15:[[47836090,{"by":"mavsman","descendants":1,"id":47836090,"kids":[47839328],"score":1,"text":"Credit usage costs are cryptic enough that it is reasonable to actually fall for this trap. If you run out of credits/tokens/etc and you need to use more Claude/Codex, do not by credits because it seems worth the money. They'll be gone before you know it.","time":1776700346,"title":"Tell HN: Codex/Claude Code one-off credit purchases are a money sink","type":"story"}],[47722081,{"by":"nitramm","descendants":19,"id":47722081,"kids":[47724105,47722210,47723526,47722889,47726557,47736969,47745194,47733969,47733722,47723160,47771837,47727822,47887824,47735381,47726239,47726555,47727218],"score":29,"text":"$16","time":1775846869,"title":"Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?","type":"story"}],[47426577,{"by":"krsna_paulg","descendants":1,"id":47426577,"kids":[47443134,47581486],"score":2,"text":"We're a small team researching how companies handle the operational side of internal AI agents -- the ones you've built for finance, ops, or marketing workflows. Not the off-the-shelf SaaS tools, but the custom agents your engineering team shipped.\nSpecific things we're curious about:

How many agents are running internally that you know of?\nWho manages them day-to-day -- engineering or the business team that uses them?\nHow do you track what they cost (LLM API fees, compute)?\nIf the business team wants to change the agent's behavior, what's the process?

Genuinely trying to understand the landscape, not selling anything.","time":1773845788,"title":"Ask HN: How is your company managing internal AI agents?","type":"story"}],[47332177,{"by":"Barathkanna","descendants":23,"id":47332177,"kids":[47362375,47418649,47395797,47346646,47395259,47343952,47333592,47335341,47332359,47332282,47353587,47336644,47332545],"score":5,"text":"I’ve been experimenting with agent-based features and one thing that surprised me is how hard it is to estimate API costs.

A single user action can trigger anywhere from a few to dozens of LLM calls (tool use, retries, reasoning steps), and with token-based pricing the cost can vary a lot.

How are builders here planning for this when pricing their SaaS?

Are you just padding margins, limiting usage, or building internal cost tracking?\nAlso curious, would a service that offers predictable pricing for AI APIs (like a fixed subscription cost) actually be useful for people building agentic workflows?","time":1773209195,"title":"Ask HN: How are people forecasting AI API costs for agent workflows?","type":"story"}],[47231886,{"by":"hakonbogen","descendants":1,"id":47231886,"kids":[47244109],"score":1,"text":"I’m curious how agencies and freelancers are pricing projects now that AI tools make us more productive but also introduce new costs. Many of us rely on LLMs, generative design, AI-assisted coding and other services that carry API fees or compute costs. If you can deliver work significantly faster with AI, do you still bill by the hour? Have you moved to fixed-price or value-based models? How do you factor in the overhead of AI tools without eating into your margins, and how do clients react? I’d especially like to hear from smaller agencies, designers and project managers who use AI heavily.","time":1772543899,"title":"Ask HN: How do agencies price projects when AI increases productivity and costs?","type":"story"}],[47220001,{"by":"LeanVibe","descendants":4,"id":47220001,"kids":[47226348,47220041],"score":3,"text":"$17","time":1772468364,"title":"Ask HN: Are we putting pricing on things too quickly?","type":"story"}],[47134263,{"by":"yamarldfst","descendants":1,"id":47134263,"kids":[47226085],"score":1,"text":"There's been a clear shift from 2023's you need RAG to 2026's agentic search outperforms RAG.

We made the switch at Cosmico when building AI-native applications with Claude Code. Agentic search gives us better accuracy but at higher cost per query.

For those running production systems:

1. What prompted your switch (or decision to stick with RAG)?\n2. What broke during the transition?\n3. What's your hybrid approach (if any)?

Specifically curious about code search vs. document retrieval use cases, and how you handle the latency/cost trade-offs.

Our context: building custom software with AI agents in weeks, not months. Accuracy matters more than speed for our workflow, but that's not universal.

What's working (or not working) for you?","time":1771920449,"title":"Ask HN: Agentic search vs. RAG – what's your production experience?","type":"story"}]]

user:	reggz
created:	March 2, 2026
karma:	1
about:	Building UnitCostAI, free tools for AI pricing, break-even, and margin modeling.