Stack Spend
AI Unit Economics & ROI

Is AI making you margin, or costing it?

Track AI ROI and cost per unit — customer, feature, request — against the value it creates.

  • Read-only access
  • 14-day free trial
  • No credit card required
5 min
setup, per provider
90 days
available history
Same-day
anomaly alerts
Connected spend · monthly forecastIllustrative product view
See spend against budget, every day. The same burn-up view your dashboard shows: cumulative spend against budget, with a forecast tail so you know where the month ends before it does.

See the workflow in practice.

Tagging and attribution

Every dollar has an owner.

Auto-tagging rules label costs as they are ingested, matching provider, account, service and project patterns in priority order. By the time someone asks who owns the spend, the answer is already on the data — filterable and groupable in the explorer.

Team plan and above

How it works
AI Explorer

Every model you run, in one lens.

Usage by base model, project and user, in tokens and in API-equivalent value. Estimated and billed usage stay separate, so the numbers never double-count and never pretend to be your invoice.

Business plan

How it works
Model recommendations

Switch to a cheaper model that scores as well.

Business plan

How it works
Cost Health score

One score for whether spend is under control.

How it works

Product examples are illustrative. Usage estimates and provider-reported costs are separate measures; availability varies by connected source.

Explore the model view

Why is this spend hard to control?

  • Total AI spend says nothing about whether AI is creating value or eroding margin.
  • Provider dashboards report by key and model, never by customer, feature, or workflow.
  • Without unit economics, teams cannot tell profitable AI usage from waste.

Know what you are connecting.

The workflow

  1. 01

    StackSpend attributes AI spend to customers, features, requests, and workflows.

  2. 02

    Cost-per-request, cost-per-customer, and margin views show where AI pays off and where it leaks.

  3. 03

    Daily signals and forecasting track unit economics as usage scales.

The source

Billing and usage from your connected providers. Credential types and permission controls vary by provider.

Provider connection guides

The limits

Provider reporting and scheduled sync determine freshness. Available history and attribution vary by source; review the setup guide for coverage. Alerts notify your team; they do not block requests or enforce a spending cap.

What we track

  • Cost per customer, feature, request, workflow
  • AI gross margin and ROI signals
  • Spend by provider and model
  • Pace-to-forecast on AI COGS
  • 90 days of history

Who is this for?

  • Product and engineering teams that need model-level visibility before AI bills surprise them.
  • Buyers consolidating OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Cursor, or open-model spend into one operating view.
  • Teams that need alerts and forecasting, not just retrospective usage dashboards.

Evaluation checklist

  1. 01

    Start a trial

    Open a StackSpend workspace with no credit card required.

  2. 02

    Connect with read-only access

    Use the setup guide to connect the provider or workflow with the minimum permissions needed.

  3. 03

    Review the first 90 days

    Check history, alerts, anomalies, and forecast so you can decide whether the workflow is worth adopting.

How does StackSpend support this workflow?

Native tools provide provider-specific reporting and controls. StackSpend adds a shared monitoring workflow across connected sources.

Provider usage dashboards and spreadsheets

  • Cost reported by key and model, not value units
  • No cost-per-request or margin view
  • No ROI signal
  • Manual, one-off analysis

StackSpend

  • AI spend attributed to customers, features, requests
  • Cost-per-unit and margin in one view
  • ROI tracked as usage scales
  • Pace-to-forecast on AI COGS

What do you get when you connect?

Setup time
Most teams can connect and validate setup in about 5-10 minutes.
Access model
Read-only credentials only. StackSpend does not modify provider resources or billing settings.
Signals
Daily Slack or email updates, anomaly alerts, and budget tracking in one workflow.
History and forecast
Historical spend context plus pace-to-forecast so overruns are visible before month-end.

Check the details before connecting.

Review connection permissions

Read the provider setup guides before sharing credentials.

Provider setup guides

See the security details

How credentials, tenant isolation and data handling work.

Security and data handling

Know the price

Compare plans, included providers and the trial terms.

Plans and pricing

Talk to the team

Ask about your stack or requirements before connecting.

Contact StackSpendAbout Andrew Day

AI Unit Economics & ROI, answered

When is this workflow useful?
  • A power user costs 10x the average and erodes plan margin
  • A feature ships with unknown cost-per-customer
  • AI cost scales faster than revenue
  • The board asks for AI ROI and the number does not exist
How does StackSpend handle AI Unit Economics & ROI?

AI unit economics measures the cost of AI per unit of value — per customer, per feature, per request, per workflow — so teams can tell whether AI spend is profitable or wasteful. StackSpend attributes AI spend to those units across OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, and more, surfacing cost-per-request, margin, and ROI as usage scales.

Can StackSpend track AI COGS?

Yes. AI COGS is the share of your cost of goods sold that comes from model usage. StackSpend attributes AI spend to features, teams, and customers, so your margin model carries a measured per-customer AI cost instead of an estimate.

What are AI unit economics?

AI unit economics measure the cost of AI per unit of value — per customer, per feature, per request, or per workflow — so you can tell whether AI spend is profitable, productive, or wasteful, rather than just looking at a total.

How do I measure cost per AI request or per customer?

StackSpend attributes AI spend (by model and tokens) to your own units — customer, feature, request, workflow — so cost-per-request and cost-per-customer become live numbers instead of a manual analysis.

How is this different from AI COGS tracking?

AI COGS is the cost side; AI unit economics adds the value/ROI lens — whether that cost is creating margin. StackSpend covers both, tied together in one view.

For the current provider catalogue, see supported integrations.

Tomorrow morning: one number, in Slack.

Connect your providers today and follow spend, budgets and alerts in one place. Review provider permissions before connecting.

Read-only access · No agent to install · 14-day free trial · No credit card required
AI Unit Economics & AI COGS Tracking — StackSpend