News & guides
Agent Cost Attribution: Tracing Spend Back to a Cause
A provider bill tells you the total and nothing else. How to attribute agent spend to a team, a task and a tool call so you can act on it.
AI Cost Anomaly Detection That Catches Real Problems
How to spot abnormal LLM spend in token data: per-workload baselines, rate-of-change thresholds, and telling a runaway agent apart from real growth.
· 11 min readAlerting on Token Spikes Before the Invoice Explains Them
Runaway LLM spend is usually discovered at month end. What to alert on, what thresholds actually work, and how to avoid alarms nobody reads.
· 8 min readBatch API Savings: Trading Latency for a Real Discount
Batch endpoints offer a meaningful discount in exchange for delayed results. Which workloads qualify, and what the switch actually costs to build.
· 8 min read
Budgeting for Experimentation Without a Surprise Bill
Experiments produce the largest unexpected AI invoices because nobody set a ceiling. How to fund trying things: separate ledgers, time-boxes and kill switches.
· 12 min read
Chargeback Models for AI Spend That Teams Accept
Allocating LLM spend back to the teams that caused it: tagging, per-key versus per-service attribution, shared costs, and when showback is the better step.
· 11 min read
Comparing Provider Pricing Models Without Getting Fooled
Per-token, per-seat, credits, tiers and flat rate all quote different units. Here is how to normalise them onto one number you can actually compare.
· 8 min read
Context Bloat: Paying Repeatedly for Tokens Nobody Reads
Every token added to a prompt is billed on that call and every call after it. Where bloat accumulates and what it actually costs to leave it there.
· 8 min readCost Per 1K Lines of Code: A Tempting, Mostly Bad Metric
Lines of code is the easiest denominator for AI spend and one of the worst. Where it misleads, where it genuinely works, and what to measure instead.
· 9 min read
Cost Per Agent Run: Why Input Dominates the Bill
Agent costs are driven by resent transcript, not generated output. Working out what one run actually costs and which lever moves it.
· 9 min read
Cost Per Code Review: What Automated Review Actually Costs
Automated review looks cheap per pull request until you count re-reviews, large diffs and false positives. Working out the real per-review figure.
· 8 min readCost Per Refactor: Estimating a Multi-File Change Up Front
Refactors are the worst case for context bloat because every touched file must stay in view. A method for estimating the bill before you start the run.
· 10 min readCost Per Test Suite: Writing Tests Versus Fixing Them
Generating tests with a model is cheap and bounded. Making a red suite green is neither. How the two costs differ and how to put a ceiling on the expensive one.
· 10 min readReady to try it?
Every model behind one key. Start free and upgrade when it sticks.