---
title: "Cost-conscious prompting — Knowledge data 2026"
url: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/knowledge/data/ai-cost-prompt
year: 2026
chapter: "knowledge"
question: "AICostPrompt"
section: "AI adoption and cost"
licence: "ODbL 1.0 (https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/)"
---

# Cost-conscious prompting

75% changed prompts for quality, 38% for cost — quality optimization outpaces cost-cutting 2:1.

Asked as: Have you changed how you write prompts or structure requests to reduce cost or improve output quality? (`AICostPrompt`, multi select, optional, v2026.1)

## Options offered

1. Yes, to reduce cost
2. Yes, to improve output quality
3. No

## Results

### All Respondents

n = 560

|  | Respondents | Percent |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Yes, to improve output quality | 422 | 75.4% |
| Yes, to reduce cost | 215 | 38.4% |
| No | 88 | 15.7% |

In context: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/knowledge/data.md