Audon vs. a spreadsheet for AI spend.
A spreadsheet is where most teams start: export each provider’s usage, paste it in, add a pivot table. It holds exactly what you put into it, which is its strength and its limit. Audon fills the same table from the providers’ APIs every day and works on it.
Side by side. Facts about Audon from the product and its docs.
| Aspect | Audon | A spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Getting the data | Read daily from each provider’s cost and usage API with a read-only key; Cursor individual plans by usage export. | Exported and pasted by hand, per provider. |
| Units | Each provider’s amounts converted exactly (dollars, cents as decimal strings, ACUs at your price) into integer micros; currencies never added together. | Whatever formulas you write. |
| Seats and plans | Entered once under Subscriptions and spread evenly per day into total spend, marked as entered by your team. | A row per plan, kept current by hand. |
| What looks wrong | Detectors with versions and the snapshot they ran on, so a result can be reproduced. | Conditional formatting you set up. |
| What could drop | Savings levers sized in order on disjoint pools of spend, so they add up into one estimate per currency. | Your own estimates. |
| Who changed what | Approvals, a second approver and a hash-chained activity log. | Version history of the file. |
When a spreadsheet is enough. Said plainly.
- You have one or two providers, a few hundred dollars a month, and someone who enjoys the monthly export.
- You only need a record for finance, not a list of changes or proof of savings.
Questions teams ask when they compare.
Can I still export to a spreadsheet?
Yes. Audit reports export as CSV or JSON, with the methodology and assumptions, and every capability is available over the REST API.
How long does it take to replace the spreadsheet?
About five minutes to connect a provider and import 30 days of spend. The free audit then runs the detectors in seconds.
The products
- Agent Spend Optimization: Finds and proves savings on what AI agents, model APIs and coding tools cost, from read-only billing data.
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