How many tokens should I buy when building a Q&A customized gpt?

API
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1

Hello

I want to connect the OpenAI API to my google drive using LangChain, but I know before starting everything, I need to buy some tokens to use the API Key. I am very confused on how many tokens should I buy? How much should be the monthly budget? I feel I am lost …

Any help would be appreciated .

2

that’s a really difficult question to answer without asking a lot of questions and requiring very accurate answers.

my suggestion is do this:

  • open an account and get whatever the current free allocation is
  • prototype your workflow and see how much you are using
  • strive to use the simpler models as much as is possible (ie GPT 3.5 Turbo) to keep costs down
  • iterate the solution and monitor your costs
  • work on your bugs, features and your optimisations iteratively
  • be prepared to spend more initially on a sub-optimal solution
  • but also be prepared to spend more later if you scale up your volume (and hopefully by this time your solution will be lean and mean!)

I think really the only way to get an answer is by doing.

One of my websites now uses under $30 a month, but there were months when I used more, specifically one month when I had bugs and I’d not optimised my usage properly and I ended up spending over 5 times more. I see that month as a growing pain and an investment.