AI costs scale with usage. Monitor spending, set budgets, optimize model choices to prevent surprises.

(Spoiler: Month 1: €100. Month 3: €10,000. Your CFO: "WHAT?!" You: "Um... the developers really like AI?" Time for that budget talk. 💰)

Cost Factors

• API Calls: OpenAI/Claude/Gemini per-token pricing
• Tool Licenses: Copilot, Cursor, etc. per user/month
• Infrastructure: Vector databases, compute for local models

Cost Optimization

• • Use smaller models when possible (GPT-3.5 vs GPT-4)
• • Cache frequent queries
• • Rate limiting per user
• • Monitor high-usage outliers
• • Consider local models for non-sensitive tasks