Before you fund an AI relay, make sure you can explain what one request costs, what happens when it fails, and where the charge appears. A low advertised token rate is only the starting point. Run this seven-step billing check before putting money behind a coding agent, command-line tool, or production application.
1. Ask for the complete token price sheet
Start with the exact model you intend to use, not a headline rate. If your workflow uses Claude Sonnet 5.5, ask for its input and output prices, the unit those prices use, and whether the displayed rate already includes the relay's markup.
Then check for separate charges for cached input, cache creation, reasoning tokens, images, and tool-related usage. Not every model exposes the same categories. Ask which billable categories can appear on your requests and where their prices are published.
2. Calculate one sample request yourself
Ask the relay to walk through a sample bill using token counts you can verify. For a simple text request, the basic calculation is input tokens multiplied by the input rate, plus output tokens multiplied by the output rate. Adjust for the stated pricing unit.
For example, at hypothetical prices of $2 per million input tokens and $8 per million output tokens, 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens cost $0.036. These are illustrative prices, not SwiftRelay rates. Ask about rounding, minimum charges, currency conversion, and payment fees before comparing your calculation with the account balance.
3. Establish what failed requests and retries cost
A failed workflow does not necessarily mean no tokens were processed. Ask what happens when a request times out, a stream disconnects, an upstream provider rejects a call, or your client cancels generation.
- Can a partially completed response still incur a charge?
- Does the relay retry automatically, and can each attempt be billed?
- Can you identify separate attempts in the usage record?
Check your client settings too. An agent or SDK may retry independently of the relay. Separate relay retries from client retries so repeated charges have an explanation.
4. Separate purchased funds from promotional credit
Before topping up, ask whether purchased funds expire, which payment methods are supported, and whether there is a minimum deposit. Confirm whether fees reduce the usable balance or are added at checkout.
Promotional balances need their own questions: do they expire, which balance gets spent first, and can they cover every model? SwiftRelay gives new accounts a small gift credit, making it a practical candidate for an initial billing check. Sign up for SwiftRelay and use that credit to inspect a small request before committing more funds.
5. Verify usage records with a controlled test
Send one short request with a modest output limit. Record the model identifier, request time, reported token counts, and balance before and after. Avoid running other workloads during this test.
Ask whether the dashboard provides request-level charges, downloadable usage records, and identifiers that support can trace. Also confirm when usage becomes visible. A balance change without enough detail to reconcile it makes later troubleshooting harder. SwiftRelay bills per token on a pay-as-you-go basis; use the test to check how those charges appear in your account.
6. Confirm spending controls before connecting an agent
Ask whether you can set account budgets, key-level limits, low-balance alerts, and a hard spending cutoff. Find out whether each control actually blocks requests or merely sends a notification. Ask what happens to requests already in progress when a limit is reached.
Long conversation histories and repeated tool calls can increase billable usage even when individual prompts look small. Start with a limited test budget and conservative client settings. Do not assume that every advertised spending control exists.
7. Get refund and price-change terms in writing
Finish by asking how unused purchased funds, disputed charges, and accidental duplicate payments are handled. Confirm what evidence support needs and whether payment-processing fees are refundable.
Also ask where price changes are announced and when new rates take effect. Keep a dated copy of the applicable price sheet and your test result. The green light is a bill you can reproduce: known rates, traceable usage, clear failure rules, and a defined way to stop spending.