Guides

Practical guides for AI governance and cost control

Step-by-step setup guides for governing AI requests, protecting sensitive data, and keeping spend in check. Written by engineers, for engineers.

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Connect a provider, issue a key, and put your first governed request through.

  1. 1Connect Your Own Provider Keys 10 min
  2. 2Create Virtual Keys for Apps and Agents 10 min
  3. 3Create Your First AI Gateway Policy 10 min
  4. 4Bind AI Policies to Teams, Apps, and Keys 8 min
  5. 5Set an AI Spend Budget That Stops Overspend 11 min
  6. 6Fix Blocked AI Gateway Requests 7 min

Limits and routing

4 guides

Cap requests and tokens, pick providers, and keep traffic flowing through outages.

  1. Set Request and Token Rate Limits 9 min
  2. Ask for a Model, Let Cloptima Choose the Provider 10 min
  3. Keep Requests Working When a Provider Fails 11 min
  4. Run AI Requests on Cloptima Credits 9 min

Guardrails

4 guides

Keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and decide what scans cost.

  1. Create Your First Guardrail Profile 10 min
  2. Redact Personal Data with Custom Guardrail Rules 9 min
  3. Add a Provider Safety Scan to Your Guardrails 12 min
  4. Control Guardrail Cost and Failure Behavior 9 min

Caching

4 guides

Serve repeat and similar prompts from cache, and measure what it saves.

  1. Cache Identical Requests and Stop Paying Twice 11 min
  2. Tune the Exact Cache for Hit Rate and Safety 10 min
  3. Reuse Similar Answers with the Semantic Cache 11 min
  4. Measure What AI Caching Saves 8 min

Agents and MCP

5 guides

Decide which tools agents may use, and trace what they did.

  1. Control Which Tools Your AI Agents Can Use 11 min
  2. Register and Approve MCP Tool Servers 10 min
  3. Catch Tool Changes Before They Surprise You 8 min
  4. Record What Your Agents Did with Session Traces 11 min
  5. Investigate an Agent Incident from Alert to Cause 9 min

Access, edge, and audit

5 guides

Rotate keys, run the gateway in your network, and prove who changed what.

  1. Rotate and Retire Keys Without Surprises 8 min
  2. Run the Gateway in Your Own Network with the Edge Gateway 12 min
  3. Put an Approval Step in Front of Risky Changes 9 min
  4. Read the Audit Log and Prove Who Changed What 10 min
  5. Connect Directory Sync (Entra, Workspace, SCIM) 6 min

Spend and attribution

4 guides

Read AI spend by owner, apply contract rates, and price business outcomes.

  1. Read Your AI Spend by Team, App, Model, and Key 10 min
  2. Apply Your Negotiated Contract Rates 11 min
  3. Track AI Cost per Ticket, Call, or Customer 12 min
  4. OpenAI-Compatible AI Gateway for FinOps 8 min

Coming from another tool

4 guides

Move from, or run alongside, LiteLLM, Portkey, Helicone, and Langfuse.

  1. Migrate From LiteLLM Reporting to Cloptima AI FinOps 8 min
  2. Use Cloptima With Portkey 7 min
  3. Use Cloptima With Helicone 7 min
  4. Use Cloptima With Langfuse 7 min

CLI and MCP server

4 guides

Work with Cloptima from the terminal, CI, and your AI assistant.

  1. Cloptima CLI Getting Started 7 min
  2. Cloptima CLI for CI/CD Cost Guardrails 9 min
  3. Cloptima MCP Setup 8 min
  4. Connect Your AI Assistant to Cloptima with MCP 9 min

Connect your AI stack

10 guides

Providers, SDKs, frameworks, and coding tools that report to Cloptima.

  1. Connect OpenAI Usage to Cloptima 6 min
  2. Connect Anthropic Usage to Cloptima 6 min
  3. Connect Gemini and Vertex AI Usage to Cloptima 7 min
  4. Connect Amazon Bedrock Usage to Cloptima 7 min
  5. Use Claude Code (and Anthropic-API Tools) With Any Model 6 min
  6. LLM FinOps for Vercel AI SDK Apps 7 min
  7. LangChain LLM Cost Tracking 8 min
  8. LlamaIndex LLM Cost Tracking 8 min
  9. OpenTelemetry GenAI LLM Cost Tracking 9 min
  10. Cloptima LLM Observability SDKs (JS, Python, Go) 7 min

Cloud, Kubernetes, and data

14 guides

Connect cloud accounts and clusters, and cut cloud and warehouse cost.

  1. Connect an AWS Account 7 min
  2. Connect Google Cloud 7 min
  3. Connect a Kubernetes Cluster 6 min
  4. Connect GitHub for PR Cost Impact 6 min
  5. Set Up Budgets and Alerts 5 min
  6. Create Virtual Tag Rules 7 min
  7. AWS Cost Optimization 12 min
  8. Multi-Cloud Cost Management 12 min
  9. Kubernetes Cost Optimization 15 min
  10. BigQuery Cost Optimization 10 min
  11. Snowflake Cost Optimization 10 min
  12. Cloud Cost Management: A Complete Guide 14 min
  13. FinOps Best Practices for Engineering Teams 11 min
  14. AI-Native FinOps: The Future of Cloud Cost Management 8 min

Put These Guides Into Practice

Cloptima automates the cost optimization strategies in these guides.

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