Cut your LLM spend by up to 80%
Most teams overpay for AI by sending every request to a frontier model. Smart routing, caching, and model diversification reduce costs dramatically without sacrificing quality where it matters.
5 tactics to reduce LLM costs
Each tactic works independently. Combined, they can reduce total AI spend by 50 to 80%.
Smart routing
30-60% savingsRoute simple queries (classification, extraction, yes/no) to budget models like DeepSeek V3 or Gemini Flash. Reserve frontier models (GPT-4, Claude Sonnet) for complex reasoning, coding, and creative tasks. Most production traffic is simple. Routing 50 to 70% to budget models cuts costs dramatically with no visible quality drop.
Prompt caching
30-60% savingsCache responses for identical or semantically similar prompts. Typical production workloads see 30 to 60% cache hit rates. Cached responses return in under 10ms with zero token cost. System prompts, tool definitions, and few-shot examples are especially cacheable. Requesty handles this automatically.
Model diversification
5-20x cheaperStop defaulting to GPT-4 for everything. DeepSeek V3 ($0.14/M input) matches GPT-4 quality on many tasks at 1/14th the price. Gemini Flash ($0.15/M input) is excellent for summarization. Mistral Small ($0.10/M input) handles classification at 1/20th the cost of GPT-4.
Prompt engineering for cost
20-50% fewer tokensShorter prompts cost less. Remove redundant instructions, use concise few-shot examples, and set max_tokens limits. A well-engineered prompt can be 50% shorter than a first draft while producing the same output quality. Every token you do not send is a token you do not pay for.
Real-time cost monitoring
Prevents overrunsSet budget caps per team, per project, per API key. Get alerts when spend exceeds thresholds. Identify wasteful patterns (overly long system prompts, unnecessary model choices) from usage dashboards. You cannot optimize what you do not measure.
How Requesty automates cost optimization
All five tactics in one platform. No infrastructure to manage.
Routing policies
Configure cost, latency, or quality routing per API key. Requesty picks the cheapest model that meets your quality bar.
Auto-caching
Automatic prompt caching with zero configuration. Cache hit rates visible in your dashboard. Up to 90% savings on repetitive workloads.
400+ models
Access GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral, and 400 more through one API. Switch models with a parameter change.
Cost dashboards
Per-request cost tracking. Per-team and per-model breakdowns. Budget caps with alerts. Know exactly where every dollar goes.
Stop overpaying for AI
Start with $10 free credits. No credit card, no contracts. See your first cost savings within minutes.
Frequently asked questions
How do I reduce LLM API costs?
Three techniques combine to reduce LLM costs by up to 80%. First, smart routing sends simple queries to budget models (DeepSeek V3 at $0.14/M tokens) instead of frontier models (GPT-4 at $2/M tokens). Second, prompt caching eliminates redundant API calls with typical 30 to 60% cache hit rates. Third, model diversification uses the cheapest capable model for each task type. An AI gateway like Requesty automates all three.
What is the cheapest way to run LLMs in production?
The cheapest production LLM setup combines budget models for simple tasks (DeepSeek V3 at $0.14/M input tokens, Gemini Flash at $0.15/M) with frontier models only for complex reasoning. Add prompt caching (30 to 60% of calls served from cache at zero token cost) and an AI gateway to automate routing decisions. This approach typically costs 50 to 80% less than using a single frontier model for everything.
How much does GPT-4 cost per month for a production app?
For a production app doing 50,000 requests per day with 800 input tokens and 400 output tokens per request, GPT-4.1 costs approximately $4,800 per month. The same workload on DeepSeek V3 costs $126 per month. With smart routing (50% to budget models) and caching (30% hit rate), the blended cost drops to approximately $1,200 per month. Use our free LLM cost calculator to estimate your specific workload.