FAQ · Cost governance
How do you control token costs?
Runaway token spend comes from no unified gateway, no usage baseline, and no model tiering. Set up a unified model gateway, tiered accounts, per-use-case budgets, and monthly reviews — instead of letting every department buy its own API keys.
Key points
- Unified model gateway (e.g. LiteLLM or enterprise gateway) for centralized billing and audit
- Tier models by use case: small models for simple tasks, large models for complex reasoning
- Set account/department quotas and alert thresholds
- Optimize prompts and RAG to cut wasted tokens (caching, summarization, length limits)
- Monthly review: use case ROI vs token cost
How to do it
- Map existing API keys and callers; consolidate behind one gateway
- Establish a cost baseline: per-use-case, per-conversation, per-token averages
- Set budget caps and an overspend approval process
- Optimize prompts and retrieval scope for high-frequency use cases