AI bots traffic is not DDoS or search bots; they are pretty much un-distinguishable from real traffic from browser traffic. If your site provide basic services to un-authenticated users, have large amount of permanent links and linked from the wider internet, they will come and they will easily consume > 100k requests per day.
The saving grace of the AI bot traffic is that they don’t really want to overwhelm you; so they are more like constant trickles not intense bursts. So I just let them crawl.
I do have some grandfathered plans, mainly for the privilege of outgoing port 25. You can also find some cheap providers on https://lowendbox.com/.
