Your AI costs are growing faster than your revenue

Description and use

In AI startups, API costs can outpace revenue. Tracking per-user costs reveals high‑usage customers, enabling pricing adjustments to protect margins.

Problem

Startups using LLMs often see their API bills outpace revenue, leading to negative margins and unclear cost attribution.

Outcome

By tracking costs per tenant, startups can pinpoint high-cost users, adjust pricing, and prevent margin erosion.

Workflow

• 1. Enable per-tenant API key or tag requests with tenant ID.
• 2. Log token counts or request costs to a database per user.
• 3. Aggregate costs daily by model, user, and tenant.
• 4. Visualize data in a dashboard (e.g., LLMeter).
• 5. Identify high-cost users and adjust pricing tiers or offer usage caps.

Evidence

If you don't track costs per user, you are flying blind.

Source