LLM Token Costs Declining 200x/Year — Model Routing + Caching Strategies Now Cut Agent Spend 40-90%

Redis·medium signal

Token pricing trends accelerated to 200x/year cost decline in 2024-2026 (up from 50x/year prior), with Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite at $0.08/M input tokens and GPT-5 reasoning at $15/M creating a 188x price spread that makes intelligent routing essential. Proven production strategies: tiered model routing saves 40-50% (cheap models for simple tasks), Anthropic prompt caching 90% off cached tokens, batch processing 50% discount across all majors. Real-world example: $12,400/month GPT-4o support bot dropped to $2,100 via smart routing.