aicost.ai
VC/PE Diligence Memo
2026-07-28
Pricing as of 2026-07-20
aicost.gateway-stage-advisor
Verdict
POLICY ROUTING
More than one workload or more than trivial spend. A gateway gives spend attribution and a budget cap, which is worth having before any routing question.
Key figures
| Break-even spend / mo |
$3,135 |
| Stage |
Policy routing |
| Net / mo at this spend |
$530 |
| Gross model saving / mo |
$1,440 |
| Router fee / mo |
$330 |
| Operating cost / mo |
$580 |
| Eligible spend / mo |
$2,400 |
| What to do |
Assign models per workload, and prove the saving before adding a router. |
Assessment
This client sits at Stage 3, Policy routing. More than one workload or more than trivial spend. A gateway gives spend attribution and a budget cap, which is worth having before any routing question. At $6,000 a month with 40 percent of traffic eligible for a cheaper model, the decision layer breaks even at about $3,135 a month. They are above that line, so it pays for itself at the stated assumptions.
Questions for the founder
- What share of this client's traffic could genuinely run on a cheaper model without a quality complaint?
- Who maintains the model assignments once they exist, and is that time billable?
- Does the client hold an attestation that requires an enforced allowlist regardless of spend?
- Is prompt difficulty actually varied, or is it uniform enough that a router has nothing to decide?
- If spend halved next quarter, would this layer still pay for itself?
Assumptions & method
- 40 percent of traffic eligible for a cheaper model *
- 60 percent saving on that eligible traffic *
- 4 engineering hours a month to operate the layer *
- Engineering time valued at $145 an hour *
- Router fees captured 2026-07-26 and re-verified before quoting.