Run Cost Estimates

Breyta run cost estimate guide for creator-facing average run cost, per-run breakdowns, fixed API costs, and LLM token pricing.

Quick Answer

Run cost estimates are advisory. Breyta records step-level cost estimates during a run, summarizes them on the flow page as Avg Estimated Run Cost, and exposes the same data through breyta runs show.

Add costs in two places:

Cost type	Where to add it	Who owns it
Fixed API or tool request cost	`:metering` on the `flow/step` config	Flow author
LLM token cost	`llm-pricing` in `breyta.flows.cost-estimates`	Breyta platform code

Use micros for money fields. One dollar is 1000000 micros, so $0.0020 is 2000 micros.

Fixed API Or Tool Costs

Use :metering when a step has a known per-call cost that Breyta cannot infer from the provider response.

(flow/step :http :get-users
  {:connection :api
   :path "/users"
   :method :get
   :metering {:unit :request
              :unit-cost-micros 2000
              :label "JSONPlaceholder request"}})

unit-cost-micros is the cost per completed step execution. The estimate line uses :label in creator-facing breakdowns, so make it readable.

Use this for:

paid API requests with a known per-request fee
enrichment providers with fixed lookup costs
internal tools where the author wants a transparent estimate line

Do not use :metering for LLM token pricing. LLM costs come from provider/model usage.

LLM Token Costs

LLM and agent steps estimate token cost from provider/model usage returned by the step result. Rates live in llm-pricing in breyta.flows.cost-estimates.

Rates are stored as micros per 1 million tokens:

{:openai
 {"gpt-5-mini" {:input-micros-per-mtok 250000
                :cached-input-micros-per-mtok 25000
                :output-micros-per-mtok 2000000}}}

This example means:

Rate	Micros	Dollars
Input tokens	`250000`	`$0.25 / 1M`
Cached input tokens	`25000`	`$0.025 / 1M`
Output tokens	`2000000`	`$2.00 / 1M`

If a model is not in the table, Breyta can still show usage but marks that estimate line as unpriced.

View Run Cost Data

The flow page shows the completed-run average as Avg Estimated Run Cost. Open the cost detail from the flow page to see the line-item breakdown.

The CLI uses the same run API response:

breyta runs show <workflow-id> --steps 0 --pretty

Look for:

data.run.costEstimate for the aggregate run estimate
data.run.costEstimate.lineItems for the aggregate breakdown
data.run.steps[].costEstimate for per-step estimates

Representative shape:

{
  "costEstimate": {
    "kind": "estimated",
    "currency": "USD",
    "amountMicros": 3500,
    "estimatedUsd": "$0.0035",
    "unknownLineCount": 0,
    "lineItems": [
      {
        "source": "configured-metering",
        "label": "JSONPlaceholder request",
        "amountMicros": 2000,
        "estimatedUsd": "$0.0020",
        "unit": "request",
        "quantity": 1
      },
      {
        "source": "llm",
        "provider": "openai",
        "model": "gpt-5-mini",
        "amountMicros": 1500,
        "estimatedUsd": "$0.0015",
        "usage": {
          "inputTokens": 1000,
          "outputTokens": 100,
          "totalTokens": 1100
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Notes And Limits