# Show HN: Costbase – See what each of your AI apps costs, without a proxy

> Source: <https://costbase.co>
> Published: 2026-07-13 12:38:19+00:00

Live demo, no signup: [https://costbase.co/demo](https://costbase.co/demo)

Hi there, over the past 1-2 years I've built and experimented with many AI apps. Some are in production, some died in the experimental stage.

The ones in production currently costs me ~$500 a month to run – using a variety of models from OpenAI's Whisper to Anthropic LLM.

Because it's important for me to track the Cost of Goods Sold of each individual app, the strategy I've used so far is to use a different credit card for my few apps. However, that obviously does not work the more apps I build.

This is why I built Costbase – a simple app that just requires that I paste in an admin key with no code change (and no proxy sitting between my app and the AI provider) – and show me the cost of my AI bill broken down by apps and not API keys.

I intentionally kept this product as simple as possible – something I would actually like to use. I know there are observability tools like Helicone that are much more capable. But to be honest I didn't even try out the competitor and just built something I'd like to use myself.

I'd like to hear from the community to see if anyone feel a product like Costbase is genuinely useful.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

(I'm in Taipei so going to sleep in about two hours. Will be back tomorrow morning to answer any additional comments)

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48891789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48891789)

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