Developer tools with hidden pricing get skipped. Not because developers are cheap, but because an unknown cost is an unbudgetable cost — and nobody can get a purchase approved for "it depends."
What "contact us" signals
To a technical buyer, a missing price page signals one of three things: the price is high enough that they want a sales call first, the price varies enough that they want to size you up, or they haven't figured out their own economics. All three are reasons to keep looking.
Public pricing signals the opposite: the product has predictable unit economics and enough confidence in them to publish.
What a good rate card contains
Per-unit rates at the smallest meaningful unit. For tokens, per million input and output, with cache rates separate. For images, per image at common resolutions. Vague tiers hide the number that matters.
Volume thresholds and how they apply. If rates drop at volume, say where. If they don't, say that too.
What's metered and what isn't. Retries, failed requests, cached reads, tool calls — ambiguity here is where surprise bills come from.
A worked example. One realistic request, end to end, with the arithmetic shown. This single item removes more doubt than any FAQ.
Why it also helps the vendor
Publishing rates forces internal clarity. It surfaces cases where cost structure doesn't match the story. And it makes the self-serve funnel actually self-serve: the developer who can compute their bill doesn't need a call to start.
Our full per-token table — input, output, cache, across text, image, voice and video — is published here: KeyoAPI [OI] rates.
No sales call required to find out what it costs.
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