Token Usage & Costs

Supervertaler keeps a persistent log of the AI tokens and cost of every operation, and a built-in Usage & Costs report to total and export it. This is the place to answer questions like “how much did this project cost me?”, “how many tokens did we use this month?”, or “what should I bill this client for AI?” — and it works for every provider, including custom and self-hosted models.

It complements the Reports tab (which shows each call live, as you work) and the AI Cost Guide (which explains how costs work). The usage log is the durable, after-the-fact record.

Note

The usage log records metadata only — model, token counts, cost, project, file and language pair — and never the prompt or response text. That keeps the file small and safe to open in a spreadsheet or hand to an institution’s monitoring team.

Added in v4.20.56.

The usage log file

Every AI call appends one line to a monthly file in your Supervertaler data folder:

…\Supervertaler\trados\usage\usage-2026-06.jsonl

The file is JSONL (one JSON object per line), so you can open it directly in Excel, parse it with a script, or load it into a notebook. A single line looks like this:

{"ts":"2026-06-18T16:07:03Z","product":"trados","task":"BatchTranslate",
 "provider":"claude","model":"claude-sonnet-4-6","project":"Example project (patent, en-nl)",
 "file":"US8312383.docx.sdlxliff","client":"","src_lang":"English (United States)",
 "tgt_lang":"Dutch (Belgium)","in_regular":654,"in_cache_read":0,"in_cache_write":27843,
 "out":808,"source":"actual","cost_usd":0.11849325,"cost_known":true,"duration_s":24.9,"ok":true}

A few things worth knowing:

• Every flow is covered — Translate, Batch Translate, Quick Launcher, AutoPrompt, Proofread and Chat. A batch run is recorded as one line (the whole job), not one line per segment.
• source is actual when the figures are the real token counts reported by the provider’s API, or estimated when they fall back to the chars/4 heuristic (see Estimates vs actual cost). Cache reads/writes are broken out (in_cache_read / in_cache_write).
• cost_known is false when the model isn’t in the price list — the tokens are still logged, the cost just shows as unknown until you add a rate (see Custom and self-hosted models).
• It’s on by default. Turn it off any time in Settings → AI Settings → “Keep a persistent token-usage log”.

The Usage & Costs report

Open Settings → AI Settings → “Usage & Costs report…”. The window totals your logged usage and lets you slice it:

• Range — This month, Last 3 months, This year, or All time.
• Group by — Project, Client, Model, Provider, Task (Translate / Batch / Quick Launcher / …), Day or Month.

Each row shows the number of calls, input and output tokens, total tokens, cost, and a % actual column — the share of that group backed by provider-reported figures rather than estimates. The footer shows the range total and your month-to-date spend (against your budget, if set).

Note

Per-client billing. Grouping by Client is only useful once each project has a client name. There is currently no in-app field for this — set it by adding a "client": "Acme Ltd" line to the project’s file under …\Supervertaler\trados\projects\. Projects without one are grouped under (none).

Exporting

The report’s Export CSV… and Export Excel… buttons write the detailed ledger (one row per call, every column) for the selected range — ready for invoicing or analysis in any spreadsheet. CSV is written as UTF-8 (with a BOM, so Excel detects it correctly); Excel export produces a native .xlsx.

Because both Supervertaler products write the same columns, an LSP can concatenate the CSV/JSONL from several translators — and from both Trados and Workbench — into one analysis.

Monthly budget

Set a soft monthly limit in Settings → AI Settings → “Monthly budget (USD)” (cents are allowed, e.g. 25.50; 0 disables it).

It is advisory and never blocks: once this month’s logged spend reaches the budget, starting a Batch Translate shows a “Monthly budget reached — start anyway?” prompt, so a large run can’t slip past unnoticed. Your month-to-date spend versus the budget is also shown in the Usage & Costs report.

Custom and self-hosted models

Costs are computed from a single price list, pricing.json, shared with Supervertaler Workbench. The bundled copy covers the built-in models. To price a custom or self-hosted model (or to override any rate for both Supervertaler products at once):

1. Copy the bundled pricing.json to …\Supervertaler\pricing.json (the shared data root), or create it there.

2. Add an entry under models keyed by the exact model id you use, with the input/output price per 1,000,000 tokens:

   {
     "models": {
       "my-university-llama": { "input": 0.0, "output": 0.0 }
     }
   }

3. Restart Supervertaler. Its cost now appears in the log and report; until then, its tokens are still logged with the cost marked unknown.

Local models (Ollama) are priced at 0 — their token counts are still recorded, which is useful for capacity planning.

See also

• AI Cost Guide — how AI costs work, estimates vs. actual, provider dashboards
• Reports — live, per-call token counts and cost as you work
• AI Settings — where the toggle, budget and report button live
• Batch Translate — the main driver of token usage
• Data folder — where the usage log and project files live