How are you tracking costs across AI services in your workflows?

Questions
1

Hey n8n community!

I’ve been diving deep into building AI-powered workflows in n8n lately, and I’ve hit a roadblock that’s been driving me crazy. Maybe you’re experiencing this too?

I’ve got workflows that chain together multiple AI services - using OpenAI for generating text, Eleven Labs for voice synthesis, and Tavily for search capabilities. n8n makes building these workflows incredibly smooth (the AI Agent node is a game-changer!), but I’ve found myself completely lost when it comes to tracking how much each workflow actually costs to run.

When a single workflow execution might trigger 3-4 different AI services, with different pricing models and billing cycles, it becomes really hard to answer simple questions like:

  • Which of my workflows is most expensive to run?
  • Is this particular AI node burning through my credits?
  • Would switching from one AI model to another save significant money?

I tried manually logging token usage in spreadsheets for a while, using Function nodes to capture the data, but it quickly became unsustainable as my workflows grew more complex.

To solve my own problem, I built a simple dashboard tool AIBillingDashboard that lets me consolidate all this spending info in one place and link it back to specific n8n workflows.

But I’m genuinely curious:

  1. How are YOU handling this? Is tracking AI costs across workflows even a concern?
  2. Are there clever ways you’re logging usage data from your n8n workflows?
  3. Would a dedicated tool that could connect to n8n and track AI costs per workflow be valuable to you?

I’m exploring the idea of building something specifically for n8n users that could connect via API and provide detailed cost breakdowns by workflow, but I want to make sure it would actually solve a real problem.

Would love to hear your experiences and pain points around this!

2 Likes
2

Ehy!
What you pose is a very interesting theme that, in my opinion, will develop a lot in the future.
At the moment I have explored few possibilities in this regard but my idea was to activate the “Return intermediate steps” functionality to have token and cost consumption of AI Agents’ actions and then transport this information in a Google Sheet and I would like to build a dashboard in Looker Studio to keep token and cost consumption under control for each individual flow.

It is not the cleanest and most beautiful solution but at the moment it is the only one that came to mind. In the end I don’t think AI Billing Dashboard does anything very different.

Here is a video that could be useful but I think you have already experienced something very similar.

3

Hey Gallo_AIA!

Thanks for taking the time to check out AIBillingDashboard

Your approach using n8n’s “Return intermediate steps” with Google Sheets and Looker Studio is definitely creative! I’m Tyler, the solo founder and software engineer behind AIBillingDashboard.

Your DIY solution shows good technical understanding of n8n. But extracting token consumption data from AI nodes can get tricky when scaling up. Several folks in the n8n community have struggled getting consistent data from AI Agents in their workflows. As you said, it’s “not the cleanest solution” - the reality of custom tracking systems!

The main difference I see is specialized vs. general-purpose tools. Looker Studio is excellent for visualization but doesn’t understand AI billing models natively. With AIBillingDashboard, I focused narrowly on AI cost management with features like token tracking and model comparisons.

For teams using multiple AI services, having everything in one place without building data pipelines saves development time. But your approach is totally valid if you enjoy building custom solutions!

What other AI services besides n8n are you using?

4

@mizudev, I believe that this environment should be used to help each other, to express doubts, to ask questions. It should not be used to sponsor your products.
I don’t think it’s fair.

1 Like
5

Hey @Gallo_AIA,

Sorry, not trying to come off as a promo for what I built!

Was genuinely curious about how everyone was tracking billing costs and wanted to share something I created around it to solve that similar issue too.

But to be completely honest, I’m super interested in building anything to help the community out so if you or anyone else has any ideas I would love to discuss and/or collaborate on something!

1 Like
6

Don’t worry!
If you are interested in building something together with all of us in here it is really a pleasure :slight_smile:

In my opinion, the issue of cost monitoring will become increasingly relevant as the tool spreads.
My method is certainly very crude, it would be interesting to understand if it was possible for you to provide a knot to have a cleaner cost tracking.

In my opinion it could be win-win: Community members benefit from a useful tool for workflows, and the name of your company is spread in your target audience.

7

I’m currently researching this as well. Outside n8n solution I’m looking into:

Langchain is almost out of the box, but too expensive, langfuse is open source but takes too much work to configure properly.

Still haven’t figured out how to track/connect them with n8n.

So if anyone has a good solution, definitely interested in hearing about it.