Token Usage & Cost Management

This page explains how Burp AI Agent tracks usage and how to reduce cost/noise when using cloud backends.

What Is Tracked

Session statistics include:

• input/output character totals,

• estimated token usage,

• per-backend usage distribution.

Passive scanner flow also records token-aware telemetry to help tune background analysis settings.

Where to View Usage

• Session sidebar summary in the chat panel.

• Passive scanner metrics in the scanner settings area.

• Audit logs (if enabled) for detailed event-level analysis.

Conversation History Budgets

To prevent prompt growth over long sessions:

Backend Type	Budget
HTTP	20 messages + 40000 total chars (minimum latest 2 kept)
CLI	10 messages or 20000 total chars

Cost Reduction Controls

Use these settings in AI Passive Scanner tab:

• Rate Limit

• Max Size (KB)

• Req body chars (AI) / Resp body chars (AI)

• Max headers / Max params

• Endpoint dedup (min) / Response dedup (min)

• Prompt cache TTL (min)

• Manual context JSON (compact)

Practical Tuning Strategy

1. Keep Scope Only ON.

2. Start with defaults.

3. If cost is high, reduce response body cap first.

4. Then reduce headers/params and max size.

5. Increase dedup/cache windows for repetitive traffic.

6. For high-volume targets, increase Rate Limit.

Provider Cost Estimation Tips

• Character counts are estimates, not provider-billed exact tokens.

• Different providers tokenize text differently.

• Use your provider billing dashboard for final spend validation.

Related Pages

• Chat & Sessions

• Passive AI Scanner

• Settings Reference