Wild Token Spreads from Search APIs: Devs Seek Cost-Reduction Strategies
Patient-Injury-1327 · reddit · 2026-08-07
Developers have found massive variations in the token counts returned by major web search APIs (like Exa, Brave, Tavily), ranging from under 5k to 40-60k per query. While the search calls themselves are cheap, the downstream LLM processing costs can skyrocket. The community is discussing production strategies such as truncation, reranking, or building custom trimming tools.
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