Production and MLOps Section 092
Caching and Cost Control
The cheapest inference is the one you never run. How to reuse answers and keep the bill small.
13 of 13 lessons published Three reading levels on every lesson
Start with “Estimating how long and how much a run will cost”
Lessons in order
Work top to bottom. Each lesson assumes the one above it.
- Estimating how long and how much a run will cost
- Caching model predictions
- Semantic caching
- Prompt prefix caching
- Caching embeddings
- Cache stampedes and single-flight
- Precomputing predictions
- Cache invalidation for RAG
- Unit economics of an AI feature
- Cutting LLM API costs
- Model cascades
- Self-hosting vs API: the break-even point
- The one-box production stack