About

AI Cost Gate

AI Cost Gate (by CostBrake) is a self-hosted, metadata-only LLM cost gateway: every request attributed, budgeted, and stoppable — without shipping prompts off your machine.

We build the local cost black box for teams that run coding agents, automation fleets, and multi-provider LLM stacks. ACG records per-request cost metadata by project, agent, and model, then enforces budgets that auto-stop runaway spend before the bill surprises you.

The product is sold as AI Cost Gate Pro: pay once, receive private GitHub source access, and self-host forever on SQLite or Postgres. There is no mandatory cloud control plane and no prompt storage — cost metadata stays under your control.

This marketing portal (aicostgate.com) is where you try the read-only demo, buy Pro licensing, and manage delivery. Day-to-day cost control runs in your own environment after you deploy the Pro source.

Free companion utilities ship as ACG Tools at tools.aicostgate.com — pricing leaderboards, burn estimators, prompt cost calculators, and budget-aware agent checklists that funnel back to AI Cost Gate Pro.

CostBrake publishes AI Cost Gate for engineering and finance owners who share one failure mode: autonomous agents that can spend overnight without a request-path gate. We optimize for containment and residency, not for replacing every multi-provider router.

If you are evaluating the category, start with the LLM cost control pillar, then the runaway, budgets, and local-first guides. The compare page explains when to keep LiteLLM beside ACG instead of ripping out a working proxy.

Who we build for

ACG is written for the people who get paged when agent fleets burn money — not for replacing every router in the stack.

Platform and SRE owners
Need a request-path gate with project and agent attribution so a single noisy workflow cannot exhaust a shared key overnight.
FinOps and engineering managers
Need budget grain that maps to teams and environments, with hard stop — not dashboards that only explain the bill after it arrives.
Local-first and compliance teams
Need cost control that stays on infrastructure they operate, with metadata-only logging and no mandatory prompt egress to a vendor cloud.

Product timeline

A short public history from first concept in mid-April 2026 through the buy-once Pro delivery loop.

Mid-Apr 2026
Concept kickoff
CostBrake started AI Cost Gate around a local cost black box for agent fleets — attribution plus budget auto-stop, separate from multi-provider routers.
May–Jun 2026
Portal + Pro delivery
aicostgate.com shipped marketing, read-only demo, and one-time Pro checkout with GitHub collaborator delivery for self-host buyers.
Jul–Aug 2026
Guides + ACG Tools
Public FinOps and local-first guides, LiteLLM comparison, and free ACG Tools utilities were added to support evaluation before purchase.

How teams evaluate containment

We do not publish fabricated case-study numbers. Evaluation usually follows a measured loop buyers can reproduce in their own stack:

Baseline a week of agent traffic by project, agent, and model (or the closest proxy labels you already have).
Set a hard budget on the noisiest agent first; keep alerts on sibling workflows so production is not surprised.
Prove auto-stop with a controlled overrun — confirm the next provider call is blocked before spend continues.
Decide whether ACG sits alone or beside an existing router (LiteLLM, OpenRouter, vendor gateways).

Publisher

CostBrake publishes AI Cost Gate and operates this portal. Product questions, licensing, and security reports go to ACG@aicostgate.com. There is no anonymous ghost brand — CostBrake is the legal and support entity behind Pro delivery, docs, and ACG Tools.