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Cost controls

Cost controls are how an organization scales AI usage without scaling surprises. As adoption grows, so does spend; cost controls keep that spend visible, attributable, and deliberate.

You can’t manage what you can’t see. Usage reporting shows where run balance is going — which teams, which workflows, which agents drive consumption. This is the foundation; every other control builds on knowing where the money goes. It draws on the same data as adoption & usage analytics.

Attributing cost to the teams that generate it turns AI from a mystery line item into a set of departmental budgets. When Sales’ usage is Sales’ number, ownership follows — teams manage their own consumption because it’s visibly theirs. This is what Teams & departments unlocks on the billing side.

Different models cost differently. A deliberate strategy — strong models where quality matters, cheaper models for high-volume routine work — is one of the biggest levers on cost. Admins set which models are allowed and steer work accordingly. See Guardrails & allowed models.

Budgets turn intent into a limit: set what a team or the organization should spend, and get alerted (or capped) as you approach it. Budgets are what let leadership say yes to broad adoption without signing a blank check.

Finance sets a monthly budget per department, routes high-volume tasks to a cheaper model, and reviews usage reporting each week. Adoption keeps climbing, but spend stays inside a number everyone agreed to — and every dollar traces to a team.