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Pikarc tracks costs at the step level using model pricing and token counts. These costs roll up into workspace and per-user daily budgets that are enforced in real time.

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Cost Calculation

When the SDK reports token counts after a model call, the cost is calculated as: 
cost_usd = prompt_tokens × input_cost_per_token
         + completion_tokens × output_cost_per_token
Pricing rates come from the Model Pricing configuration. If no pricing entry exists for a model, cost_usd remains null for that step.

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Example

For a gpt-4o call with 500 prompt tokens and 100 completion tokens:
TokensRateCost
Input500$0.0000025/token$0.00125
Output100$0.0000100/token$0.00100
Total$0.00225

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Budget Enforcement

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Workspace Daily Budget

Set daily_budget_usd on your workspace to limit total spend per day. When cumulative spend for the current day (UTC) reaches this limit, all subsequent runs and steps are denied with WORKSPACE_DAILY_BUDGET_EXCEEDED. 
curl -X PATCH http://localhost:8000/v1/workspace/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lg_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"daily_budget_usd": 100.0}'
Set to null to remove the limit.

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User Daily Budget

Set user_daily_budget_usd to limit spend per SDK user per day. This is a uniform limit — all users share the same daily budget cap. When any user’s spend reaches the limit, their requests are denied with USER_DAILY_BUDGET_EXCEEDED. 
curl -X PATCH http://localhost:8000/v1/workspace/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lg_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"user_daily_budget_usd": 25.0}'
Per-user daily budgets require the Pro plan or higher.

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How Budgets Reset

Daily budgets reset at midnight UTC. The Redis spend counters are keyed by date (YYYY-MM-DD) and expire automatically after 25 hours.

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Enforcement Flow

When a run starts or a step is created, the guardrails engine checks budgets in this order:
  1. Look up workspace daily spend from Redis (or Postgres fallback)
  2. Compare against workspace.daily_budget_usd
  3. If exceeded → DENY with WORKSPACE_DAILY_BUDGET_EXCEEDED
  4. Look up user daily spend from Redis (or Postgres fallback)
  5. Compare against workspace.user_daily_budget_usd
  6. If exceeded → DENY with USER_DAILY_BUDGET_EXCEEDED
After a step completes with token counts:
  1. Calculate cost_usd from model pricing
  2. Atomically increment workspace daily spend counter in Redis
  3. Atomically increment user daily spend counter in Redis
  4. Store cost_usd on the step in Postgres

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Setting Up Model Pricing

For cost tracking to work, you need to configure pricing for your models: 
# GPT-4o
curl -X PUT http://localhost:8000/v1/model-pricing/gpt-4o \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lg_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input_cost_per_token": 0.0000025, "output_cost_per_token": 0.000010}'

# GPT-4o-mini
curl -X PUT http://localhost:8000/v1/model-pricing/gpt-4o-mini \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lg_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input_cost_per_token": 0.00000015, "output_cost_per_token": 0.0000006}'
The model string in your pricing config must match exactly what you pass to run.model_call(model=...).

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Viewing Usage

Check your current spend and usage breakdown via the Usage API: 
curl http://localhost:8000/v1/usage/summary \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lg_..."
This returns today’s spend, 7-day and 30-day totals, plus breakdowns by model and by user. The dashboard also visualizes this data on the main page.