What is Baseline Cost per Workflow?

The fully-loaded cost of running one AI-assisted process, including model API costs, human review time, error correction, downstream rework, prompt engineering overhead, and monitoring.

Why do organizations underestimate AI workflow costs?

Most organizations only track API spend and miss 40-60% of costs from human review, error correction, prompt maintenance, and monitoring overhead.

Baseline Cost per Workflow — Cromus

Baseline Cost per Workflow is Step 1 in Cromus's 4-step measurement framework. It calculates the fully-loaded cost of running one AI-assisted process today — going beyond simple API pricing to include every cost component.

A complete baseline includes: Model API costs (input and output tokens at current pricing), Human review time (the labor cost of reviewing, correcting, and validating AI outputs), Error correction costs (the cost of fixing mistakes, re-running failed executions, and handling edge cases), Downstream rework (the cost when AI outputs cause problems in subsequent processes), Prompt engineering overhead (the time spent crafting, testing, and maintaining prompts), and Monitoring and observability costs.

The baseline formula: Baseline Cost = Direct API Cost + (Human Review Hours x Hourly Rate) + (Error Rate x Correction Cost) + Prompt Maintenance Allocation + Monitoring Overhead.

Most organizations underestimate their workflow costs by 40-60% because they only track API spend. The baseline provides the true denominator for ROI calculations and Croms waste measurement.

This page connects to: Workflow Classification (Step 0), Croms (Step 2), and TCWO (Step 3) in the Cromus measurement framework.