things just for the sake of it. Programming is either a hobby or some weird form of relaxation. People like me fall into this category. If I see a SaaS tool that feels “simple,” I immediately get the urge to rebuild it, just to understand why people pay for it.

After building a few of these tools, I still haven’t deployed any. Mostly because they barely work, lol. Even with AI helping me, the best I can manage is maybe 10% of what the real SaaS product delivers. And that’s not because I’m a bad coder — it’s because I don’t understand the product the way the actual team does. They’ve lived with it for years. I’ve spent, what, a weekend? My version works once, maybe twice. A third try and it’s guaranteed to break somewhere.

So why do people like me keep thinking it’s cheaper to vibe-code something instead of paying $10 a month?

It’s the same logic as when someone starts learning to cook. The moment you realise you can make biryani for ₹200, you start questioning why you ever paid ₹350 on Swiggy or Zomato. It feels logical.

But here’s the catch: we never count our time.

As a hobby programmer, I can waste time and still feel good about it. It’s better than doom-scrolling or watching some random series. But a lot of developers who do this aren’t hobbyists — they’re people working full-time jobs, the so-called “founding engineers.” They think building an internal tool saves the company $10 a month. Meanwhile, during the vibe-coding marathon, they’ve already spent $20 on Cursor, cycled through multiple free-tier coding tools, and hopped across different ChatGPT accounts like it’s a treasure hunt.

Add all the hours they burned, and whatever they built is… questionable at best.

At some point, you realise that if a tool is affordable, reliable, and genuinely makes your work easier, it’s just smarter to use it. Better that than sitting there hoping, “please work, please don’t crash,” every time you open your homegrown creation, lol.