Counting the Cost: A Framework for Understanding True LLM Expenditure Beyond Per-Token Pricing
Engineering teams evaluating large language model providers frequently anchor decisions on published per-token rates, overlooking a constellation of costs that can double or triple actual pipeline expenditure. From context window inefficiencies to cold-start latency penalties and prompt inflation, the economics of production LLM deployments are considerably more complex than any pricing page suggests. This guide provides a structured methodology for calculating what your NLP stack truly costs to