What AI API pricing doesn't tell you
You are about to build on an LLM API, so you check the pricing page. Every provider gives you the same thing: a table of dollars per million tokens, cheapest model at the bottom, flagship at the top. It is the first number you look at, and it feels like the number that decides your bill.
It is not. The price per token tells you what a token costs, not what an answer costs, and definitely not whether the cheap model gives you an answer you can ship. Those are different questions, and the pricing table cannot answer either one. Two real runs show the gap.