> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/llms.txt.
> For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://docs.merge.dev/_mcp/server.

# Projects and cost

> Build once. Connect to every API, tool, and LLM. Ship products and agents to production without owning the integration stack.

## Docs

- [Plans and pricing](https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/pricing.md): Gateway plans, per-request cost, BYOK billing, and the errors returned when credit or plan limits are reached.
- [Projects](https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/projects.md): Create a project, scope requests to it with a project API key, the X-Project-Id header, or the project_id body field, and see which methods enforce its budget.
- [Budgets](https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/budgets.md): The four budget scopes compared: where each is configured, periods, error codes, headers, enforcement timing, and project budget alerts.
- [Cost governance and savings](https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/cost-governance-and-savings.md): Where Gateway reports spend (Usage & spend, Logs, and per-response cost), how managed and BYOK costs read, and the routing, compression, and caching settings that lower spend.
- [Context compression](https://docs.merge.dev/merge-gateway/cost/context-compression.md): How context compression compacts JSON and trims long conversations, the three modes and their thresholds, and where to set the organization default and project overrides.