Skip to lesson
Exit
FinOps for AI & COGS Attribution1 / 3

2 min lesson

Cost-per-resource vs. cost-per-outcome

Answer this as if it were happening now: "A routing change lowers cost per token by 20% but quietly reduces edit-acceptance rate. Which metric catches the problem and why?" Say what supports your choice.

Step 1 of 3

Cost-per-resource vs. cost-per-outcomethe metric that survives a changing product

Cost-per-resource - dollars per GPU-hour - is stable but says nothing about whether the spend is productive. Cost-per-outcome - dollars per accepted edit, per completed agent task, per retained user - survives a model swap because it's anchored to value, not to the resource that happened to produce it.

RESOURCE VS. OUTCOME, SIDE BY SIDE

Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.

diagram: compare

Track both: report resource for finance; reason in outcome for decisions.