What a2aviary costs
Updated (USD, excluding taxes). Draft for owner review.
Provider invoices are the authority. Token counts and ledger amounts from launch tests are not a monthly bill. We have no traffic, analytics or tracking figures, and we don't publish any.
How to read the statuses
- confirmed
- Fixed by configuration plus published pricing, or confirmed by the owner.
- estimated
- Calculated from published prices and assumptions; token counts can be measured while dollars are estimated.
- measured
- Reported by a provider for real usage; measured tokens do not establish a dollar bill.
- budgeted
- An allowance, reservation, or ceiling, not spend. AWS budget notifications are alerts, not spending caps.
- to-confirm
- Requires an invoice or billing dashboard check.
Cost sheet
Amounts are in USD. Scroll the table horizontally on small screens to read all columns.
| Item | Provider | Type / period | Amount (USD) | Status | Source / evidence and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domain a2aviary.io (registered 2026-10-03, expires 2027-10-03) | Amazon Registrar (Route 53 Domains) | annual year |
$72.00 | confirmed | WHOIS a2aviary.io; https://d32ze2gidvkk54.cloudfront.net/Amazon_Route_53_Domain_Registration_Pricing_20140731.pdf (.io $71.00 registration/renewal); amount paid $72.00 confirmed by Carlos List price; paid amount to be confirmed by Carlos |
| TLS certificate (ACM, CloudFront) | AWS | monthly month |
$0.00 | confirmed | infra/src/app.ts acm.Certificate; https://aws.amazon.com/certificate-manager/pricing/ |
| Route 53 hosted zone | AWS | monthly month |
$0.50 | estimated | docs/costs.md; https://aws.amazon.com/route53/pricing/ |
| Secrets Manager (4 secrets) | AWS | monthly month |
$1.60 | estimated | infra/src/email.ts; docs/costs.md |
| CloudWatch: 8 alarms (17 alarm metrics) + 2 custom metrics | AWS | monthly month |
$2.30 | estimated | infra/src/controls.ts; docs/costs.md |
| AWS usage (Lambda incl. 1-min watchdog, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, S3, logs, API Gateway, CloudFront, SES) | AWS | usage month |
$0.20–$3.60 | estimated | docs/costs.md working scenario |
| AWS actual bill since 2026-10-03 | AWS | usage to-date |
Not yet known / no dollar figure recorded | to-confirm | AWS Billing/Cost Explorer (payer account); Project cost tag not yet activated |
| Launch research task (22,556 in / 1,177 out tokens, 1 search) | OpenAI | usage one-time |
$0.015257 | estimated | docs/release-verification.md (tokens measured; $ conservative ledger estimate) |
| Combined-usage research task, research portion (12,671 in / 381 out) | OpenAI | usage one-time |
$0.011775 | estimated | docs/release-verification.md; final Agents usage unavailable |
| Final no-research task (14,667 tokens) | OpenAI | usage one-time |
$0.001998 | estimated | docs/release-verification.md |
| Smoke turn (6,759 in / 8 out tokens) | OpenAI | usage one-time |
Not yet known / no dollar figure recorded | measured | docs/release-verification.md (tokens only; no $ recorded) |
| Held unknown-usage reservations (4 x $1) | OpenAI (internal ledger) | reserved to-date |
$4.00 | budgeted | docs/release-verification.md Ceiling, not spend |
| OpenAI actual bill | OpenAI | usage to-date |
Not yet known / no dollar figure recorded | to-confirm | OpenAI billing dashboard |
| Model allowance ($1 reserved per task) | a2aviary ledger | budget month |
$10.00 | budgeted | docs/costs.md; docs/decisions/004-openai-runtime-and-limits.md |
| AWS notification budget (alert only, no cap) | AWS Budgets | budget month |
$15.00 | budgeted | infra/src/controls.ts; https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-budgets/pricing/ |
| GitHub public repo + Actions (standard runners) | GitHub | monthly month |
$0.00 | confirmed | https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-actions |
| ChatGPT Pro (Codex), shared personal subscription used for a2aviary since 2026-10-03 | OpenAI | subscription month |
$100.00 | to-confirm | Reported by Carlos Not project-exclusive; shown at full amount, no prorating (no usage hours) |
Totals
These are not invoices. The totals below are supplied estimates and targets; they are not a sum of all rows.
- Paid or committed to date, known amounts
- $72.02903
- Expected monthly run-rate, project only
- $10.60–$24.00
AWS 4.60-8.00 est + domain 72/12=6.00 + model 0-10 cap
- Monthly run-rate including shared tools at their full amount
- $110.60–$124.00
- Configured monthly operating target
- $25.00, plus $6.00 domain amortization
AWS budget is an alert, not a cap
Excluded from the paid or committed total
- AWS actual bill since 2026-10-03 (
aws-actual) - OpenAI actual bill (
openai-actual) - Held unknown-usage reservations (4 x $1) (
openai-held-reservations) - ChatGPT Pro (Codex), shared personal subscription used for a2aviary since 2026-10-03 (
chatgpt-pro)
Honesty notes
- Estimates use published prices and the assumptions in docs/costs.md. Replace them with invoice amounts once available.
- Token counts are provider-reported. Dollar figures next to them are conservative application ledger estimates, not invoices.
- Held reservations are ceilings for usage the provider has not reported yet. They are not refunds or spend, and they are released only against provider billing evidence.
- The ChatGPT Pro plan is Carlos's personal subscription, not a project-only expense. Its full amount is shown because no usage hours are available to split it.
- The supplied figures, statuses, sources, and notes are preserved, including the domain note that still asks for confirmation despite its confirmed status and source.