PromptCost – Agent Inference Latency & Cost Dashboard

Real-time inference latency tracking and cost attribution for AI developers and consumer-facing teams

Problem

Developers complain that AI inference speed becomes a workflow bottleneck — e.g., multiple high-effort thinking prompts still yield no answers, and 15-20 second waits between iterations are unacceptable in consumer image editing. Meanwhile, fine-grained real-time visibility into API call costs is lacking, leading to surprise bills.

Solution

A lightweight local dashboard or dev-side SDK that automatically tracks latency, token consumption, and cost per AI inference request, categorized by model, endpoint, and user session. Provides real-time charts and threshold alerts to help teams quickly locate slow requests and costly operations, with exportable reports for optimization decisions.

Users

Indie developers and small teams building consumer-facing AI apps, heavy users of AI tools.

MVP

Provide a lightweight SDK or reverse proxy to intercept requests; record latency, model name, token count, and cost per request; display summaries and trends by time period, model, and endpoint in a local web dashboard; support latency and cost thresholds with webhook alerts.

Revenue

Open-source core + paid hosted version (multi-project, team collaboration, long-term data retention); or tiered subscription by tracked request volume.

Why now

AI inference costs are becoming a significant expense for indie developers, while consumers are highly latency-sensitive — a low-cost local observability tool can quickly validate demand.