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Know what AI costs. See what you get back.

Understand spending, share budgets and connect AI use to the work it supports.

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Buy tokens, rent GPUs, or own the rack?

Open-weight models are now good enough to make self-hosting a financial question rather than a capability one. I modelled four options, an office rack, colocation, rented GPUs and per-token APIs, to find where each one actually wins. The answer turns on utilisation, and it isn't the one the internet keeps giving.

Turn a $3m AI bill into $1.9m

Most teams overpay for AI twice without noticing: they run everything through the default flagship model, and they buy the tokens on a metered plan they can't see into. An intelligent proxy fixes both. Here is the maths, a calculator you can drag, and where Flowstate fits.

Start with the work All use cases

Understand AI spending and value

See where the budget goes and what the business gets back.

Share one AI budget across your tools

Fund people, teams and projects across connected services.

Give your team more capacity

Reduce the preparation, checking and follow-up around recurring work.

Connect AI use to delivered work

Follow AI activity into projects, code and business results.
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Docs / Flowstate Desktop

Flowstate Desktop

Flowstate Desktop runs on Mac and Windows. It sends AI requests from a computer to Flowstate so usage is tracked in one place. Everything else goes straight to the internet.

It replaces the earlier Flowstate Agent and its Cloud Proxy.

What it does

  • It sends only AI inference requests to Flowstate. Other traffic isn’t sent.
  • It works with the AI tools people already use, without changing each tool’s settings.
  • If Flowstate can’t be reached, requests go direct, so a problem on our side doesn’t stop people’s AI tools.
  • On Mac, it also covers OpenRouter and the xAI API. A Mac that was set up before this needs a one-off Update certificate from the menu bar, once it runs Flowstate Desktop for Mac 2.0.4 or later. See Update the certificate.
  • Requests then follow your workspace’s routing settings and data residency.

Set up in three steps

StepMacWindows
1Sign in to Flowstate.Sign in to Flowstate.
2Enable the network extension.Turn on routing.
3Trust the certificate.Trust the certificate.

Do the steps in that order. The certificate lets the app read AI requests on the computer so it can pick out the ones to send to Flowstate. On Mac, nothing is sent to Flowstate until the certificate is trusted.

After setup, Flowstate runs from the menu bar on Mac and the notification area on Windows.

Choose your guide

Download

Flowstate Desktop for Mac

Download for macOS

Flowstate Desktop for Windows

Download for Windows

Not sure whether you need Flowstate Desktop

If you only want to connect developer tools, you can point them at Flowstate Router instead. Use Flowstate Desktop when you want to cover company computers without changing each tool.

Before you roll out

Read Data residency and what’s captured. By default, Flowstate records usage, cost and routing decisions, not conversations. Tell people what’s recorded, and whether session transcripts are on for any service, before you install Flowstate Desktop.