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How to cut your Claude API costs

Claude offers the deepest caching discount of any major provider — up to 90% off cached input — so prompt structure matters more here than anywhere else. The playbook:

The playbook, in order of leverage

  1. Prompt caching — Explicit cache_control breakpoints give up to 90% off cached tokens (5-min and 1-hour TTLs). Put system prompt, tools, and reference docs above the breakpoint, byte-identical every call.
  2. Model routing & cascades — Haiku handles classification, extraction, and routine drafting at a fraction of Sonnet/Opus pricing; cascade upward only on failure.
  3. Batch APIs — The Message Batches API is 50% off and stacks with prompt caching.
  4. Context hygiene & token management — Long agent conversations dominate Claude bills — summarize history instead of replaying it, and trim tool outputs.
  5. Fix the context & data layer (agent memory) — Agent workloads that re-ingest context every session are the #1 Claude overspend pattern; persistent memory cuts it at the source.

Pro tip

Cache-aware prompt ordering is worth more on Claude than any other single change — audit that first.

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