TutorCat Guide Open TutorCat

Admins

Costs

See what AI costs by day, job, provider, model and account, split into what the provider charged and what we estimate. Export it as CSV.

On this page
  1. Choose the dates
  2. Read the totals
  3. Costs by account
  4. Export to CSV
  5. What is recorded
  6. Use it to set the budget and allowance

Costs shows what the AI costs, in US dollars. Pick Costs in the sidebar. For today's spend against the daily budget, use AI and usage. Costs is for looking back and finding out where the money goes.

Costs: the totals, where the figures come from, and spend per day
  1. Choose the dates
  2. Totals for the range
  3. Provider-charged or estimated
  4. Models with no price
  5. Spend per day

Choose the dates

The switch at the top right sets the range: 7d, 30d, 90d or Custom. With Custom, pick From and To. Days are UTC and both ends are included. The longest range is 366 days.

Read the totals

Four boxes sum up the range:

  • Spend: the total, with the average per day.
  • Calls: how many AI requests, with the average cost per call. If any were answered by a backup, it says how many.
  • Tokens: input and output together.
  • Provider-reported: the share of the spend that the provider itself charged.

Where the figures come from splits the spend in two:

  • Provider-reported: the charge OpenRouter sent back for each call. This is the real bill.
  • Estimated: tokens multiplied by the price table on AI and usage. Use it as a guide, not a bill.

Below that:

  • Spend per day is a chart, one bar a day.
  • By job and By provider show each one's cost, share of the total and calls.
  • Whiteboard lessons are counted as their own job, Whiteboard, so you can see what boards cost compared with ordinary tutor replies. They count toward the daily budget and each child's allowance like any reply.
  • Natural narration voices are their own job, Narration voices. Only a new clip costs money: a replay of a stored clip is free. Each clip is counted on the child whose board it read, so By account shows narration per child. For this job the Tokens figure counts characters of text, because voices are priced per character. A Preview voice on Models is counted on your own admin account.
  • AI diagrams are their own job, Diagram pictures. It holds the picture and the vision check, counted on the child whose board asked for the picture. The image safety screen is counted under Safety screen, like every screen. A picture reused from the diagram library costs nothing.
  • To guess these two jobs' costs before you pick a model, use the estimates on Models: about 800 characters per board for a voice, one 1024×1024 picture for a diagram. Costs shows what was actually spent, which differs when boards are longer or shorter, or clips are reused.
  • By model lists each model's Cost, Share, Calls, Tokens and Provider, with a Not priced tag where it applies.

Costs by account

The By account table
  1. Search by email
  2. Students or parents
  3. Export to CSV
  4. One account: email and role only
  5. Family total

By account lists who the money was spent for. Each row shows an email and a role, never a name. A child's name is never shown anywhere in the console.

  • Search by email, filter by Role (All, Students, Parents) and choose the sort: Cost, Family cost, Tokens or Calls. The table shows 25 accounts a page; use Previous and Next.
  • A parent's own cost is small, because it is only their session summaries. Family adds their linked children's cost on top and says how many children. A child's row says Has a linked parent.
  • Top job and Top model show where that account's usage went.

Select an account to open its drawer.

One parent's costs, with the linked children
  1. Own cost and family total
  2. Cost by day
  3. By job
  4. Linked children

The drawer shows that account's Cost, Family, Calls and Tokens, then Cost by day, By job and By model. A parent's drawer lists Linked children, and a child's lists the linked parent. Select one to jump to it.

Export to CSV

Three buttons save a spreadsheet for the range you picked: CSV by day (above the chart), CSV by model and CSV by account.

What is recorded

Each AI call leaves one usage record with:

  • the account it was for (the student, or the parent for a session summary),
  • the model, the provider and the job,
  • input and output tokens, the cost and whether it was provider-charged or estimated,
  • how long it took, and which model failed first if a backup answered.

Message content is never recorded. No question, answer, photo or voice clip is in these records, so none can be shown here. Costs is totals and metadata only. See The privacy boundary.

If a family is erased, the link to their account is removed from the records. The spending stays in the totals, so past spend still adds up, but it no longer belongs to anyone and appears in no account's row.

Use it to set the budget and allowance

  1. Look at 30d with the Spend per day chart. Note a normal day and a busy day.
  2. Set the daily budget a little above a busy day, so the tutor does not pause on a normal one. Change it on AI and usage.
  3. Sort By account by Cost and look at the top students. Set the Per-child daily allowance in Settings above what a keen student normally uses, and well below the budget, so one account cannot use the day up.
  4. If a model is pricey for its job, switch to a cheaper one on Models, then check Costs again after a few days.

Check Provider-reported now and then. If a lot of spend is only estimated, make sure the price table is right.