DEV CommunityWednesday · July 22, 2026FREE

I Couldn’t Fix My LLM Costs Until I Measured Tokens Per Feature

The author of the DEV Community article explains their struggle with rising LLM costs and how they solved it by shifting from measuring tokens per request to measuring tokens per feature. They implemented a system to track token consumption for each feature in their application, which revealed that some features were using far more tokens than expected due to inefficient prompt design. By analyzing this data, they were able to refactor prompts, reduce unnecessary context, and eliminate redundant calls. The consequence was a substantial reduction in overall token usage and cost, while maintaining the same level of functionality. The article emphasizes the importance of granular monitoring and provides practical advice for developers facing similar challenges.