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Keeping AI costs under control

Field notes on LLM cost control — spend caps, per-user limits, spike alerts, and monitoring Claude and GPT bills before the invoice lands.

• ControlsJul 25, 2026 · 6 min

  Token Usage Limits: Capping Tokens Across Claude and GPT

  Token usage limits are the most direct lever on LLM cost. How to bound input and output tokens across Claude and GPT — per call, per user, and per run.

• MonitoringJul 22, 2026 · 6 min

  AI Budget Alerts: Catch Cost Spikes Before the Invoice

  AI budget alerts turn a monthly surprise into a same-minute page. How to detect LLM spend anomalies, set thresholds that don't cry wolf, and route alerts to Slack.

• ControlsJul 18, 2026 · 6 min

  Per-User Rate Limiting for LLM Features

  Per-user LLM rate limiting protects both cost and availability. How to bound bursts per user across Claude and GPT, and how it differs from a spend cap.

• MonitoringJul 11, 2026 · 7 min

  Monitoring Anthropic Claude API Costs in Production

  How to monitor Anthropic Claude API cost in real time: attribute spend by feature and user, track tokens per call, and catch problems before the monthly invoice.

• Cost spikesJul 4, 2026 · 6 min

  Why AI Agent Costs Compound Instead of Add

  AI agent cost doesn't grow linearly with traffic — it grows with traffic times loop depth. Here's why agentic workloads compound, and how to bound them.

• ControlsJun 27, 2026 · 6 min

  How to Set a Hard Spend Cap Per User on LLM APIs

  Enforced budgets, not advisory ones. How to implement a hard spend cap per user across Claude and GPT so one person can't drain your whole AI budget.

• Cost spikesJun 18, 2026 · 7 min

  How to Stop Your OpenAI API Bill From Spiking

  A step-by-step playbook to prevent a surprise OpenAI or Anthropic bill: find the spend, cap the worst offenders, and get alerted before the invoice — not after.

• FundamentalsJun 9, 2026 · 8 min

  LLM Cost Control: A Practical Guide for Production Apps

  A field guide to LLM cost control: where AI API spend actually comes from, the four controls that keep it predictable, and how to enforce budgets without slowing your app down.