Reducing your costs

Tracking cost follows a simple rule: every prompt multiplied by every platform, on every run. All cost reduction is managing one of those three multipliers.

The multipliers

1. Prompts: prune prompts that never cite anyone, including you. They consume executions without producing signal. The prompts rollup shows which questions carry no information.
2. Platforms: select platforms per topic deliberately. If your customers live on two platforms, tracking five dilutes both budget and attention. Remember that Gemini executions count double toward the quota.
3. Runs: weekly is the right frequency for most markets. Daily is for fast-moving markets or active optimization phases; monthly is enough for slow ones.

Using your own keys

Own API keys change the economics fundamentally: their executions never count against your quota. You pay the provider directly, at cost, visible per call in the Cost Report. Teams that track heavily often run the base load on platform keys and shift overflow to their own keys.

Watch the levers

1. The usage meter on the billing page shows the month's consumption in real time
2. Usage-warning emails at 80 and 100 percent leave time to react
3. The Cost Report per-source table shows which platform burns the budget, and its average cost per call shows whether prompt length is the driver