LLM Prompt Caching Guide 2026: Cut API Costs 70% with Anthropic and OpenAI
Prompt caching is the single highest-ROI optimization available for production LLM applications. If you run 10,000 requests per day with an 8K-token cached system prompt on Anthropic Claude, you save roughly $576/month — with a few lines of code change. OpenAI’s automatic caching requires zero code changes and gives you a 50% discount on repeated input tokens. Anthropic’s explicit caching offers up to 90% savings. This guide covers both, plus Gemini, with production code examples, real cost numbers, and the anti-patterns that silently destroy your cache hit rate. ...