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Show HN: BotBudget – AI Agent Cost Calculator

Hacker News - AI
Jul 15, 2025 16:44
jakejohnson
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Summary

BotBudget is a free online calculator designed to help users accurately estimate and model the costs of deploying AI agents across hundreds of LLM models and AI services, addressing the complexity of pricing in multi-service workflows. It features up-to-date pricing data, prompt token estimation, and cost projections, making expense forecasting more accessible for teams and clients. This tool streamlines budgeting for AI projects, potentially reducing barriers to adoption and improving financial planning in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Hi HN, I kept running into the same problem when helping clients forecast expenses for AI agents. Pricing can be complex and requires some serious spreadsheeting. You need to factor in different model tiers, token estimates, prompt caching, and a variety of services across your specific workflows. After manually building spreadsheets for each client, I decided to build BotBudget - a free calculator that models these costs across hundreds of LLM models and AI services. Key features: - Multi-service workflows (LLM + STT/TTS + RAG + guardrails) - Recent pricing data for major providers - Built-in tokenizer for prompt estimation - Cost projections with growth scenarios - Shareable team links Try it at botbudget.com - would love feedback on what's missing or could be improved. Simple stack btw: It’s built with Next.js, hosted on Cloudflare Workers using @opennextjs/cloudflare, and flat JSON pricing data updated daily with GitHub Workflows from self and community maintained sources. Comments
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