Costs
Where the money goes when you build with language models, and how to spend less: token arithmetic, model tiers, prompt caching, and measuring cost per useful result.
4 articles tagged Costs.
Claude Sonnet 5.5: what's new, and how to test it on your own work
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 with faster responses and lower typical task costs at the same per-token price. Here's what was announced, which numbers are vendor-reported, and a simple way to test whether it's worth switching for your workload.
Choosing the right Claude model for the job
Bigger models cost more and run slower, and most tasks don't need the biggest. This guide shows how to think about model tiers, test the choice on your own data, route between models, and avoid paying for capability you never use.
LLM tokens and costs, explained with real arithmetic
Tokens are the unit everything in an LLM bill is measured in. This guide explains what they are, why output costs more than input, how agents multiply spend, and the practical levers that bring a bill down without hurting quality.
Prompt caching: cheaper and faster LLM calls
Agents resend the same long prefix on every step. Prompt caching lets the provider reuse that work at a fraction of the price and with lower latency. Here's how it works, how to set it up, and what quietly breaks it.