alt Hacker NewsWhy not just attach a real dollar amount, rather than using "credits"?
Well, I know why. I just wanted to be snarky. It's just that trying to hide the actual price is getting a bit old. Just tell me that generating this much code will cost me $10.
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A fundamental architectural problem is that they genuinely do not know what a query will cost ahead of time.
Even for a single standalone LLM that's the case, and the 'agentic' layers thrown on top just make that problem exponentially worse.
One'd need to entirely switch away from LLMs to fix this problem.
Taximeter effect
What is snarky about that?
The answer is so that they can charge different prices per credit. If you buy low amounts, they can charge one price. If you buy in bulk, they can offer a discount. The usage is the same, but they can differentiate price per usage to give people more a favorable price if they are better customers.
Is there anything wrong with that?
I can think of a few other reasons:
- Not everyone uses dollars.
- The price of credits in some currency could change after you bought them.
- The price of credits could be different for different customers (commercial, educational, partners, etc)
- They can ban trading of credits or let them expire