The problem
You only find out when the invoice arrives
Solo developers watch costs spike overnight with no warning. Teams give everyone AI access and end up with no idea which project burned what. Providers give you keys — not budgets, not attribution, not control. Stop relying on delayed billing dashboards with the only OpenAI cost monitoring tool you need to track your exact usage down to the token.
Spend attribution
Every provider. Every project.
Every team member.
Total AI spend this month
$234.50
Polling interval
Sub-5 minute
Usage data refreshed every 5 minutes — never out of sync.
Encryption
AES-256
API keys encrypted before storage. Never logged or exposed.
Features
Developer-first cost control
Everything you need to attribute, enforce, and control AI API spend for individuals and teams, without changing a line of your existing code.
Automatic enforcement, not just alerts
Hard budget blocks and Slack/email fire the moment spend crosses your threshold — before the damage is done, not after.
AES-256 encryption
API keys encrypted before storage. Never logged, never exposed in errors or support tickets.
Spend attribution by project, team, and provider
See exactly who spent what — broken down by project, team member, and provider — updated every 5 minutes across your whole org.
A retry loop on staging hammers the API all weekend. The 80% budget alert fires Saturday morning — not on the invoice.
Runaway retry loop
A prompt tweak doubles output tokens overnight. The spend chart shows the jump the same morning, per project, per provider.
Silent prompt regression
A forgotten cron job keeps calling an expensive model every minute. Daily spend triples — the alert lands in Slack within five minutes of the threshold.
Zombie cron job
A demo link goes viral and traffic spikes 20x. The daily limit holds the line while you decide what to do — before the month-end surprise.
Viral traffic spike
A retry loop on staging hammers the API all weekend. The 80% budget alert fires Saturday morning — not on the invoice.
Runaway retry loop
A prompt tweak doubles output tokens overnight. The spend chart shows the jump the same morning, per project, per provider.
Silent prompt regression
A forgotten cron job keeps calling an expensive model every minute. Daily spend triples — the alert lands in Slack within five minutes of the threshold.
Zombie cron job
A demo link goes viral and traffic spikes 20x. The daily limit holds the line while you decide what to do — before the month-end surprise.
Viral traffic spike
Budget governance for every failure mode
Whether it's a solo dev's runaway loop or a team's unchecked model usage — Frugal catches it early instead of letting it show up on the invoice.
How it works
Up and running in three steps
Connect your providers
Paste your API keys or invite your team and assign theirs. Frugal validates and starts tracking immediately — all keys encrypted with AES-256 before touching the database.
Set budgets per project or team
Monthly limits per provider, per project, or per team. Alert at 80%, 90%, 100% — or any threshold you choose. Works for a solo dev's side project or a 20-person engineering org.
Enforce limits, not just notifications
Frugal polls every 5 minutes. Hard budget blocks and Slack/email alerts fire the moment a threshold is crossed — so you stop runaway spend, not just hear about it.
Use cases
Built for the people paying the bill
Indie developers
Stop AI bills from killing side projects
One misconfigured prompt loop can rack up hundreds of dollars overnight. Set hard spending caps and sleep knowing Frugal will cut it off before it hurts.
Engineering managers
Know before your CFO asks
Your team ships features using AI APIs every day. Frugal shows you exactly which project is burning what — before the invoice lands.
Startups & founders
Make every dollar of runway count
You're giving your team access to GPT, Claude, and Replicate. Frugal tracks what each project spends and blocks runaway costs before they eat your runway.
Companies & teams
AI budget governance without the spreadsheet
Set per-team and per-project budgets across every AI provider. Get automatic alerts and hard blocks. Know exactly who spent what before month-end.
Pricing
Start free, upgrade when spend grows
No credit card to start. No proxy, no code change on any plan.
Free
See your AI spend before it sees you
- Unified dashboard — all providers in one view
- Email alerts on spend spikes
- 7-day usage history
- 1 connection · 1 project
- No proxy · no code change
Plus
Stop guessing. Start controlling.
Cancel anytime. No lock-in.
- Monitor 3 providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, and one more
- Get Slack pings the moment a budget hits 80%
- Hard blocks that stop runaway spend automatically — not just notifications
- See where this month's costs are heading before you get the invoice
- 90 days of history to spot recurring cost spikes
Pro
Know exactly which users are costing you money.
Cancel anytime. Switch to monthly anytime.
- See exactly which users drive your AI costs
- Monitor unlimited providers and projects
- Pipe alerts into PagerDuty, Linear, or CI/CD
- Automatically block overruns on unlimited rules
- Spot long-term trends with 1-year spend history
No credit card required · Cancel anytime · Data export on cancellation
Managing AI spend across a whole team? See Corporate plans
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
If you don't find what you need, contact us at support@getfrugal.dev
What is Frugal?
What does Frugal do?
What is the best alternative to Frugal?
What is the best tool for monitoring LLM API costs?
How do I set a hard budget limit on the OpenAI API?
How to get alerts before OpenAI API overspend?
How much does the Anthropic Claude 3 API cost compared to OpenAI?
What happens when you exceed your AI API budget?
How does the pricing work?
What payment methods do you accept?
Frugal pricing and features
How do I contact support?
Stop paying for AI you can't see.
Whether you're a solo dev protecting a side project or a team lead managing AI spend across 20 engineers, Frugal gives you the visibility and control you need.