Agent bills grow quietly because spend depends less on how many tasks you run and more on how you frame them. Here are the techniques, ordered by payoff.
1. Split models by task
The biggest saving and the simplest. The flagship is for work that ties a lot of context together: reading unfamiliar code, refactoring across files, chasing a race.
Parsing logs, rewriting text, generating boilerplate from a pattern and classification all run fine on a smaller model. The price gap between tiers is a multiple, not a percentage.
2. Ask for a short answer
Output costs several times input. One line in the prompt moves the bill noticeably:
Reply with code only. No explanation, no preamble, no summary of what you did.
It works almost every time, because the default behaviour leans toward explaining.
3. Do not paste a whole file when you need one method
Context is cheaper than output, not free. On agentic runs it compounds: step twenty carries the history of every step before it.
Cut out the part that matters. If the tool can read files itself, tell it which file and which part.
4. Frame the task more precisely
A vague task is billed twice: once to generate the wrong thing and again to redo it. Figures that circulated across the industry put a noticeable share of team token spend into fixing what the model itself produced.
A minute spent sharpening the request saves several iterations.
5. Break large tasks up
A ten-file task nearly always comes back with errors and rework. Five two-file tasks land first time more often and cost less in total.
They also review better.
6. Rein in background runs
An agent firing in CI on every commit is spend that tracks your team's activity rather than your decisions. Hang it on pull requests instead of commits, or on the branches that actually need it.
7. Set a ceiling and watch the breakdown
A total is useless until you know who produced it. You need a per-key and per-project breakdown to see where iterations eat the budget.
In the Claudexia dashboard you can set a monthly cap with alert thresholds, and sub-organisations split teams onto their own budgets. On hitting a threshold you can either be warned or have keys frozen.
What it comes to in money
Check it against your own numbers: the site has a calculator with presets for typical scenarios. Enter your volume before and after and compare.
In short
Three techniques carry most of the saving: the right model for the task, short answers, and a precise brief. The rest is hygiene that stops the bill from growing unnoticed.