Cost Tracking & Optimization

Monitor LLM spending, optimize costs, and understand unit economics across your AI application

Track and optimize your LLM costs across all providers. Helicone provides detailed cost analytics and optimization tools to help you manage your AI budget effectively.

How We Calculate Costs

Helicone uses two systems for cost calculation depending on your integration method:

AI Gateway (100% Accurate)

When using Helicone’s AI Gateway, we have complete visibility into model usage and calculate costs precisely using our Model Registry v2 system.

Best Effort (Without Gateway)

For direct provider integrations, we use our open-source cost repository with pricing for 300+ models. This provides best-effort cost estimates based on model detection and token counts.

Cost not showing? If your model costs aren’t supported, join our Discord or email [e-mail] and we’ll add support quickly.

Understanding Unit Economics

The most critical aspect of cost tracking is understanding your unit economics - what drives costs in your application and how to optimize them.

Session cost breakdown showing unit economics across different user interactions

Sessions: Your Cost Foundation

Sessions group related requests to show the true cost of user interactions. Instead of seeing individual API calls, you see complete workflows:

// Track a complete customer support interaction
const response = await client.chat.completions.create(
  { 
    model: "gpt-4o", 
    messages: [...] 
  },
  {
    headers: {
      "Helicone-Session-Id": "support-ticket-123",
      "Helicone-Session-Name": "Customer Support"
    }
  }
);

This reveals insights like:

• A support chat costs $0.12 on average with 5 API calls
• Document analysis workflows cost $0.45 with 12 API calls
• Quick queries cost $0.02 with a single call

Segmentation That Matters

Use custom properties to slice costs by the dimensions that matter to your business:

Cost breakdown by user tier showing premium users generate 3x more value than cost

headers: {
  "Helicone-Property-UserTier": "premium",
  "Helicone-Property-Feature": "document-analysis",
  "Helicone-Property-Environment": "production"
}

Now you can answer questions like:

• Do premium users justify their higher usage costs?
• Which features are cost-efficient vs. cost-intensive?
• How much are we spending on development vs. production?

AI Gateway Cost Optimization

The AI Gateway doesn’t just track costs - it actively optimizes them through intelligent routing.

Automatic Model Selection

The Model Registry shows all supported models with real-time pricing across providers. The AI Gateway automatically sorts by cost to find the cheapest option:

Model Registry showing price comparison across providers

How Automatic Optimization Works

1. BYOK Priority - Uses your existing credits first (AWS, Azure, etc.)
2. Cost-Based Routing - Automatically selects the cheapest available provider
3. Smart Fallbacks - If one provider fails, routes to the next cheapest option

// One request, multiple potential providers
await gateway.chat.completions.create({
  model: "claude-3.5-sonnet",
  messages: [...]
});

// Gateway automatically routes to cheapest available:
// 1. Your AWS Bedrock key ($3/1M tokens)
// 2. Your Anthropic key ($3/1M tokens)
// 3. Next cheapest provider...

Cost Prevention & Alerts

Cost alert configuration with spending thresholds and real-time notifications

Setting Smart Alerts

Configure cost alerts to catch spending issues before they become problems. Set graduated thresholds (50%, 80%, 95% of budget) and use different limits for development vs. production environments.

The key is understanding your baseline spending patterns and setting alerts that give you time to react without causing alert fatigue.

Cost alerts rely on accurate cost data. See How We Calculate Costs above. If you see “cost not supported” for your model, contact us to add support.

Caching for Cost Reduction

Enable caching to eliminate redundant API calls entirely:

Cache performance showing 73% hit rate saving $1,247 this month

headers: {
  "Helicone-Cache-Enabled": "true",
  "Cache-Control": "max-age=3600"  // 1 hour cache
}

Best caching opportunities:

• FAQ responses in support bots
• Static content generation
• Development and testing environments

Automated Reports

Get regular cost summaries delivered to your inbox or Slack channels. Reports provide insights into spending trends, model usage, and optimization opportunities.

What Reports Include

• Weekly spending summaries and trends
• Model usage breakdown by cost
• Top cost drivers and expensive requests
• Week-over-week comparisons
• Optimization recommendations

Setting Up Reports

Configure automated reports in Settings → Reports to receive them via:

• Email - Weekly digests to any email address
• Slack - Post to your team channels

Reports help you stay on top of costs without checking the dashboard daily. Perfect for finance teams and engineering managers tracking AI spend.

Next Steps

Set Up Alerts

Configure spending thresholds before they become problems

Enable Caching

Start saving immediately on repetitive requests

Configure Gateway

Let automatic routing optimize your costs

Track Sessions

Understand your true unit economics