Cohere Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize Cohere costs through model selection, token budgets, embedding compression, and usage monitoring. Cohere pricing is token-based with separate input/output rates.

Prerequisites

• Cohere production key (trial is free but limited)
• Access to dashboard.cohere.com billing page

Cohere Pricing Model

Key principle: Cohere charges per token. Input tokens and output tokens have different rates. Embed, Rerank, and Classify have separate pricing based on search units.

Tier	Access	Rate Limits	Cost
Trial	Free	5-20 calls/min, 1000/month	$0
Production	Metered	1000 calls/min, unlimited	Per-token

Model Cost Comparison

Model	Input (per 1M tokens)	Output (per 1M tokens)	Best For
command-r7b-12-2024	Lowest	Lowest	High-volume, simple tasks
command-r-08-2024	Low	Low	RAG, cost-effective
command-r-plus-08-2024	Medium	Medium	Complex reasoning
command-a-03-2025	Higher	Higher	Best quality

Non-Chat Pricing

Endpoint	Pricing Unit	Notes
Embed	Per input token	Batch 96 texts to minimize calls
Rerank	Per search unit	1 query + N docs = 1 search unit
Classify	Per classification	Charges per input classified

Instructions

Strategy 1: Model Tiering

type CostTier = 'economy' | 'standard' | 'premium';

function selectModel(tier: CostTier): string {
  switch (tier) {
    case 'economy':  return 'command-r7b-12-2024';    // ~5x cheaper
    case 'standard': return 'command-r-08-2024';       // Good balance
    case 'premium':  return 'command-a-03-2025';       // Best quality
  }
}

// Route by use case
function routeModel(task: string): string {
  // High-volume, simple tasks → cheapest model
  if (['classify', 'extract', 'summarize-short'].includes(task)) {
    return selectModel('economy');
  }
  // RAG, moderate complexity
  if (['rag', 'search', 'qa'].includes(task)) {
    return selectModel('standard');
  }
  // Complex reasoning, user-facing
  return selectModel('premium');
}

Strategy 2: Token Budget Controls

import { CohereClientV2 } from 'cohere-ai';

const cohere = new CohereClientV2();

// Set maxTokens to prevent runaway generation costs
async function budgetedChat(message: string, maxOutputTokens = 500) {
  const response = await cohere.chat({
    model: 'command-r-08-2024',
    messages: [{ role: 'user', content: message }],
    maxTokens: maxOutputTokens,  // Hard limit on output tokens
  });

  // Track actual usage
  const usage = response.usage?.billedUnits;
  console.log(`Tokens: in=${usage?.inputTokens} out=${usage?.outputTokens}`);

  return response;
}

Strategy 3: Embedding Cost Reduction

// 1. Use int8 embeddings (same quality, cheaper storage)
const response = await cohere.embed({
  model: 'embed-v4.0',
  texts: documents,
  inputType: 'search_document',
  embeddingTypes: ['int8'],     // 75% less storage than float
});

// 2. Batch to 96 per call (minimize API calls)
// 3. Cache embeddings (they're deterministic — embed once, use forever)
// 4. Use embed-multilingual-v3.0 if you don't need v4 features

Strategy 4: Usage Monitoring

class CohereUsageTracker {
  private usage: Record<string, { inputTokens: number; outputTokens: number; calls: number }> = {};
  private dailyBudget: number;

  constructor(dailyBudgetUSD: number) {
    this.dailyBudget = dailyBudgetUSD;
  }

  track(endpoint: string, billedUnits: { inputTokens?: number; outputTokens?: number }) {
    if (!this.usage[endpoint]) {
      this.usage[endpoint] = { inputTokens: 0, outputTokens: 0, calls: 0 };
    }
    this.usage[endpoint].inputTokens += billedUnits.inputTokens ?? 0;
    this.usage[endpoint].outputTokens += billedUnits.outputTokens ?? 0;
    this.usage[endpoint].calls++;
  }

  getReport(): string {
    return Object.entries(this.usage)
      .map(([ep, u]) =>
        `${ep}: ${u.calls} calls, ${u.inputTokens} in, ${u.outputTokens} out`
      )
      .join('\n');
  }

  estimateDailyCost(): number {
    // Rough estimate — check cohere.com/pricing for exact rates
    const chatIn = (this.usage['chat']?.inputTokens ?? 0) / 1_000_000;
    const chatOut = (this.usage['chat']?.outputTokens ?? 0) / 1_000_000;
    const embedIn = (this.usage['embed']?.inputTokens ?? 0) / 1_000_000;
    // Multiply by per-million-token rates from pricing page
    return (chatIn * 0.5) + (chatOut * 1.5) + (embedIn * 0.1); // example rates
  }
}

// Wrap all API calls
const tracker = new CohereUsageTracker(10); // $10/day budget

async function trackedChat(params: any) {
  const response = await cohere.chat(params);
  tracker.track('chat', response.usage?.billedUnits ?? {});

  if (tracker.estimateDailyCost() > tracker['dailyBudget'] * 0.8) {
    console.warn('WARNING: Approaching daily Cohere budget limit');
  }

  return response;
}

Strategy 5: Rerank Before RAG (Skip Embed for Small Corpora)

// If you have < 1000 documents, skip embedding entirely
// Rerank is cheaper than Embed + vector search for small collections

async function cheapRAG(query: string, corpus: string[]) {
  // 1 search unit instead of N embed calls
  const ranked = await cohere.rerank({
    model: 'rerank-v3.5',
    query,
    documents: corpus,
    topN: 3,
  });

  const docs = ranked.results.map((r, i) => ({
    id: `doc-${i}`,
    data: { text: corpus[r.index] },
  }));

  // Use cheaper model for generation
  return cohere.chat({
    model: 'command-r-08-2024', // Not command-a (cheaper)
    messages: [{ role: 'user', content: query }],
    documents: docs,
    maxTokens: 300,
  });
}

Cost Optimization Checklist

• Use command-r7b for simple tasks, command-a only for complex ones
• Set maxTokens on all chat calls
• Batch embed calls (96 texts per request)
• Cache embeddings (deterministic — compute once)
• Use int8 embeddings for storage
• Monitor usage.billedUnits in every response
• Set daily budget alerts
• Use rerank instead of embed for small corpora (< 1000 docs)

Output

• Model tiering by cost/quality
• Token budget controls preventing runaway costs
• Usage tracking with daily budget alerts
• Cost-effective RAG with rerank pre-filtering

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Unexpected bill spike	No maxTokens	Set maxTokens on all chat calls
High embed costs	Individual texts	Batch to 96 per call
Budget exceeded	No monitoring	Track billedUnits per response
Over-provisioned model	Using premium everywhere	Tier models by task complexity

Resources

• Cohere Pricing
• Cohere Billing Dashboard
• Cohere Token Counting

Next Steps

For architecture patterns, see cohere-reference-architecture.