# Culpa vs Respan > Respan, formerly Keywords AI, sets budgets per customer and blocks overspend. Culpa sets that spend against what the customer pays and forecasts it. URL: https://getculpa.com/culpa-vs-respan Last reviewed: 2026-08-03 ## Answer Respan, the platform formerly called Keywords AI, is a gateway and observability product that sets budgets per key, per customer or org-wide and blocks requests before spend runs away. Culpa, a local-first LLM cost, margin, and forecast ledger, prices those calls against what each customer pays you and forecasts next month with a range. ## Why this happens Respan gets closer to Culpa's question than anything else in this cluster, and the gap that remains is exact. It sets budgets and rate limits per key, per customer or org-wide, warns as you approach them and blocks requests past them. Its feature table lists cost and usage tracking, user analytics and custom properties on every tier including the free one. So per-customer cost attribution is there, and per-customer enforcement is there, which is more than most of this category ships. Two things aren't. A budget is a number you chose, so it tells you what you'll allow rather than what you'll spend, and the tool holds no revenue, so the spend it attributes to a customer has nothing to sit against. Note also that keywordsai.co now resolves here and the footer still reads Keywords AI, Inc, so the rename is recent enough that older references point at the old name. ## What this usually looks like - You can cap a customer's spend and can't say whether that customer is profitable. - A budget got raised because a customer complained, and nobody checked what they pay you. - Per-customer cost exists and per-customer revenue lives in the billing system nobody joins to it. - You know which key overspent and not which ones are worth the money. - Your forecast is last month's number with a percentage added. ## Common mistakes - Reading a per-customer budget as per-customer economics. Why it hurts: A budget is a ceiling you set. Economics needs the revenue that customer pays, which no observability tool holds. Do instead: Join attributed spend to your billing system, or use a ledger that already carries revenue. - Treating a warning threshold as a forecast. Why it hurts: A threshold fires when you get there. A forecast tells you beforehand, with a range. Do instead: Keep the threshold for safety and project the month from your own history. - Assuming old Keywords AI links and docs still describe today's product. Why it hurts: The product renamed to Respan and older material may not match the current feature set. Do instead: Verify against respan.ai directly rather than cached references to the old name. ## Self-check - Pick your largest customer by spend and write down what they pay you. - Divide one by the other, and see whether any tool did that for you. - Ask what next month costs, with a range rather than a point. - Check whether your budget thresholds were derived from anything or just chosen. ## A budget cap and a margin, on the same customer Respan can cap a customer at a monthly figure and block requests past it. Take a customer capped at $300 a month of model spend who pays you $250 a month, priced on Claude Haiku 4.5 at real rates of $1.00 and $5.00 per million from the price book, effective 2026-07-02. Their usage is modelled and the rates are real. 150M input tokens x $1.00 per million = $150.00 30M output tokens x $5.00 per million = $150.00 total model spend = $300.00, exactly at the cap, so nothing is blocked revenue $250.00 - cost $300.00 = -$50.00 margin, and the cap never fires The cap did its job and the customer is still unprofitable, because the cap was never told what they pay. A ceiling set above your revenue is a ceiling that protects nothing, and no tool without revenue can tell you where to set it. ## Cost figures Every figure carries its confidence and its source. For each provider-reported figure below, its own source line names the published record it came from, the date that record was read, and any aggregation applied to it. - $199 per month, Respan's published Team plan price, billed yearly [provider-reported] Source: respan.ai/pricing, read 2026-08-03. Team includes 100k logs and 10k scores with unlimited datasets, evaluators and prompts, additional logs at $8 per 100k and additional scores at $1 per 1k. Free is $0 with 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators and 5 prompts. Enterprise is custom. - -$50.00 per month, modelled margin on a customer capped at $300 of spend who pays $250 [calculated] Source: 150M input tokens at $1.00 per million plus 30M output tokens at $5.00 per million on Claude Haiku 4.5 = $150.00 + $150.00 = $300.00 of model spend, against $250.00 of revenue, giving -$50.00. Rates are real, from the price book effective 2026-07-02. Token volumes, the cap and the revenue figure are modelled. ## FAQ Q: Is Respan the same as Keywords AI? A: It's the same company under a new name. keywordsai.co now resolves to respan.ai, and the footer on that site reads Keywords AI, Inc with Respan as a registered trademark, read 2026-08-03. Older documentation and links under the previous name may not match the current product. Q: Does Respan track cost per customer? A: Yes, and this page says so plainly. Its published feature table lists cost and usage tracking, user analytics and custom properties on every tier including the free one, and it sets budgets per key, per customer or org-wide. Cost attribution isn't the gap. Q: So what does Culpa add over Respan? A: The revenue each customer pays you, which turns cost per customer into margin per customer, and a forecast of next month from your own history rather than a threshold you chose. Neither appears in Respan's published feature set as read on 2026-08-03. Q: What does Respan cost? A: Free is $0 with the full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators and 5 prompts. Team is $199 a month billed yearly with unlimited datasets, evaluators and prompts. Additional logs are $8 per 100k and additional scores $1 per 1k. Enterprise is custom. Read 2026-08-03. ## Sources - Respan: https://www.respan.ai - Respan pricing: https://www.respan.ai/pricing Run the free Cost Leak Scan: https://app.getculpa.com/scan?source=pseo&slug=culpa-vs-respan&cluster=competitor Machine-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/api/pages Human-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/guides Site overview: https://app.getculpa.com/llms.txt Privacy: Culpa runs on your infrastructure. Your prompts and responses never leave it. Culpa counts calls to run your plan, and it fails open, so if it ever breaks your app keeps running.