---
title: "Why cached AI agent API calls are free - actionlake"
description: "Agents repeat the same reads all day. actionlake serves repeats from a tenant cache and bills nothing for a cache hit, in the terms. Here is how it works."
canonical: https://actionlake.com/blog/cached-answers-are-free
updated: 2026-10-22
---

Pricing

# Cached answers are free: why repeated AI agent reads cost nothing

Why the cheapest call is the one we never make, and why we bill accordingly.

**On this page**

Published 5 August 2026 Updated 22 October 2026 Pricing By the actionlake team

Most agent traffic is repetition. The same client list, the same open tickets, the same invoice status - asked again and again, by agents that cannot remember each other's answers. Metering every one of those repeats is easy revenue, which is exactly why everyone does it.

**Cached answers are free on every plan. Start free and watch the AL-Cache header.** 100,000 free calls a month, no card.

[Start free](https://actionlake.com/console?start=sandbox)

## What a cache hit costs: nothing

We do the opposite. When actionlake can answer from its cache - and the cache is shared across your tenant, so five agents asking the same question cost one upstream call - the answer costs you nothing: no fee from us, and no call against your vendor's rate limit. The response says `AL-Cache: hit` on its face, and you can verify it against your vendor's own usage page.

Fair use applies, and it is in the price book too: up to 200 cache hits for every billed call, then US$0.02 per 1,000 hits past that. Writes are never cached and never retried.

## Why it is in the terms

This is not a promotion; it is written into the terms. It survives because our incentives are aligned with yours: we make money when agents do new work in your systems, not when they ask the same question twice. A meter that charges for repetition is a meter that quietly punishes agents for being thorough.

## Failures are free too

The corollary matters too: anything that fails through no fault of yours - a vendor outage, a timeout, a rate-limit refusal - is also free. You pay for definitive answers. Everything else is our problem, which is what an infrastructure company is for.

The full meter, with every free item, is on the [pricing page](https://actionlake.com/pricing).

## Related guides

- [Guide · Pricing How much do AI agent tool calls cost? Per-call, per-task and per-seat pricing compared](https://actionlake.com/guides/ai-agent-tool-call-pricing)
- [Guide · Cross-system Cross-system questions: joining Autotask tickets with Xero invoices using an AI agent](https://actionlake.com/guides/autotask-tickets-and-xero-invoices)
- [Guide · Architecture MCP server vs MCP gateway: what you need for production agents](https://actionlake.com/guides/mcp-server-vs-mcp-gateway)

[← All posts](https://actionlake.com/blog)

## Ask one question across two systems.

[Start free](https://actionlake.com/console?start=sandbox) [See pricing](https://actionlake.com/pricing)

100,000 free calls a month. No card. Hard caps on every key. Cached answers are free.

---

Source: https://actionlake.com/blog/cached-answers-are-free
More: https://actionlake.com/llms.txt