How to Audit AI API Costs by Team and User in 2026

Track every AI request with team_id, user_id, model, token counts, and feature context, or your invoice will stay unexplainable. Build a request-level cost ledger first, then roll it up into team, user, feature, and model views. Most LLM spend spikes come from a small set of causes: model switches, prompt bloat, retry storms, and unbounded feature adoption. The fastest useful audit is not perfect chargeback. It is a weekly process that shows who spent what, why it changed, and what action to tak...