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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

Set up Flowstate Desktop for Windows

Flowstate Desktop for Windows sends your AI tool requests through your workspace so usage is tracked in one place. Only AI requests are sent. Everything else goes straight to the internet.

If your IT team manages your PC, they may install it for you. See Deploy Flowstate Desktop for Windows with Intune.

Download

Download for Windows

Install and open Flowstate

Run the installer, then open Flowstate from the Start menu.

Set up

  1. Sign in to Flowstate. Choose Sign in. Your browser opens platform.flowstate.inc and shows a code. Sign in to your Flowstate account, check the code matches the one in the app and approve it. Then choose Open Flowstate to return to the app.
  2. Turn on routing. Choose the button. Windows shows no prompt. Restart your terminal apps afterwards so they pick up the change.
  3. Trust the certificate. Windows shows a Security Warning about a certificate from a certification authority claiming to represent Flowstate. Check the thumbprint it lists, then choose Yes. If you choose No, nothing is trusted and the step stays open.

After setup, Flowstate sits in the notification area. Select its icon to open it. The menu shows the current status, Open, Pause routing and Quit. Pause and Quit put your previous proxy settings back as they were.

Limits to know about

  • Apps that ignore Windows proxy settings and the HTTPS_PROXY variable aren’t covered. Their requests go direct.
  • QUIC (HTTP/3) traffic isn’t covered. Browsers fall back to a covered connection in most cases, but a policy that forces QUIC skips Flowstate.
  • Environment changes only reach apps you start afterwards. Restart terminals and editors.
  • If Flowstate stops while a terminal tool still expects it, the tool can fail to connect. The Flowstate app removes its proxy variable when it can’t reach its service. Start the app, or choose Pause routing, to recover.

More help: Troubleshooting.