- In short
- Token distributions are often skewed: most requests are short, but a tail of long requests consumes a disproportionate share of total cost. A cost model based on average token usage can underestimate real cost by a factor of two or three when the tail is significant. A POC low-volume bill is not a scaled-down version of production cost; it must be explicitly extrapolated to production volume with error bounds. Sensitivity analysis, checking what happens if volume doubles or the tail grows, reveals how fragile a cost estimate really is.
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