Be careful with the new Agents API, I just paid $1600 for idle containers
A developer reported an unexpected $1600 charge after using the new Agents API, despite carefully monitoring token usage which was around $0.20 per run. The issue stemmed from idle containers (sessions) that were left running. The developer advises others to avoid this mistake by ensuring containers are not left idle, highlighting a potential cost pitfall with the Agents API for recurring background jobs.
This report is one of the first user accounts detailing unexpected costs with the new Agents API, specifically identifying idle containers as the cause.
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PublishedOffset at this time: UTC+0Sep 18, 2026, 19:01 UTC
IngestedOffset at this time: UTC+0Sep 18, 2026, 23:00 UTC
- Published
- Sep 18, 2026, 19:01
- Ingested
- Sep 18, 2026, 23:00
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- Dev community
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- Community
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The new Agents API was amazing for my use case. A recurring multi-step job that should run in the background. And I kept a careful eye on the token usage. Around $0.20 per run after switching to Luna. Nice.
What I didn’t keep a careful eye on? The hosted containers. Or I did, but the bill was just not calculated until DAYS later.
Because I had made the big mistake of creating a new container for each job. 5 minutes of work, then just left it idle. 138 containers in total. Or sessions, as OpenAI calls them. So I just looked at it as a useful history to keep for tracing.
Got a little shock when the usage was over $200 this morning. Then an even greater shock when it suddenly spiked to over $1600.