Show HN: Stop over-budget AI API calls per customer/feature (no proxy)

MarginDash — AI Cost Tracking + Budget Guard Track AI spend. Stay on budget. Track AI API spend by customer and feature. Get limit alerts and stop over-budget calls. No proxy required. Start Free No credit card required MarginDash Dashboard March 2026 Revenue $12,480 Cost $8,340 Margin $4,140 Margin % 33.2% Revenue vs Cost Over Time Revenue Cost Budget Status Organization-wide 72% Image Generation 91% From [email protected] Subject 🚨 Budget Alert: Image Generation at 91% 🚨 Budget Alert: Image Generation Your Image Generation budget has reached 91% . Current spend $546.00 Budget $600.00 / mo Used 91.0% Days remaining 16 days View Budget Dashboard Built for real cost control, not just reporting No proxy hop App calls providers directly SDK budget guard Block over-budget calls by customer/feature Margin-aware tracking Costs mapped to revenue and customer IDs Fast setup Install SDK, track events, set budgets Works across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Azure, Groq, and more. Architecture Budget guard architecture Your app still calls providers directly. MarginDash provides the budget state control plane, and the SDK enforces decisions at call time. Runtime data Usage context from your app Your app sends model/token usage plus customer and feature IDs. Prompts and completions stay in your stack. Control plane Budget state from MarginDash SDK polls a lightweight blocklist endpoint with TTL/version caching. Enforcement path SDK verdict before provider request Wrap calls with guardedCall . If a customer or feature budget is exceeded, the SDK blocks the request. Go live in three steps 1 Set budgets in dashboard Create org-wide, feature, and per-customer budgets. Budgets 3 created Organization-wide $2,000 / mo Alerts: 50%, 80%, 100% Active Feature: summarize $500 / mo Alerts: 50%, 80%, 100% Active Per-customer 30% of revenue Alerts: 50%, 80%, 100% Active Save Budget 2 Add one package npm install ai-cost-calc Also available as pip install ai-cost-calc or use the REST API 3 Guard AI calls and track usage Wrap AI calls with guardedCall . If a call is over budget, it is blocked before the provider request is sent. const response = await md. guardedCall ({ customerId : user.id, eventType : "summarize" }, () => providerCall ()); md. addUsage ({ model : response.model, inputTokens : response.usage?.prompt_tokens, outputTokens : response.usage?.completion_tokens, }); md. track ({ customerId : user.id, eventType : "summarize" , revenueAmountInCents : 499 // optional }); Start Free Core capabilities for spend control Budgets, blocking, revenue correlation, and current model pricing in one workflow. Budgets Per-customer and per-feature budgets Define limits by customer or feature and monitor utilization continuously. Revenue Revenue tracking Connect Stripe, or pass revenueAmountInCents via SDK events. Works with any billing system. Pricing Auto-updated pricing Provider pricing syncs daily across 400+ models so cost calculations stay current. Enforcement Budget guard (SDK sidecar) Use SDK guard methods to block over-budget calls without rerouting traffic through MarginDash. Margin reporting See customer profitability when you need it If you connect revenue, MarginDash shows cost, revenue, and margin per customer so engineering and finance share the same numbers. MarginDash Customers (100) March 2026 Customer ID Revenue Cost Margin Margin % Plexo Health 5 $233.25 $277.20 -$43.95 -18.84% Vantage Ops 4 $358.86 $421.66 -$62.80 -17.50% Alder Analytics 1 $260.79 $294.17 -$33.38 -12.80% Conduit Logic 2 $401.56 $434.29 -$32.73 -8.15% Summit SaaS 3 $225.09 $233.64 -$8.55 -3.80% Helix Robotics 66 $134.29 $127.31 $6.98 5.20% Canopy Labs 25 $350.89 $316.85 $34.04 9.70% Ember AI 78 $211.12 $184.94 $26.18 12.40% Stratos Cloud 53 $417.32 $357.64 $59.68 14.30% Lumen Ops 86 $153.79 $129.34 $24.45 15.90% Prism Data 15 $105.80 $87.23 $18.57 17.55% Revenue, cost, and margin per customer Automatic Stripe invoice sync Negative margins highlighted instantly Pricing Simple, predictable pricing One plan. Full access. Unlimited plan $99 /month Unlimited tracked events, customers, and feature budgets. SDK budget guard for customer and feature limits AI API spend tracking at customer and feature level Margin reporting with Stripe revenue sync Auto-updated pricing across 400+ models Start with Unlimited Optimization Simulate model swaps before you deploy Once spend is controlled, test cheaper model options per feature before changing production traffic. Start Free to Use Simulator Questions teams ask before rollout Budget guard is production-focused and intentionally scoped. Here is exactly what it does. Does this add a proxy hop to every LLM request? No. Your app still calls providers directly. MarginDash is SDK instrumentation. What gets blocked? Calls wrapped with SDK guard methods are blocked when their customer or feature budget is exceeded. Uninstrumented calls are not blocked. Do you see prompts or completions? No. MarginDash receives usage metadata (model, token counts, customer ID, feature/event type). Prompt and response bodies stay in your infrastructure. Can finance still get margin reporting? Yes. You still get per-customer profitability with Stripe revenue correlation, plus customer/feature budget controls and email alerts. Control AI spend before it controls you. Track spend, alert on limits, and block over-budget calls with SDK-side enforcement. Start Free See Integration Docs No credit card required · or book a demo