All learning paths Learn See Try Make Count what a run costs What this lesson is about Work out the money and the minutes one run takes, and what it would cost a hundred times over.
A small firm asks what its supplier-mail agent costs to keep running. What do you go and measure?
A The money one run uses, since the machine's bill is the only thing the firm pays. B Cost is money and minutes. Record both for one run before you count a week. C The time one clean run takes, then multiply it by the runs a good week needs.
Check my recall Why this matters The Hugging Face course tells you to track token use, which is the money. It also tracks how long a run took, which is the minutes. Both matter, because somebody is sitting there. A workflow whose cost nobody counted cannot be priced or defended when a buyer asks.
Give the money and the minutes one run takes, and the honest figure for a real week.
The Hugging Face course tells you to track token use, which is the money. It also tracks how long a run took, which is the minutes. Both matter, because somebody is sitting there. A workflow whose cost nobody counted cannot be priced or defended when a buyer asks.
Cost is money and minutes. Record both for one run before you count a week. The expensive part is usually the retry, so count retries on their own. A workflow whose cost you have not counted cannot be priced or defended. Task Price one day of the supplier-mail workflow, with the model's published price open in front of you.
Weak approach Says one run takes about four minutes, so twenty runs is an hour of machine time. No token count is opened, and the money side of the sheet stays empty.
Stronger approach Reads the price page on 13 September 2026: Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, $0.10 in and $0.40 out per million tokens. One run uses 10,000 in and 2,000 out, which is ₹0.16 at ₹88 to the dollar. Twenty runs a day is ₹3.20, and one retry in five makes it ₹3.80.
Why the stronger approach works The weak sheet counts minutes and no money at all. The strong one shows the multiplication and the day the price was read. A price with no date cannot be checked later, because that page changes.
Try a changed situation A vendor quotes you a price for each clean run of an agent workflow. What do you ask before you agree?
Make something yourself Make a cost sheet for one workflow. Give the money and the minutes for one run, count the retries on their own, and show a real week. Write the day you read the price.
Lesson 6 of 9 on Running and checking AI agents next Add the check that stops the break Part 2 ends in a work sample you can send The rules this work sample is read against
Read the primary or official source: Hugging Face Agents course · watching and judging agents