An AI-generated app feels like it costs nothing — until day 12, when the first real users arrive and the cloud invoice arrives with them. Here are the three line items we have seen catch teams off guard, and what to do about each.
1. Generation credits
Every regeneration, edit and AI-assisted change consumes credits. On a free or Basic plan that is plenty for a prototype, but a busy product team can burn a Pro tier in a day if they treat the editor like a shell. Two habits help:
- Batch your edits. One prompt that asks for three changes is cheaper than three prompts.
- Use a smaller model when you can. Switching the model per generation is one click; not every change needs the frontier model.
2. Egress
The default deployment puts your assets on a global CDN, which is great for users and bad for your egress bill if you serve uncompressed images. CodeSky-generated apps already use modern image formats; the surprise is usually a third-party SDK pulling large analytics payloads. Audit the network tab once before you call the launch done.
3. Idle compute
If you connect a Postgres or a small VM-backed service, that resource costs the same whether anyone is using it or not. For low-traffic SaaS, a serverless database or auto-pause Postgres pays for itself in week one.
The 3-line audit
Once a month we run a three-line audit on every CodeSky-built app:
- How many credits did we burn last month, and on what?
- What is the median asset size on the homepage?
- What is utilization on each backing resource overnight?
If any of those three numbers shocks you, that is the next quarter's biggest savings opportunity, hiding in plain sight.