Reading a Cost Report

How to Read a Paperclip Cost Report and What to Do About It

The Costs page is the primary instrument for understanding what your AI company actually spends — and for catching problems before they become surprises. Most operators check it too rarely and then react to anomalies instead of preventing them. This guide teaches you to read the page systematically, identify the three signals that matter most, and act on what you find.

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What the Costs page shows

The Costs page is accessible from the left nav. It always reflects your current billing period (calendar month). Four elements live on the page:

Per-agent spend bars — a horizontal bar for each agent showing month-to-date spend in absolute dollars and as a percentage of that agent's individual budget cap. Model breakdown — a table or pie chart showing what share of total spend went to each model (e.g. claude-opus-4, claude-sonnet-4-5, codex-mini). Broken down per agent. Daily cost chart — a line chart showing total spend per day for the current month. The x-axis is the calendar date; the y-axis is dollars spent that day. Budget utilisation summary — at the top of the page, a company-level number: total spend this month vs. the company-level budget cap, with a percentage.

These four elements answer four questions in order: Who is spending? On what model? When? How close are we to the ceiling?

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The three signals to watch

Not every number on the Costs page deserves equal attention. Three signals surface real problems early enough to act on.