LLM Cost Governance Checklist
The list of controls every production LLM system should have before traffic ramps — per-tenant budgets, caching layers, model routing, and cost attribution.
Token + dollar accounting at the request level
Every request logs input tokens, output tokens, model, dollar cost, and tenant. Without this, every later control is guessing.
Model routing
Cheap model for easy queries, frontier model for hard ones. Routing decisions measured against the same eval set so you know the quality hit (or lack of one).
Caching layers
Cache embeddings (deterministic, huge win), retrieval results where safe, and full generations for FAQ-shaped traffic. Typical savings: 40–80% on embedding spend alone.
Per-tenant budgets
Hard monthly budget per tenant. Alerts at 50/80/100%. Requests past budget return a clear error, not silent cost. Don't leave this to accounting to discover.
Quotas and rate limits
Per-user quotas prevent one bad actor (or one bad prompt loop) from burning the month in an afternoon. Pair with alerts on anomalous per-user token spikes.
Prompt and retrieval cost audit
Periodic audit: which prompts are longest? Which retrievals are oversized? Shortening verbose prompts and tightening top-k is the cheapest win in the deck.
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