Dishaya / How To Reduce AI Costs
How To Reduce AI API Costs
Seven levers, ranked by how much they actually move the bill, not a list of micro-optimisations.
The largest single saving is to stop sending every request to one premium model and instead match each request to the cheapest model that can handle it. After that: cache repeat work, trim the context you send, batch where latency allows, and fail over instead of blindly retrying. Together these routinely cut a bill by more than half without lowering answer quality.
Ranked by impact
1. Route by value, not by habit, biggest lever
Most teams pick one strong model and send everything to it. But summarising, reformatting, and answering simple questions do not need a frontier model. Routing each request to the cheapest model that clears the quality bar, and escalating only the hard ones, is almost always the biggest saving available. See how AI routing works.
2. Cache repeated and near-repeated work
Identical or near-identical prompts are common in real products, the same system prompt, the same document, the same FAQ. Caching responses and reusing prompt prefixes turns repeat work into near-zero marginal cost.
3. Trim the context you send
You pay for every token in and out. Sending an entire document when a relevant section would do, or keeping a long chat history that no longer matters, quietly inflates every call. Retrieve and send only what the model needs.
4. Right-size the output
Unbounded responses cost more and are often worse. Asking for a specific length or format reduces output tokens and usually improves the answer.
5. Batch when latency allows
Background and bulk work, classification, enrichment, overnight jobs, often qualifies for cheaper batch pricing or can be grouped into fewer, larger calls. Reserve real-time pricing for real-time needs.
6. Fail over instead of retrying blind
When a provider rate-limits or errors, naive retries against the same endpoint waste money and time. An ordered failover chain moves the request to the next capable model, so you pay once for a successful answer instead of several times for failures.
7. Bring your own keys where there is markup
Some platforms add a margin on top of provider pricing. If yours does, using your own provider keys removes that markup. Dishaya, for instance, routes your own keys with no markup on the free plan.
The shortcut
Levers 1, 2, and 6, routing, caching, and failover, are exactly what a good model router does for you automatically. Dishaya applies all three on every prompt and shows you the saving in real numbers, so you get most of this list without building any of it. You can bring your own keys with no markup or use Dishaya credits.
What is the single biggest way to reduce AI costs?
Stop sending every request to one premium model. Routing each request to the cheapest capable model is usually the largest single saving.
Does reducing AI costs mean worse answers?
Not if you route by value: easy work goes to cheap models and hard work is escalated, so quality stays flat while average cost falls.