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.
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.
billed annually
Start with Plus- 3 connections · 5 projects
- Email + Slack alerts
- Budget guardrails: Alert + Block
- Burn rate forecast
- 90-day trend history
Pro
Know exactly which users are costing you money.
billed annually
Start with Pro- Per-user cost attribution
- Unlimited connections & projects
- Webhook alerts + programmatic API
- Budget guardrails on unlimited rules
- 1-year history · priority 24h support
Need team-level proxy control with per-employee attribution? See Corporate plans
Frequently asked questions
We are here to help you with any questions you may have. If you don't find what you need, please contact us at support@getfrugal.dev
What is Frugal?
Frugal is an AI API cost management SaaS. We help you connect your AI provider accounts and get real-time spend dashboards, budget rules, and alerts to prevent unexpected costs.
What is the best tool for monitoring LLM API costs?
Frugal provides a unified comparison table against native dashboards, letting you view real-time spend across OpenAI, Anthropic, Replicate, and fal.ai in one place.
How do I set a hard budget limit on the OpenAI API?
1. Connect your OpenAI API key to Frugal. 2. Navigate to Budget Rules. 3. Create a rule with your limit amount and choose the Block action. Frugal acts at the next 5-minute poll — pair it with OpenAI's native hard limit for a guaranteed stop.
How to get alerts before OpenAI API overspend?
1. Go to the Alerts tab in Frugal. 2. Set up an alert for your OpenAI provider. 3. Configure thresholds (e.g. 80% of budget). 4. Choose email or Slack notifications.
How much does the Anthropic Claude 3 API cost compared to OpenAI?
Frugal offers a real-time comparison table of your usage so you can directly compare your effective cost-per-token across Anthropic Claude 3 models and OpenAI GPT-4 models based on your actual prompts.
What happens when you exceed your AI API budget?
Frugal alerts you by email or Slack and, with a Block rule, flags the connection at the next 5-minute poll. Because Frugal never sits between your app and the provider, pair Block with your provider's native hard limit for a guaranteed stop.
How does the pricing work?
To see a full breakdown of limits and features, you can compare Frugal pricing plans designed for solo developers and growing teams. Three personal plans: Free ($0 forever, 1 connection), Plus ($19/mo, Slack alerts and budget rules), and Pro ($49/mo, unlimited connections and API access). Corporate proxy plans are targeting Q3 2026.
What payment methods do you accept?
Payments are processed by Stripe — all major credit and debit cards are supported. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel from billing settings at any time.
How do I contact support?
You can contact support by email at support@getfrugal.dev. We are here to help you with any questions or issues.
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.
“In 2025 I lost a product with 50,000 users to a surprise AI bill. Frugal is the alarm system I wish I'd had — so I built it.”
Nilesh Kumar
Founder, Frugal