Self-paced online course

Learn to manage the cost of AI.

A self-paced online course that teaches you how to measure AI spend, explain what drives it, and make better cost and quality decisions across models, RAG and agents.

Every chapter free  •  Beginner-friendly  •  Learn at your own pace

Designed for FinOps practitioners, engineers, product managers and finance teams.

Course lesson 8 min

Chapter 01 · Foundations

Understanding AI costs

Learn how requests, tokens and model choices appear on an AI bill.

In this lesson

  • Trace how AI usage becomes cost
  • Read token and model pricing
  • Compare cost with quality

Worked example

Trace a real AI bill line by line

3 free chapters
The learning journey
Provider bill
Tokens
Workloads
Cost drivers
Optimization
Verified savings

Applied skills

What you will be able to do

Make cost decisions that engineering and finance can both trust.

Explain an AI bill
Allocate spend to workloads
Find token and context waste
Calculate cache savings
Right-size models
Compare cost without sacrificing quality
Forecast AI expenditure
Communicate recommendations clearly

Practical, not theoretical

Work with the evidence behind the bill.

Use realistic datasets, provider bills, API usage events, prompt examples, cost incidents and business scenarios. Every exercise works with spreadsheets and sample data, so paid tools and provider access are optional.

Workload cost map01
Cache business case02
Model comparison scorecard03
AI cost dashboard04
90-day optimization roadmap05

Course roadmap

Every chapter is free to read.

See the complete path from cloud cost foundations to AI governance. Chapters are released as they are ready, and all of them stay free.

Part 1 · Foundations

01

FinOps Crash Course

Free learning
02

How Production AI Applications Work

Free learning
03

Token Economics and AI Pricing

Free learning

Part 2 · Build AI cost visibility

04

From API Calls to Business Workloads

Coming soon
05

AI Usage Telemetry and Cost Allocation

Coming soon
06

Dashboards, KPIs and Cost Anomalies

Coming soon

Part 3 · Optimize AI workloads

07

Prompt, Context and Output Waste

Coming soon
08

Caching Economics and Avoidable Uncached Spend

Coming soon
09

Model Rightsizing and Workload Routing

Coming soon
10

Compare Models Without Breaking Production

Coming soon

Part 4 · Advanced AI cost drivers

11

RAG and Embedding Economics

Coming soon
12

Agent Economics and Cost Controls

Coming soon

Part 5 · Operate AI FinOps

13

Forecasting, Budgets and AI Unit Economics

Coming soon
14

Governance and the AI FinOps Operating Model

Coming soon

Part 6 · Reference

15

Glossary
Work in progress

Free learning
16

Recommended Learning
Work in progress

Free learning

Capstone preview

Reduce an AI bill without breaking the application.

Investigate why a fictional AI bill rose from $18,420 to $31,760 while usage grew only 24%.

Preview the case