Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Definition
A full-cost view that includes retries, review time, and operations overhead beyond API token price
#TCO#Total Cost of Ownership#ownership cost#operating cost
What is TCO?
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the complete cost of running a model in production, not just the API line item.
What should be included?
Typical components are token spend, retry overhead, human review time, incident handling, and latency-related productivity loss.
Why does it matter?
A cheaper model by token price can still become more expensive in practice if it causes more rework or slower delivery. TCO prevents that blind spot.
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