Understand usage and costs
Usage figures help you compare activity; they are not always an invoice. A provider-reported charge takes precedence, while an estimated price may be unavailable. For detailed field definitions and CLI instructions, see Usage & Costs.
Open the usage panel
- In Web chat, open the chat controls and choose Show stats.
- In the panel titled Usage, select This conversation, All models, or Context.
- If a value is missing, check whether the selected conversation or account has recorded activity.
The conversation view describes the session you are viewing. All models summarizes recorded provider requests for your account, including requests outside conversations. Context estimates what fills the active conversation's context window. These views have different scopes, so their totals are not expected to match.
Read the three views
Use This conversation to check tokens, cache, cost, and generation speed for the current session. Use All models to compare usage grouped by provider and model across your account. Deleting a conversation does not remove this recorded model history. Use Context to see the active window and an estimated breakdown of its contents; estimates may differ from the provider's own count.
A dash means the relevant value is unknown or unavailable, not necessarily zero. A known free request can be reported as zero. Totals add known prices; they do not turn unknown prices into zero.
Interpret cost and cache
When the provider reports a charge, that amount wins, including a reported zero. Otherwise Elowen estimates using known model pricing. Unlisted or ambiguous models can have no estimate. If you need a billable amount, compare with the provider's own usage or invoice.
Cache figures describe cached input reads and writes; they do not mean the request was free. A cache hit rate shows the share of prompt input served from cache. Context and cache values explain different things: one estimates what occupies the conversation, the other records provider cache accounting.
Check longer-term usage
An administrator may install the optional Stats plugin to provide a separate Statistics page with date-range reports. Without it, the built-in chat views remain available. The plugin's Consumption origin view is administrator-only and separates users, addresses, and internal or channel activity; viewing an admin article does not grant access. For plugin availability and limits, see the Stats plugin guide.
If a view cannot load, use its retry action. If it is empty, choose a range or conversation with recorded usage; data deleted before usage tracking cannot be reconstructed.