The Silent Cost of AI Agents: Why Your Next.js SaaS Is Burning Money on LLM Calls

Short summary

Cost management is the fourth dimension AI SaaS teams often overlook, leading to unsustainable expenses. The author presents three proven patterns: prompt caching eliminates redundant token sends (saves 200k+ per 100 calls), task routing directs simple work to cheap models and complex tasks to capable ones (16x cost difference), and strict JSON schemas prevent expensive failed-output retries. All are immediately implementable in Next.js.

• •Redundant context resends waste tokens; prompt caching can save 200k+ tokens per 100 calls
• •Route simple tasks to cheap models (gpt-4o-mini) and complex to expensive ones (GPT-4), a 16x cost difference
• •Strict JSON schemas prevent malformed output retries, eliminating the most expensive LLM calls

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